Internet Explorer 7 might have some chops when it comes to handling and organizing RSS feeds, but dedicated Google Reader fans don't get much love from the browser—there's no option in the interface for adding a feed anywhere but inside IE7's "Live Bookmarks," leaving the copy-and-paste job to the user. Alex at the Google Operating System blog points out two makeshift solutions: Install Google Toolbar 5, or add a nifty "Subscribe" bookmarklet to your Links toolbar, provided on Google Reader's Settings->Goodies page. Both seem far more convenient than digging to find the address of a site's feed and pasting it into Google Reader's "Add Subscription" dialog.

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The Google Operating System blog has a helpful, quick guide on how to enable Google Web History for more than just Google searches without having to make the usual Google Toolbar installation, using JavaScript-based tools like Greasemonkey for Firefox, Trixie for Internet Explorer, and Safari, Opera, and Konquerer (KDE Linux) also. You still need to be logged into a Google account to enable history tracking, but it could be a real help to those using alternative browsers for which the Toolbar isn't offered. And while many users certainly still have their privacy concerns about Google knowing everywhere you've been browsing, disabling the non-Google portion is as simple as turning off the script.

Google's new Toolbar 5 beta for Internet Explorer has a couple of very nice features including the ability to save your customised Toolbar settings via your Google account so you can access them from any computer. Google Notebook is now completely integrated - so you don't need to download a plug-in to be able to clip items from websites and save them with comments in your notebook. When you mouse over the clipping in your notebook, your comments appear like a tooltip.
You can also add gadgets to your toolbar to be able to view content from websites (such as YouTube).
The Google Operating System had a nice writeup of the new features, along with screenshots. You can download the toolbar here (and watch the Google video guide to the new features) or check out Google's guide to the new toolbar and features here.

Google Toolbar 5 for IE [Google Operating System]

APC magazine's web editor Dan Warne points out on his blog that while GMail users can 'click to email' in the latest version of Google's toolbar for Firefox and IE Google, bizarrely, users of Google's paid Google apps service cannot.

He links to a couple of workarounds on how to hack the toolbar to point to your Google Apps account instead of GMail. They are:

Google Apps Gmail + Google Toolbar [Tokyo Genki] and Customize Google Toolbar for Google Apps for your domain [Red Primary]

Dan notes there are helpful comments on the Red Primary blog as well.

Thanks for the tip, Dan!

Google Apps Toolbar [The Warne Account]