Blogger has added integration of the AJAX news bar and YouTube/Google Video bar as an easy drag and drop addition to your template. The bars are available for every website, as well as blog and web search bars, but Blogger’s addition makes it easy for less advanced users to configure and just drop in.
Also, Anothr is making it easy to receive RSS feed updates in Google Talk. Read more at Download Squad. Finally, Google released today a

ComputerWorld has an article about trouble some users and organizations had accessing their Google Apps services recently. According to the article, this was the third time this month the service suffered downtime, this time on Tuesday of this week from 10:00 am to about 4 pm. There was a previous outage on March 12 for about two hours, and another on March 1 for at least 8 hours. Paid users of the Premier tier of service received an extra 15

Google Spreadsheets has been updated, a minor release bumping the version number to 1.2.0i. The update fixes these issues: spreadsheets not loading quick enough spreadsheets not loading disconnect error messages (and if you are disconnected, you will be reconnected automatically)
for IE users, if your spreadsheets aren’t loading, you’ll be prompted with instructions “press Ctrl + F5 on your keyboard”
Now supports Tab

Yahoo has started integrating Yahoo Messenger into Yahoo Mail, just like Google did with Gmail over a year ago. Because of Yahoo’s cool tabbed IM interface, the IM window is full size, supersized even, making for lots of room for avatars, rich text editing controls, and timestamps.
I’m not sure how integrated it is in Yahoo Mail and how it compares to Gmail Chat, but it’s interesting to see this becoming a trend

Google is now reporting how many of its users are subscribed to website’s feeds, by including the subscriber info in the header its Feedfetcher spider leaves when it grabs a feed. This means that if you look at the header, you’ll know how many users combined subscribe to that feed in Google Reader and the Google Personalized Homepage

According to an article in the latest issue of BusinessWeek, Google will turn Google Apps For Your Domain into a subscription service for corporations sometime in the next few weeks. If true, it would turn the service (which offers services for company domains, currently Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Blogger, and is expected to add more services) into an actual revenue generator for Google, a rarity for a company that many say needs to diversify its earnings.
Soon, it’s expected to add word-processing and spreadsheet services to the suite, which includes an online calendar, chat service, and Web page builder

Ionut Alex found some code in a Google Docs file (which Google removed quickly) that may point at a presentation application, code-named Presently. Considering that Google is almost definitely building an office suite to compete with Microsoft Office, and the only pieces it is missing are presentations (vs

Cross post: This article is posted both at InsideGoogle and InsideMicrosoft.
Rob did a cool thing and compared the way Dolphin Stadium and the city of Miami are portrayed in 3D in Google Earth and Windows Live Maps. Take a look:
Dolphin Stadium:
Google Earth:

Windows Live Maps:

Miami:
Google Earth:

Windows Live Maps:

Thoughts:
Google Earth has a baseball field because the Florida Marlins play there, too

Turns out Google Talk hooks into the operating system to give you some command line options, which means you can create desktop shortcut icons that link to specific Google Talk actions. As Ionut Alex reports, using “gtalk:chat?jid=[Gmail-Username]@gmail.com” will launch a Gtalk chat window for the specified contact, while “gtalk:call?jid=[Gmail-Username]@gmail.com” will automatically call that person.
What you can do with this is create a shortcut, on your desktop, that launches exactly the chat or call option you are interested in, and you can even create an icon for it (like a picture of that person’s face)

The Google Reader team added a little convenience for Blogger users: If you’re using the new Blogger system (and practically everybody is now), you can add a Google Reader widget to your blog sidebar just by clicking an “Add to Blogger” button. Reader is taking advantage of Blogger’s new architecture to streamline the process for users, making it completely unnecessary for less experienced users to have to edit code.
Oh, what does the widget do? If you are sharing feed items, like some bloggers do, making a nice little link blog, you can use it to display the latest headlines to your blog readers

