• Google Blog Search launched a new home page with aggregation of top stories from the blogosphere. It seems to be more democratic than Techmeme, in that it is easier for small blogs to get listed. More stories on a wider range of subjects are also covered. What makes it less useful however is that there is no RSS feed, and blog conversations for a story are only tracked for less than a day. The latter flaw it shares with Techmeme, by the way. Probably there is no immediate SEO effect of getting aggregated on Google Blog Search, as the post listings are generated by JavaScript.
  Tags: aggregation, blog search
• Gnip, the infrastructure service for providers and consumers of social network data, which I wrote about in July, has released version 2.0 of its API. ProgrammableWeb writes: 
  

  The new version of the API adds full data delivery, XMPP support, and advanced data filtering. [...]
  The new features look like they’ll be very useful to developers, and the business model is priced to entice hobbyists, small companies, and big businesses alike.

  Tags: Gnip

• GIMP, the open source "Photoshop killer", has updated to version 2.6 writes OStatic. The new version comes with user interface changes and enhancements for plug-in developers.
  Tags: GIMP
• Widget company Clearspring acquires bookmarking and sharing service AddThis, whose widget can be found at the bottom of this post. Josh Catone interviewed Clearspring CEO Hooman Radfar and writes: 
  

  The data that [AddThis] has presumably collected about how content is shared across the web has a lot of potential use for marketers. Radfar told me he hopes to eventually expose that sharing data via an API that will allow people to really dig into sharing trends.

  Tags: widgets

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• Clearspring adds AddThis to its product line

• I've been using the free anti-virus software AVG for a year or so now and found it lightweight and non-intrusive. The last month, however, a message keeps popping up requesting me to upgrade to the new version 8.0. Apparently, some 20 million people world-wide have made the upgrade, to much annoyance to web site owners. As it turns out, the new version contains a link scanner, that pre-visits the search results from Google and Yahoo searches, masquerading as a real user. The Register reports that last month the number of visits had doubled on certain pages, thanks to the link-scanner robot. At first thought, this might seem as a good thing for site owners, but actually it is not. The fake traffic jeopardizes the web statistics, increases the bandwidth cost, and slows down all other legitimate internet traffic. As the Register writes: "[It] could destroy web analytics as we know it."
  Imagine a scenario where the top ten results of all web searches were pre-scanned. This would theoretically lead to an overall ten-fold increase in web traffic. One cannot help but think that it is up to the search provider, Google or Yahoo for example, to provide safe search results, instead of relying on an external service scanning all results. The link scanning can be disabled by disabling a browser plugin, but that's probably to advanced for the average user.
  Tags: web analytics
• The Swedish blog search engine Twingly went public this week after a couple of months in private beta. Bravely, they claim to be spam free, though I think it will be hard to maintain in the long run.
  Tags: blog search
• Reblogging own comments made on other blogs has become popular since my own comment on comments piece. Both Tim O'Reilly and Fred Wilson have recently done the same. In a follow-up post Fred concludes that there is no difference between a great comment and a great blog post, and as he says: "Comments are often way more insightful than blog posts."
  Tags: comments
• Google Reader has an easter egg in the form of a Konami Code (Hit ↑↑↓↓←→←→ba). All software should have an easter egg.
  Tags: trivia

• Trendrr Makes Data Mashups A Breeze – Josh Catone
  Trendrr, a potentially useful service for tracking and graphing data. Comes with an API.
  Tags: graphing
• Scalr: The Auto-Scaling Open-Source Amazon EC2 Effort – Henry Work
  An open source initiative for managing Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service.
  Tags: cloud computing, open source
• Google Gears, a Software Update for the Web – Ionut Alex Chitu
  An embedded Google TechTalk video about what's new with Google Gears - "An open-source mechanism for updating the Web." HTML 5 and Gears have a lot in common.
  Tags: Google Gears
• Europe-Focused Blog Search Engine Twingly Goes Into Private Beta – Michael Arrington
  A Sweden-based blog search engine.
  Tags: blog search
• How to Disagree – Paul Graham
  A disagreement hierarchy in 7 levels: DH0. Name-calling DH1. Ad Hominem DH2. Responding to Tone DH3. Contradiction DH4. Counterargument DH5. Refutation DH6. Refuting the Central Point
  Tags: blogging
• Not Your Ordinary Google Interface – Ionut Alex Chitu
  The Google interface in unusual languages, including "Bork, bork, bork!", the language of my favourite Muppet Show character: The Swedish Chef.
  Tags: humor