Coasting on the high of its multi-billion dollar initial public offering, Google has introduced a new iteration of its Blogger Web service.  Blogger is a self-publishing tool that dates back to 1999, intended to allow users to share a bubbling mass of opinions, thoughts, fears and desires with a worldwide audience.

The redesigned Blogger touts a cleaned up user interface, author profiles, shared comments, and allows authors to post by e-mail. Other improvements are template designs and the Blogger Dashboard - a "command center" to oversee every blog an author has editorial access to.

The rising trend of "blogging" has led Microsoft's MSN business unit to invest in a "Blogbot" that will scour the Web to return Web logs as relevant search results in response to customers' search queries. Google made its search engine blog-friendly following its purchase of Blogger.com from Pyra in February 2003, by modifying the way its indexing works.

It is clear that blogs have experienced a steady rise in popularity; although not without some consequence. Last October, ex-Microsoft employee Michael "Woody" Hanscom posted a picture to his Web log intended for the amusement of friends and colleagues, only to be fired when a manager came upon his site.

Recently, researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs found another dark side to the blogging phenomenon: plagiarism.  They discovered ideas from lesser-known blog sites are often swallowed up by more popular blogs without credit. To demonstrate the scientifically proven viral nature of blog plagiarism, HP researchers created the Blog Epidemic Analyzer search engine.

Google's Blogger is a free Web service for registered users.