Flurry of updates: Google Reader and Yahoo Web Messenger

We are seeing a flurry of news about updates on various software by the giants today. This is really good for us, the consumers.

Yahoo Messenger launches Web Messenger
Yahoo is finally getting the drift that there are people who can’t download the IM client at certain places like work or someone else’s computer but still would stay in touch with their IM contacts. They have released a web-based Messenger client. More reading..

• Yahoo Launches Browser Version of Messenger [via TechCrunch]
• Yahoo! launches web-based Yahoo! Messenger [via Download Squad]

For those of you using Google Talk and miss the group chat feature, try out imo.im. They claim that you can pull in friends from any IM service into one group chat! That is a killer feature.. not sure if Meebo has it.

Google Reader rocks to email stories
Google Reader has always had the nice ‘Share’ feature to share interesting stuff with your feed-loving friends. But, what if you found a cool video about RSS feeds that you want to share it with your computer savvy dad? You will email it.

Now, you can do that inline from Google Reader without opening Gmail. It gets better.. you have full access to your GMail contacts! It even preserves the format and pictures in the articles in the email.

Now, that should make you switch to GMail if you haven’t already. Just kidding.

Google reader was made available as a gadget to iGoogle previously Google Personal Homepage **add link** just a month ago. Also, it supports various videos in your blog posts from YouTube, Myspace, etc.

More reading:

• There are people who don’t use feed readers? [via Official Google Reader Blog]