Haha! Google is doing is again, and this time, its got me laughing all the way into the sunset! :) When was the last time you saw a product go into Beta after being launched, twice! :-P But heck, I'm really not complaining!

I have been out the whole day today because of Independence Day (happy I-Day to my Indian readers), and when I checked my mails about 10 mins back, I was bombarded by the news! Blogger has gone back to Beta, and they're pipelining many features which I'm dying to tell you about. Chances are you've already read them either on Bloggeratto or Freshblog, but I'm just going to get my excitement out here! :)

The features cometh

So, the new features that Blogger is now offering in limited release are as follows:

• THE BIG KAHUNA!!: Yes! The categories are finally here!! Wohoo! Ofcourse, they're called labels. I'm sure Avatar is fuming somewhere in his house right about now! Hehe! But atleast now we have native categories. No more hacking for categories!

• Drag and Drop Template editor: Now you see where the Google Pages trick comes in. People who've been using it will be familiar with this new way of designing your template, and new comers will be surprised at the simplicity by which they can now design their templates.

• Privatise your blog: You can now seriously limit who can see your blog. Earlier privatising methods could fail, but now there is little chance that they will! Yay for private blog owners! (like me! :D) You can add members the normal way, and also decide your viewers by their e-mail address.

• Feeded the future: Take a hike all you coComments and the likes, Blogger now offers native feeds of all comments on a blog, or comments per posts. This should also remove a few hacks that people have been coming up with.

• Dashboard revamp: The dashboard is now going to look sleeker and more attractive. Thats good, because people will atleast not cringe everytime they have to look at it! :) The most used commands are now a click away!

• No more spinning: I'm tired of seeing the spinner every time something is loading, so now Blogger has removed it. Not saying they removed it for me! :) I've yet to test it out, but I hope they've managed to AJAXify it!

The martyrs

Ofcourse, as I predicted, this would mean the death of countless hacks. Comment Feeds and Categories are ones I can mention off the top of my head. The new template editor now takes Psycho Template Editor out of the equation. How's that for picking off services Google style! ;)

Ok, so now I'm off to try out the new Blogger, and don't worry. As they say, everybody will get it soon enough. I guess we now know exactly what Blogger had been doing with the downtimes and the server crashes. Enjoy yourself guys, the revolution has begun! Happy Independence Day!