Google had announced that it would be flying over parts of Australia on Australia Day, last week Friday, in order to take photos for Google Earth and Google Maps (Microsoft was doing it, too). Australians were excites, with people planning to build giant signs and write words on the ground, or just wave at the sky, in order to live on for a while in Google’s maps of the country

Some funny Google Maps sightings in the last day or so:
First off, a bug in the directions system in Google Maps sent drivers into a tail-spin, with Google instructing them to make well over 200 u-turns. Yikes!
A screenshot of the first 28 steps in the process, courtesy of Kandarp:

Don’t worry, Google’s already fixed it, but I heard there was a major traffic incident in New Jersey yesterday involving 8,500 dizzy drivers

Hitwise has released a graph tracking major web-based RSS readers (Bloglines, Google Reader, Rojo, Newsgator and Netvibes) over the last year, and their stats show that Google Reader leapt out of a malaise after the release of the new version, and while it has a ways to go before catching Bloglines, it is finally a contender.
On January 6 of this year, Reader had .00011 of all U.S

Over a year ago, Google paid a billion dollars for a chunk of AOL, and probably the most exciting part of the deal was the announcement that Google Talk and AOL Instant Messenger would probable eventually connect to each other. Finally, after 13 months of silence, Googler (and former AIM developer) Justin Uberti has sorta maybe confirmed that Google is still working on it, or at least that the official statement (”We are working actively on integrating AIM access in Google Talk.”) still applies.
On the AOL side (connecting AIM to Google Talk), he’s not sure if AOL’s new management will make it enough of a priority, but notes AOL has a project in the works to allow Jabber clients (Google Talk is one) to access the AIM network, logged in under AIM screen names

While no doubt Google’s simple and clean applications have been a hit with some users, I’m really impressed with what Yahoo is showing off in its new Messenger for Windows Vista. The product isn’t out yet, but looks to be almost ready, and they’ve got a video showing off its capabilities.

The new Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista takes advantage of a new technology in Vista called the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which makes it easier for developers to create applications that use rich graphics without some of the massive coding and design work previously involved in such applications, and with better performance by taking advantage of native Windows Vista technologies

Google has taken version 4 of Google Earth out of beta, making it the default install of Google’s wildly-renowned globe mapping software. Most Google-thusiasts have been running version 4 in beta since it was released back in June, and have enjoyed a number of useful new features, like a revamped, smaller navigation UI (though some hate it), the ability to draw directly on the map, and controlling the software with a video game controller and support for 3D textured buildings

Amit Agarwal reports that Google has released version 6 of its 3D modeling software, the free Google Sketchup and the not-as-free $495 Google Sketchup Pro (which is a free upgrade for purchasers of most previous paid Sketchup versions). While the new version still does not have support for Windows Vista (curious, with Vista coming out in a mere three weeks), it does have a bunch of new features.
The coolest new feature has got to be its ability to create a 3D model from a photograph

As reported by Ionut Alex. Chitu, Google is partnering with scientists who are building a giant sky-scanning telescope, hoping to give the public access to digital photos of space, including asteroids, supernovas and distant galaxies. Google is bringing its expertise in data processing to the table, as well as stature to the $350 million project that could use some publicity to raise public and private funding

Got a strange message from Google Talk yesterday:

Looks like a new version of Google Talk is available, one that adds support for Windows Vista. Of course, if you already have Talk installed (which would require you to have had Talk installed under Windows XP, then upgraded to Vista), Talk can’t upgrade itself, and you’ll have to uninstall it, then reinstall from Google.com/talk. Otherwise, everything seems exactly the same, and it runs perfectly fine.

