Google’s www.Blogger.com , is set to launch a substantial upgrade soon! Not only will this enhance its versatility, but it’ll also give you more options to play around with. Check out beta.blogger.com, to take a peek at the new beta version, and see what’s in it for you!

Developed by San Francisco-based Pyra Labs in 1999, Blogger was later acquired by Google in 2003. Pretty much nothing has changed since then, it remains the easiest and fastest route to having a free blog.

Blogger has lined up quite an impressive array of new and updated features. A major difference could be the integration with Google Accounts. This integration could open up a world of possibilities in the near future. Also, when elements from the Google Empire beyond Adsense, begin appearing on non-techie users’ blogs, you’ve got one exciting possibility that could create a sensation in the blogger community! For now though, some of the other features being discussed, are privacy, tags, drag and drop layout, and easier inclusion of non-textual elements.

Instead of re-publishing the entire blog after each post, Blogger.com will now switch to publishing individual posts only, to their Blogspot servers. Besides making the system more user-friendly, this could also effectively solve the problem of Blogger blogs re-publishing their entire feeds, only to have it appearing as ‘unread’, in feed readers.

Another neat idea is the option of enabling privacy settings, so you can control access to your blog. While some in the Blogger community have welcomed this move, many others have strongly protested. They claim that private blogs are counter-intuitive, and that anything posted online should be understood as being available for public viewing. In case you’re wondering which way to go, I’d say that it’s totally your call!

One thing that’s obvious is that Google intends, that only readers with Google Account logins will be allowed access to private blogs. Definitely not a smart move! RSS privacy however, still appears to be undetermined. It would be really interesting to see if Blogger will want to support the RSS privacy standard that Bloglines recently proposed!

A cool feature of the upgraded version is that posts can now be tagged.

Yet another amazing feature is the drag and drop layout. With this option, both customizing your blog’s template and changing the position of elements later, would be an absolute breeze! The drag and drop page gives you the choice of adding an element, including 3^rd party JavaScript.

Enabling feeds for all comments and individual feeds for comments on each post, is also a fabulous idea! The upgraded version of Blogger supports RSS 2.0 in addition to Atom.

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.