Good news for Blogger users, Google has finally added some major upgrades to the service, many of which are sure to fulfill the dreams of devoted users out there. Information about what's new can be gleaned from the official "What's new in Blogger" answer page as well as the Blogger: New features tour. The upgrades are currently in beta, meaning only a few users will get to play with them immediately. Hopefully it will trickle down to the masses soon. Here's what you can expect (culled from the above sources):

Dynamic Serving: Changes to your blog (new posts, editing old posts, modifying the template, etc.) no longer require rebuilding a bunch of static html files, it now simply updates a database. Bottom line: No more whirling "Publishing..." spinner, the results of posting should be immediate.

Access Control: Bloggers can now mark their blog as readable only by a list of specific users.

Labels: The post creator GUI now has a box for entering a comma separated list of "labels" (i.e. "tags" or "categories"). These appear with the post on the page and are available as a sidebar for easy navigation by readers. This is similar to systems used in other services, including the hacked (and currently broken) category implementation here at WITFITS. No word on whether or not this will work with Technorati (I have fired off a support request to them, though I don't anticipate a response).

More Site Feed Options: Additional site feeds for all comments and per-post comments. Upgrades from Atom 0.3 to Atom 1.0 and choice of using RSS 2.0 instead.

Improved Dashboard: One-click access to common tasks such as "View Blog" and "Template". The interface for accessing old posts is apparently improved as well.

Google Accounts: Blogger will now use Google accounts as the log in method. If you already have a Google account, you'll be able to merge your Blogger account with it.

Layouts: Templates now have a drag-and-drop layout editor. It sounds like this will preclude direct editing of the template, but using this feature is not required (you "upgrade" your template to the layout feature) and your old template is saved indefinitely allowing you to revert back at any time.

New Templates: New templates.

If you haven't been chosen to upgrade yet, you can create a new account (or use an existing Google account) to create a new blog and try it out at beta.blogger.com.