I tried out a couple of new tools the last 2 days. The first is Google Blog search and the second is an alpha of an online messenger client.

Google Blog Search has the same characteristics as the rest of the company’s products, a nice clean interface, simple to use, same presentation of results as the other searches. One of the biggest advatnages over its competitors is its speed, as it can leverage the existing assets for the searching. With an ego search, I like that this blog is recognised as being related (and how do they do that?) but thoroughly dislike that posts from here turn up in the search. I don’t see that happening in technorati/icerocket etc. If they can recognise that I’m related to this blog, surely they can strip out the results? One to watch.

The other product is Meebo, an online IM client that allows you work with AIM/Yahoo/MS/ICQ services at the same time. It’s still in alpha and is running on only a single server but first impressions are good. The first page is easy to use and once inside, the layout and usability is excellent. The only issue I’ve had so far is that it logs me out after a while if not in use. I’ve been looking for something like this as it is difficult to put all the clients I need on a work PC. (I hoping the single client for all networks comes sooner rather than later!) More playing around later. Via plaxoed.