Google’s blogging system, Blogger.com has just been given a major face lift and has had some huge modfications added. Blogging is now even easier, and with these changes, they have basically eliminated any need to know html and css code.

Here’s the rundown from Google’s blogpost:

Blogger has always been the easiest-to-use blogging software around, but it just got way more powerful. We’ve added a bunch of new features, which you can check out in the new version:

- You can add stuff to your blog (cute cat photos, lists, feeds) without needing to know HTML.
- You can also make a completely unique template that has just the color scheme you want, without knowing any CSS.
- Don’t want your mom to read your thoughts? Make a private blog.
- Label your posts, to group related ones together.
- Use one of our new templates.
- You can now sign in to Blogger using your Google Account.
- Naturally, this is still a work in progress, and more exciting features are in the pipeline. Try it out and send your feedback!

If you are new to the blogging world, don’t forget to add your blog to the directory at Today.com once your blog is up and running.

Google has just posted that Picasa Web Album is getting some great new additions just in time for the bustling and potentially embarrassing holiday season. Now, you can order prints for your photo albums and to share the technically uninclined. You can also upload video clips!

Google has released their beta version of Google Patent Search. This specific sub-search engine of the uber-powerhouse that is Google searches through the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you. You can also used the Advanced Patent Search page to search by criteria, including patent number, inventor, and filing date, as well as viewing images of original patents online.

The Google Patent Search uses much of the same technology that powers Google Book Search, so you can scroll through pages and zoom in on text and illustrations just like you can with books.

Google states on their official blog “It’s a natural extension of our mission to make this public domain government information more easily accessible using Google’s search technology. We’re pleased to have started with over 7 million patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and look forward to expanding our coverage over time.”

Google Finance isn’t one of the Google services I use very often, but for you stock market freaks, here is a list of the recent updates to the service:

All fascinating and useful stuff, I’m sure, but not typical to Google releases, there was a strange video attached to the update.

I guess the Google Finance guys had a burning desire to break from from their mostly serious work and express themselves artistically. Or, you know, someone was bored, had some animation software lying around and decided to kill an afternoon making that. Yes, it is also on YouTube instead of Google Video.

This was really the reason I posted this. Poor unloved Google Video… I know they own both, but YouTube’s interface is still horrible.

What do you get when you mix the best browser with the best mapping service?

Yes, you get aerial photography of a huge crop circle of the Firefox logo.

Curious as to how the Firefox Crop Circle was made? Here are all the behind the scenes details.

With the news that Google Answers is closing, the Yahoo! Answers Team had this to say on their blog:

Some of you may have already heard, but it was announced yesterday that after 4+ years Google Answers has decided to close its doors to new open questions. While some may choose to celebrate this news, I feel a little differently. We still have a lot of work ahead of us as a product, and continued feedback from the community is helping us make Answers a better place to ask and answer questions.

So what does the Google Answers news mean for Yahoo! Answers? Well for one thing there is now a group of expert askers and answerers looking for a new place to call home, and what better place to turn to than Yahoo! Answers? 

We’d like to extend a warm welcome, so we’ve set up a Yahoo! Group for all of you ex-Google Answerers. Come in, make yourselves at home, and most importantly share your experiences with the rest of us? What worked? What didn’t? We know we have plenty of areas to improve upon in our own community, but what else can we do to make this place the best that it could possibly be?

Sure, everyone jokes about how Google will take over the world, but if you would like to actually see the details of how they plan to go about it, then you might want to take a look at Google’s Master Plan.

Many UnderGoogle spies died to bring you that variable resolution Flash-based capture of Google’s top secret whiteboard, but it was worth it. We now know where Google will strike next. Or possibly it’s the plot outline for some future Tom Clancy thriller.

Either way, it’s worth taking a long meandering look through it.

Google has announced that it will stop taking questions at Google Answers later this week.  The previously posted Q & A’s will still be available to browse.  Google plans to stop taking answers to questions by the end of the year.

Google Answers was one of the first projects that the company created, and was based on an idea from Larry Page.

There are tons of hacks and mashups out there that build upon Google Maps through their API.

The one I’ve been fooling around with today lets you select any point on earth and “dig” a hole directly across the middle of the Earth. After clicking you end up on the other side. Unfortunately, it appears that digging from anywhere on the continental United States would land you somewhere in the Indian Ocean. At least Hawaiians ends up in Africa somewhere…

Go get your geographical shovel and give it a try.

Now that Windows Vista is nearing it’s public release date, software makers will be rushing to make sure all their products fit into the new visual style of the operating system.

Since Vista has its own built-in sidebar, Google has updated their own Google Desktop sidebar to fit in better with that visual style. Parts of Google’s sidebar are now transparent, making things such as the gadgets fit into the desktop in a much nicer way. Also, if you find yourself with two sidebars in Vista, you might want to switch one off.

Along with the Vista upgrades, this version includes full integration with Office 2007 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and a couple of other things.