Google appear to have added a few more search criteria to their UI. Amongst these new options are forum and review search. The UI looks a lot more like Google Blog Search where you are able to search posts from the past 24 hours, past week, past year etc. So this is a sign Google are moving towards real-time search along with the added value of conversation search.

This will be another great addtion to the many brand monitoring tools out there. There are currently quite a few forum search engines, such as BoardReader and Omgili, but it is very interesting to see Google move into it. First looks show that it is quite comprehensive, although there doesn’t seem to be the opportunity to create trend graphs like you can do with Omgili Buzz Graphs.

Google have also added review search. In the past, there haven’t been many tools that let you specifically search reviews. I had bodged together a consumer review search on Google Custom Search a while ago, it searches all the consumer review sites I know of, but Google’s new filter appears to search both ‘professional’ and consumer reviews.

This is all very interesting stuff that gives an insight into where Google are going with search – showing they recognise the importance of social search and being able to search what people are saying.

Top marks to bigmouth Andy Travers for pointing this out.

The Next Web argues that blogs are not dying, but evolving and maturing. While this is true, in their original format; as something anyone could create and publish content, blogs are dying. Of course, any one can still create a blog and publish content, but what is the point? The blogosphere is saturated. No one is going to listen – unless you have real talent, as Keen argues at The Next Web conference.

The blogs that were created back in 2004-05 are now considered mainstream news sources. I’m thinking blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch here, they have transitioned from a “blog”, which is defined by Wikipedia as “…a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary…”, to a mainstream news network. Not maintained by an “individual” but by many contributors.

So yes, I would argue that blogs are both dead and evolving. I’ve tried to draw parallels between blogs and fanzines before, in that many fanzines evolved into more mainstream publications while others stayed in their tiny niches being read by a very, very small audience – and that’s the way they liked it.

Maybe blogs will stay in their true, original format – as something maintained by an individual – but I can’t see how we’ll see a small individual blog becoming a behemoth like Mashable or TechCrunch any more. Social technologies are moving too fast for that to happen.

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A university engineer created the idea of the blog writing plant named “Midori-san” (which translates to Mr. / Ms. Green) during his studies of how to communicate with plants. And it is good to know that what Midori-san writes is not another unnecessary blog rant, in fact the plant simply writes a regular blog about its feelings.

This clever little addition to the flora family works from a sensor attached to the plant measuring bio-electric signals, which are converted into data by a computer that sits next to the plant. The computer is then able to translate the data into Japanese, in the form of a blog.

Thus far, the plant has managed to write blogs in relation to the weather and ambient temperature, whilst even managing to impress the customers that have visited the café. The inventor is hoping that the plant will “inspire people to think about the environment in new ways”.

And, perhaps many will now maybe agree with what Justin Leon has said and that blogging is not dead, well at least not for a certain little Japanese plant it would seem. Of course, new bloggers are cropping up all over the world every day but with the Japanese posting more blogs than any other nation in the world, their blog count could be about to get a little bit bigger. Right, where’s my trowel…