According to the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, the users now no longer have to specify the Sitemap file type in order to submit a Sitemap to Google! The search engine will now automatically determine as to what type of data is being submitted… In short – Sitemap submission has now become easier!

Part of what makes the web so interesting is that there are so many different kinds of content out there. Do you use videos on your website? If so, send us a Video Sitemap file so that we can send you visitors to those videos! Do you host source-code samples? Submit a Code Search Sitemap! Here are the various kinds of Sitemap files that Google supports at the moment:

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Love the company or hate it, at least Microsoft seems to be doing a little more work.  After we documented its patching of some stuff last time, the software giant’s effort to create some format interoperability solutions is now proving fruitful.

Employee Peter Galli documented three new solutions in a Port 25 post.  “The solutions - which will improve the installation, performance and stability of translated documents - include the Open XML Document Viewer, which translates Open XML documents to an HTML Web page and allows readability on Web friendly browsers like Firefox,” he wrote.

Then there’s “the Open XML/ODF Translators Version 2.5, a document translator that improves translations between different formats through optimized templates, and which will be made available as an add-in for Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and XP,” and “[t]he Apache POI Java SDK for Open XML gives customers and independent software developers greater choice as they create and use business applications that manipulate business documents and which are built on Java.”

Since the Document Interoperability Initiative was just launched in March, all of this represents a pretty good turnaround.  The collection may improve Microsoft’s reputation in the XML community, and should at least provide members with a few different things to look over.

Even more tools appear to be on the way, so stay tuned for further updates and additional Open XML interoperability in the future.