Some of you may have noticed that yesterday’s 6pm PDT launch of Gmail Labs came and went. The Gmail team promises that “We are currently in the process of rolling Labs out to English users” but I’ve yet to see it in my Gmail account.

No changes in ranking seem imminent – Google Reader was actually closer to catching Bloglines ten months ago than it is now.  Still, new Hitwise data confirms that these are the top two RSS readers, and in a 12-month comparison, Google’s service is gaining ground.

Although the uninitiated might imagine that iPhone users only use their devices to listen to music and surf social networks, Google knows they can be quite literate, too.  And a new version of Reader plays up to this characteristic.

Bloggers looking to brag on themselves (or "share their most popular stories," if you prefer) can now do it more easily thanks to Benjamin Golub.  Golub’s RSSmeme API will create a list that should work with all of the most popular blogging platforms.

When a company’s last press release was put out in June of 2005, it’s probably wise not to expect a quick response.  Still, users of RSS reader Bloglines are disappointed (and increasingly angry) following a long outage.

Since I’m full of the milk of human kindness after a wonderful Christmas, I’ve been trying to remain calm in the face of all the Google Reader hysteria about shared items and so on — but wiping out on some ice yesterday and landing on my ass has made it hard to stay serene (combined with gashing my hand playing Wii baseball), so I can’t help pointing out that much of the moaning about “privacy” is just ridiculous.

Google’s orchestrating its own Facebook-Beacon-esque fiasco with its latest addition to Google Reader. Users are miffed (to put it lightly) that their shared feeds were suddenly broadcast to anybody they’d had a conversation with via Google Talk or Gmail chat.

The interns are taking over the Googleplex! Seriously, if you want to know why Google is so intent on reaching geniuses at an early age, you need look no further than today’s upgrades to Google Reader.

Another tidbit of information about feeds on Google Reader emerged, showing how easy it is to find out how many Reader users have subscribed to a particular feed.

Google’s known for leaving “beta” tags hanging about for long periods of time, but today, the company pulled one of its products out of testing.  Behold: Google Reader is no longer in Labs, and it’s also gained support for a number of new languages.

This is the season for Facebook. It used to be that you couldn’t scan Web news without seeing a new Google report. Then it was MySpace, then Digg. Since Facebook opened up to the general public and to developers, it’s all anybody wants to talk about.

Google Reader is taking another step forward, and it’s holding Gmail’s hand as it does so.  Thanks to a new feature, users can now “share something you find in Reader with someone who doesn’t use a feed reader at all.”

Google Reader has been having problems all weekend long and I haven’t seen any bloggers talking about them. Why is that? Because the reader part is working great. But the "sharing" part? Everytime today I try to share an item with you I’m getting an error. Is Google hitting scalability problems with its Reader?

Can a few more of those smart PhD’s please help out the Reader team and get the problem fixed? Thanks!

But, I guess it’s fair. Many USA workers are taking the day off because of President’s day.

Publishers asked for it, and the Google Reader team listened. Engineer Justin Haugh announced earlier today that the company’s crawler now “reports the number of Google users subscribed to the feed.”

Hitwise is reporting that Google Reader is still lagging pretty far behind both Bloglines and Rojo in terms of market share, despite much love from tech writers throughout the blogosphere.

Steve Rubel and a variety of others are opining that Google Reader could be turned into the next Digg. Oh, I so so so agree with that!

The buzz among the technophile blogosphere is that Google could easily and effectively put “a hurtin’” on Digg by tweaking Google Reader. An algorithm and, perhaps, buying out a social news site might be all that is needed.

Anyone notice this? It seems that I can read faster than Google Reader can mark as read. At least it isn’t very good about marking things as read.

If you’re looking to get some insights into the mind of a Googler, this video interview with the Google Reader team is a fun one to watch. It’s with Nick Baum and Jason Shellen.

I have been keeping up with my Feed Reading lately and posting the best stuff to my link blog. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t reading as many feeds lately because it just wasn’t fun.

Kevin Burton released a new TailRank. Last week I asked the audience at ConvergeSouth how many people even knew about TechMeme. Very few hands went up.