Google Reader added a really cool feature, Google Reader Trends, that shows you your personal reading statistics for your Reader account. You get charts and statistics on the feeds you read the most, the stuff you star and share the most, the total number of read items charted by day, time of day, or day of the week, the feeds that update the most frequently, and the ones that have not updated in the longest time.
I don’t use Reader, but I have loaded my OPML in there, and it tells me that the MSDN blog feed is my most active, with an average of 103 items a day

Using a combination of great ideas, you can put a search feature (that is sorely lacking) right into Google Reader. First, follow these instructions to export an OPML of your Reader subscriptions, then create a custom search engine based on that OPML file (which you can upload directly into the CSE)

Google Enterprise VP David Girouard spoke to InternetNews, and he dropped a lot of interesting info. Chief among them: Google Talk “will be beefed up to integrate with traditional phone systems as well as VoIP offerings from other vendors”. That seems to be saying that Talk will be able to make phone calls, but certainly isn’t specific enough to be absolutely sure

I’m gonna need more cowbell!
Gmail’s got an easter egg of an emoticon, one that is definitely a reference to a great SNL sketch starring Christopher Walkin. Just enter +/’\ into a Gmail chat window and hit enter. Enjoy!
Courtesy of Daniel and KP in the comments.
I got a fever. And the only prescription… is more cowbell!

Google Earth is running an interesting promotion encouraging you to track Santa Claus’ route around the world. All you have to do is have the latest version of Google Earth installed, download a special KML file, and head to the North Pole. Every day a new present will appear outside Santa’s workshop, and it will contain a clue about the next location

Google announced some new data layers for Google Earth, including one that shows Wikipedia content. Hit the checkbox for it in the sidebar, and go to different areas to see what Wikipedia has to say about it. There are also new layers featuring data from Panoramio and the Google Earth Community.

It seems like only yesterday that a bunch of breathless articles appeared touting the brilliance of Google’s innovation strategy. That strategy was, if you recall, the spaghetti strategy: Throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Business Week captured the concept well in this passage from a big October 2005 story on Marissa Mayer, the company’s director of Web products and “champion of innovation”:

What Mayer thinks will be essential for continued innovation is for Google to keep its sense of fearlessness. “I like to launch [products] early and often. That has become my mantra,” she says. She mentions Apple Computer and Madonna. “Nobody remembers the Sex Book or the Newton. Consumers remember your average over time. That philosophy frees you from fear.”

Google Reader users should enjoy a few new options for feed management. You can now rename feeds (especially useful with sites that overload their RSS feed name with fifteen words), and easily add them to a folder from a drop-down. Previously, you had to head into a settings page for feed management, which was just plain annoying.

Take a look up there, that is a Google Spreadsheet, courtesy of Ionut. Alex. He reports that Spreadsheets has added publishing options for your spreadsheets, letting you publish them as HTML, PDF, XLS, ODS, CSV, or a feed, or you can go right ahead and embed it in your site or blog. That is a pretty cool feature, and will no doubt be used by a bunch of bloggers to easily show detailed charts on their blogs.
There’s a little more as well:
Google Spreadsheets shows you all the revisions of a spreadsheets, so it’s easy to go back to an earlier version

Haochi Chen noticed that Picasa Web Albums now lets you pay them even more money for more storage. Besides 6.25 gigabytes for 25 bucks, you can now get:

25GB ($100 per year)
100GB ($300 per year)
250GB ($500 per year)

If you’re a serious heavy-duty uploader, this is just great. Flickr places limits on Pro accounts that can’t be increased; there’s no amount of money you can throw at them to get more than two gigs of upload bandwidth per month

Google has issued an updated version of the Google Desktop platform, and the only new feature in version 4.5 seems to be this:

There’s also improved compatibility with newer applications, but it seems like this update is here for only one reason: to match this:

and this:

I mean, Microsoft didn’t invent transparency, but it sure seems like Google wants to make sure its product fits in with Microsoft’s next big thing.

Philipp ran a great post asking a bunch of bloggers what their most popular post was, and I was one of those featured. Mine was at InsideMicrosoft, a video I posted that wound up making it to number two on YouTube (in the early days of YouTube, natch). Incidentally, my most popular InsideGoogle post was when I had Google Earth launching about ten minutes before everyone else did. How’d I do it? Let’s just say a major search blogger kinda screwed up, and I took the ball and ran.