The New Techmeme Design...

In a world of personalized, distributed information sharing, Techmeme and its sister sites have successfully gone the opposite direction. They’re machine-powered, human-controlled news aggregators that have readers — especially media types — following like drug addicts jonesing for another hit. The flagship site, Techmeme.com , has just gotten a big redesign that modernizes the look and feel of the interface, and emphasizes new social features. Here’s one junkie’s reaction. The main aspects are the same as before. It still analyzes the web for popular articles, using factors like which article has the most inbound links, to provide an ever-shifting flow of top news. The stories are ranked according to popularity from top to bottom, with the input of its human editor team . Almost everything else is different. It’s is the biggest change-up since the site  looked like this  back in 2006. First off, links no longer have underlines, as founder Gabe Rivera says in his official post on the changes. This reflects a design preference seen on most of the web these days — except, as he notes on that old-school political news aggregator called the Drudge Report . Perhaps more obviously for the casual user, the main feed of stories has had its width reduced by roughly 100 pixels by my count. Sponsored posts have been moved into a center column, which will appear above the fold on most computer screens. The feed of the newest stories has been moved to the far right. “Sponsors weren’t complaining [about where they appeared on the site],” he tells me, “but I imagine some of them will like the new layout. One reason for three columns is it will make more room for other things near the top of the page. There’s space for ‘future expansion’. And yes, we’re not done filling that white space.” Conversations, the collection of other stories under each main one, also has a convenient new dropdown feature — a downward arrow button that you can click on to see the extended list of articles. In the previous design, you could also do this, but you had to mouse over the story to get a small “+” button to appear for you to click on. On the social side of things, the site is making sharing even easier by adding Twitter retweet and Facebook Like buttons at the top right of each main story. Mouse over any one of them and the buttons will appear, as well as an additional one that lets you quickly grab a unique URL for the story. The previous design had packaged all of the sharing options into a window you opened via clicking on the story icon. “In most cases readers don’t want to bother editing the headline of the story they’re sharing,” Rivera says about the choice of the Retweet button in his post, “so we opted for the more natural retweet option.” I followed up by asking what sort of sharing stats he had available. “Now that you asked,” he replied, “I realize I haven’t done any testing or research at all to support going with a RT button. It just seemed like a cool idea. I suspect you don’t see these buttons much because, unless I’m missing something, it’s a little harder to implement (because your site needs to grab the tweet ID after you post to make the button work).” I asked him about the lack of Google’s +1 button. “Well, we’re open to it, but just want to begin with a simple trio of buttons.” A few other changes include a toggle button at the top to open all links as new tabs, a new About section, and new locations for links to sister sites, the archives, etc. Most of the reactions so far have been positive, but some readers are wondering about the new Optima font. Rivera has a good explanation. “Optima (the font people see on Macs and iOS) is very good at allowing the eye to see the different pub names in “More” (formerly “Discussion”) as distinct. Also, it’s the font most people I spoke to preferred when presented with a few alternatives before launch. But indeed, I noticed some people dislike it. Maybe it’s a divisive font. But don’t assume the haters are the majority. See also .” The new interface will eventually roll out to  Mediagazer  and other Techmeme sister sites, like gossip aggregator WeSmirch and my secret favorite, Drudge-replacing political aggregator Memorandum . But the refresh isn’t as urgent, Rivera says in his post. “Mediagazer in particular isn’t as afflicted with the uglies in the first place, given that its area of coverage leads to less link-heavy story clusters. But it will nonetheless benefit from a refresh. Techmeme’s redesign will not, however, extend into its past. One curious yet fun practice we’ve upheld here is that old archives maintain their  old look .” Rivera’s response when I asked about what to expect from the privately-held, boostrapped company in the future? “We’re going to do more stuff.” Prepare yourselves, addicts. [H/t to Miguel Rios for the headline.]

SoundCloud Hits 10 Mill...

SoundCloud still isn’t conforming our story that they recently raised a $50 million round led by Kleiner Perkins – but today at the DLD conference in Munich they have announced a pretty significant milestone – hitting 10 million users. SoundCloud is gunning to be a kind of YouTube for sound, but with a wide variety of apps that can plug into its platform, and a business model which encourages upgrades to a premium paid experience. It competes with the like of Audioboo to some extent, but that is on a much lower 300,000 users and focuses on speech.

Now Bing Is For Doing

Bing is not the decision engine anymore. In new ads there is a new attempt to position the search engine away from the “Bing and Decide” approach. Now Bing is for Doing. The new ads are more about the emotional, dare we say, social side of the engine. The story of the snowboarder, Kevin Pearce, is a great one and quite inspirational. I am happy to see his recovery. Will this ad help Bing in its battle against Google? You decide. Video: Bing is for #Doing: Kevin Pearce’s Story

Cup of Joe: A Story Of ...

Once upon a time there was a commercial printing company. Of course this wasn’t just any company. This particular company was once regarded as a leader in its region, often winning awards for excellence. However, as time passed technology evolved and changed not only the process of printing but also the consumer demands. Needing to respond to these changes, the owner of the company upgraded their production capabilities by purchasing a digital press . In layman’s terms a digital press is similar to a giant computer printer. With it, a company can produce the same high quality printing that a large commercial offset printing press can but at smaller quantities and directly from a computer or workflow server. Digital presses not only allow for companies to streamline the production process but they also open up new avenues for more customized products such as variable printing . The particular digital press that this company purchased required a dedicated server to manage all of the incoming data and organize project management. So when it came time to purchase a server the company’s IT specialist was consulted. Internal IT specialist are in rare form these days. With IT services being outsourced and more data being stored in the cloud, remaining IT personnel are constantly looking for ways to show value to their employers. It seems as if this IT specialist was no stranger to this, and when it came time to recommend a server, he recommended the cheapest option available. The IT specialist’s recommendation was taken and the cheapest sever available was purchased. After the whole system was setup new orders started rolling in and new production started moving forward. However, after a few months something clearly wasn’t right. They were now completing projects at a much slower rate, Which means less work was getting done and less orders getting filled. This was mind boggling to some in the company. How could new technology that removed huge work loads in production, take longer? If you asked this question to any of the press operators or technicians responsible for running the new press, they would immediately tell you that the server that was bought was to slow. Soon most of the employees could see the effects of the slow new server as it impacted every aspect of the plant. But despite the obvious problems, everyone kept quiet everyone kept working even when everyone started to get their hours cut. The reason that this company is now starting to fail isn’t because of a slow server. It isn’t because the digital press doesn’t work right. They are starting to fail because of fear. The IT specialist was afraid to recommend extra cost. The employees are afraid to complain about new processes. All this while the company continues to lose money with new equipment to pay for. And maybe even the owner is afraid of failure himself. The ironic part of this story is that it is the fear of failure that will eventually bring failure on. Don’t think this can happen to your company? Well the saddest part of this story, is that its true. Eliminate fear in your company, before fear eliminates you. [ photo credit ]

It’s Here! Facebook Tim...

You’ve been anxiously waiting for it, and now it has finally arrived. Facebook Timeline , which MG likened to ‘the story of your life on a single page’ when it was first announced back in September. We told you how to get it early and what it looked like , but most of you earthlings – not living in New Zealand – had to wait patiently until Facebook decided to flick the on/off switch. This morning, they did . Wait, are you still here? Go click that “Get It Now” button. You’ll have seven days to review everything that appears on your Timeline before anyone else can see it.