Upgraded to Blogger Beta

Blogger recently launched a new beta version with new features like Labels, New Layout etc. As you might have noticed, this blog is now running on it.

The switching process was a breeze. The whole process including updating to a new layout based template took like 30 min, during which I played around with all the new things I could do with it.

The most important feature that compelled me to switch to this beta is the labels support. Now I can label my posts and clicking on a label takes you to all the posts with the same label. There is a labels box in the left hand sidebar which lists all the labels I have created. Hence readers interested in philosophical posts can find all of them together and need not be bothered with the tech posts. This feature was long overdue as most other popular commercial blog services provide it.
This feature also eliminates the need for me to maintain a separate tech blog. Its really difficult for me to maintain a separate tech blog, and hence I would not update the other blog anymore.

There have also been some changes in the template. There is a hierarchical blog archive on the left sidebar which provides much better navigation to the old posts.

Another change is the change in the feed url. In case you use a rss reader, please subscribe to this new feed url. There is also an option to subscribe to all comments on the blog. Or to comments of this individual post.

Overall, I'll give Blogger thumbs up for incorporating some long due changes which brings it at par with the commercial services out there.

Update 2/11/06: Looks like their is some issue with Blogger Beta feeds. The feeds do not show the date and time of the post when it was published. Instead it shows the last updated time of the post. I don't know whether its a feature or a bug but I liked it the earlier way.
Also, I have migrated my feeds to feedburner and updated the feed url links.