GVisit allow you to track your site visitors on a Google Map, for free. For an example, here is the log for Infinity Plus.

The service only requires you to add one line of Javascript to the head section of your webpage, and it even works on blogging services which allow you to directly edit the template, such as Blogsome.

The free service tracks the last 20 visitors, but a donation of any amount will upgrade you to the last 100. Interesting stuff.

Rob’s Blog has the definitive list of both official and third-party tools for GMail, including some very useful add-ons. Here’s the best of the bunch, just to save you time:

• GMailIt - sets your default mail program to GMail, meaning all mailto: links on webpages will link you straight to GMail’s compose page, with the To field already filled in.
• GMail drive shell extension - allows you to access your whopping 2GB space via Windows Explorer, just like a normal hard drive partition. Veeeery useful for quick backups.
• Icon generator - download an image icon of your GMail email address for putting on your website or as a forum signature. Stops the spammers nicely.
• Official notifier - adds an icon to the system tray and alerts you when you have new email messages.

GMail Tools & Plugins (via Oishii)

There is a lot of evidence that suggests speculation of a Google IM client is not all a load of rubbish.

Google announced a few days ago that on Wednesday (tomorrow) they would be releasing information about a ‘communications tool’, and users of the Neowin.net messaegeboards have been doing a bit of investigating themselves. They have found that connecting to http://talk.google.com redirects to http://www.google.com/talk, suggesting that Google have the infrastructure in place all ready to go.

Also, using a Jabber IM client, they managed to get a response from the same server, suggesting even more so that Google are readying to put the system in place. A screenshot of this is available here.

Discussion now is of whether Google will ‘lock down’ the system to allow only Google users to log on, or whether any users of other services such as MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger will be able to log on as they wish, as with other Jabber clients.

Personally, I think if they did allow you to add MSN and AIM contacts to your contact list on Google IM (if it indeed manifests itself), then it would take off like a dream, just as with Gmail and Adsense.

We’ll soon find out.

More info: InsideGoogle

Update:The LA Times makes it even more definite

PCs around the world slowed down to a grinding halt in unison yesterday when Google released Desktop 2 on beta. It’s not for me to judge really, but even with my 512MB of RAM (which was a lot a couple of years ago) it seems to consume a hell of lot of it, even when it’s just sitting there.

However, for those of you who don’t know what Google Desktop is, last autumn Desktop was released as a new Google product, and it was sort of a desktop offline-capable search engine. It kept all the information about every file on your PC, and allowed you to search by keyword through documents, pictures, content of emails, etc. all at the same time. And so could Google (conspiracy!).

But anyway, Desktop 2 comes with a host of new features, including:

• ‘Sidebar’ gives you access to personalized information including custom RSS feeds, weather and email.
• ‘Quick Find’ allowing you to launch applications and search, with on-the-fly results.
• New toolbar for Outlook puts all the features of Desktop into Outlook, so that you can easily search your other POP email.
• Plugin support. You can already download a to-do list plugin, a system monitor, and analogue clocks, among others.

Google Desktop 2 (via GoogleBlog)