Google has enabled Google Contacts as a standalone app for Gmail users at google.com/contacts

Excellent find Martin! I surely will be using this.

Its only missing the favicon for this URL (standalone version).

Cool, the URL is far easier to remember than mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ ... which has been available for long time.

[linkfix ~hebbet]

I'll be expecting an offline version of it :]

[Moved from "Standalone Contacts" – Tony]

Matt Cutts just twittered about this: google.com/contacts
Useful if you store phone numbers or if you need information faster...

[Moved from "Standalone Contacts" and threads now merged, thanks mbegin! – Tony]

I could've sworn I'd seen this posted somewhere else recently, otherwise I would have done so when I spotted it on Tuesday after noticing the "contacts" service had gone live.

Aha... here it was on GoogleWatchBlog.de:

googlewatchblog.de/2009/03/20/ ...

This was also just announced on the Google Apps update alert blog/feed.

But what I don't get is how this:
googleappsupdates.blogspot.com ...
is any different to this:
googleappsupdates.blogspot.com ...