John Battelle posts on his Searchblog about the new Beta version 3 of the Google Toolbar, which boasts three powerful new features.

This version of the IE-only toolbar adds a spellchecker for forms, a translation tool and a feature to turn U.S. postal addresses on any web page into clickable URL's, which link to the corresponding page on the Google Maps site.

Spellcheck feature of Google Toolbar Version 3

The spellchecker is very handy, clicking the toolbar button analyzes the form you're about to submit, and words that may need correction are bolded and coloured red; clicking them gives a drop-down menu with alternative spellings - handy if yu a raelly bad tyipsst.

The auto-translator also looks handy for users who have English as a second language, simply hovering the cursor over any English word for a few seconds displays a tooltip with the word in a language you can specify - the range of languages are French, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

The Auto-Linker is the most interesting feature though - this folds the recently -released (and highly praised) U.S.-only Google Maps service into the toolbar in an excellent way: any U.S. postal address you come across displayed on a web page can be turned into a link straight to Google Maps with one click.

I did a quick test of it using the addresses here, and clicking them sent me smoothly to the exact page on Google Maps, where I could get directions to or from that location from anywhere in the U.S.

Added:
I noticed that autolinker is not limited to just U.S. addresses: it also works with ISBN's (these send you to Amazon.com's page for the book), Vehicle Identification Numbers, and Package Tracking Numbers

This ease of access to more info through auto linking should be useful, and according to Search Engine Watch, more options should be in the pipeline, most likely based on the "Search by Number" look-ups already enabled on a standard Google search.

According to Marissa Mayer (Google's product chief), who spoke with Battelle, the beta won't last long, and a version with the new features will probably be officially released soon.

More info:
· Download the Google Toolbar 3 Beta
· News: Google Launches New Toolbar, Musings on Meaning of Beta
· A New Version (Beta) of the Google Toolbar is Now Available, Still No Firefox
· Auto-Linking: Google Gets Away With What Microsoft Couldn't
· Related: Yahoo! Release official toolbar for Firefox
· Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox | Where is Google?