Lots of people were expecting the new Facebook user profile layout but the “company” was very slow in delivering. The new layout was supposed to be ready early April, but all we got were more details on their Developers page. Apparently the new layout will contain 5 main tabs : Feed, Wall, Info, Photos, and “Boxes”.

The feed tab seems to be unchanged containing news feeds, but still users may find it hard to “understand” why there is a Wall anymore because it will be text-only from now on. Using a Publisher Tool users will be able to post to their friends’ feed tabs and their own. The tool could be similar to FriendFeed-like conversations but it’s nothing certain until we get more info from the guys.

Existing wide and narrow profile boxes will now appear on a new Boxes tab that every user can enable/disable on their profile.

Though I said there are 5 tabs contained within the layout, users will be able to add their own, too. Facebook will allow up to 5 application boxes to be shown across all tabs but there will be some sort of height restriction.

I’m waiting for the release to give you more info because right now there isn’t much I can dig, except for a not very informative screenshot. Stay tuned.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Building a successful blog has many key elements, one of them is a great design and layout. Now not all of us are design savvy and could easily end up with a horrible looking blog. Luckily we have blogging rockstars like Adii to provide high quality themes with feature packed back ends.

Adii released three new premium Wordpress themes, the Live Wire series : Live Wire 2.0, Live Wire Edition and Live Wire Style. The prices start at $99.95 for a single license (website), go up at $149.95 for all three themes and two licenses and if you need to use them on an unlimited number of domains you’ll have to pay $249.95 (includes all three themes).

Here is a list of the features you get when you buy a Live Wire premium theme:

Automatic Image Resizer (requires PHP GD Library to work)
Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery
Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments
Author Profiles & Archives
Featured news section
Video Panel (for use with Flash videos)
Navigation Dropdown Menu’s
Sidebar Tabbed Box
2 different homepage layouts (featured section)
Widgetized sidebars
Integrated Banner Ad Management (easily switch this on / off)
Integrated Flickr & Feedburner

The three themes are all magazine-like but I’m sure you could use them on your blog even if you don’t want to start an online magazine. For example, an ideal place to use the Live Wire themes would be on a blogs network. We all know branding is important and having the same elements present is a must for blog networks.

I had the chance to see all of the themes in action and I really liked what I saw. Functionality is great but kept simple with a clean layout and sweet features.

One of my friends bought the developer’s package for his network of blogs and told me that his RSS subscribers increased by 20-percent and readers started to make more and more comments on his articles. This sounds like a great deal so if you want yours, go ahead and buy it now.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Ladies and gents if you remember our Springleap coverage last month you probably know that if you submit your t-shirt design and people like it, you may win some prizes.

The guys did it again, this time with a marketing solution to get blogs/Internet exposure and came up with a SEO contest. So they needed designers the first time to have what to sell and all they need now is people talking about them.

But let me tell you more about the contest. It’s starting today and ends on April 1st. This is when a number of judges will open up google.com and will search for - springleap - and will award points to the first three URLs (obviously 3pts for #1, 2pts for #2 and 1pt for #3). The total votes will be counted and the winners will get R500 for number three, R1000 for number two and a “whopping” R2500 for number one.

As you can see their marketing strategy is great and believe me there’s going to be a lot of buzz on this SEO contest mainly because it’s money involved. What I would enjoy the most is to get some numbers from them, that tell us how many new buyers they got from this campaign.

Right now, for - springleap - BandwidthBlog is #2 and we plan to either stay there or climb one step further. I wish everyone luck and let the games begin.

Popularity: 37% [?]

We’ve published quite a few scoops over the last few months namely the release of Laaik and Play from 24, the Nudjit launch and now leaked screen shots of the much anticipated and documented M&G redesign.

OK, so maybe the screens weren’t leaked but actually graciously sent to me by the head strategist of M&G and Amatomu co-founder Vincent Maher. I caught up with him on Skype and he gave me the low down on their latest project -

The screen shots below is straight after their first internal review attended by Vince Maher, Matthew Buckland, Riaan (M&G editor) and Matthew (the news editor). The goal was to bed down the style and the grid of the homepage which is about 50% done. The way they setup their homepage mock up is exactly what it would look like online with real content, the exact type size, face and line height. The next step was to print and review as a team (team mentioned above). Then they navigated the same mock up in a browser to check the vertical units have their own visual logic in the loading view.

Vincent Maher: Ideally we want people to stop scrolling at logical points and what they see is something that makes sense on its own. Or, if they don’t, there must be enough visual markers to understand that they have stopped between blocks..

Some of the other notable changes are -

• Horizontal navigation
• Wide format 96opx wide, centered
• Essentially four columns decreasing in width towards the right
• Colour - we’re dropping the red and black links because its hard to read
• Blurbs shortened from 5o to about 17 words

Tomorrow is the second round of meetings and then Vince and his team start work on the sections and story pages. Screen shots below -

Pics of the M&G brains trust working on the design

Remember you saw it here first!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Bandwidth Blog’s first office photos post was pics from leading internet companies offices and ended up being a huge hit with our audience. Today we are featuring local internet power house 24.com’s offices which is the digital arm of Media24.

Now you might think - “Media24, aren’t they old school corporates?” - Think again - They have made serious in roads with aligning themselves with the latest internet trends and the vision behind their office reflects this - staff party room with stocked bar and xbox360, staff library, boardrooms themed with geeky virus names like “Trojan” and “Dark Avenger” and a huge open floor office with plasmas hanging above the offices streaming the latest news24 headlines - 24.com certainly has a great environment to work in.

Here are some photos of the 24.com offices -

Cubicle area

Top view of office platform

The “Trojan” boardroom

Staff party room/bar

Library

Library

Flashy lighting

Thanks goes out to Elan Lohman (Head of social media) and Karen (Marketing) from 24 who sent me the pics.

Popularity: 11% [?]

An office is the mirror of the company and what’s going on inside, the perfect way to communicate with your employees, customers and investors. Hence why so many say, your office is your face. Knowing it, we decided to make a list of the most known internet companies and see what they have to offer on the inside. Here’s a list featuring 10 internet company’s office photos -

Blip.tv, images by Scott Beale

blip.tv is a video sharing service designed for creators of user-generated content. blip.tv provides content creators with free hosting, support for a variety of video formats, distribution using technologies like RSS and an opt-in advertising program with a 50/50 revenue share. blip.tv focuses on “episodic content” or “shows,” rather than viral video. Their wiki entry

Jaiku, images by Jyri Engeström

Jaiku is a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter^. Jaiku was founded in February, 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland and launched in July of that year. It was purchased by Google on October 9, 200.7. Their wiki entry

Songbird, images by Jonathan Koshi

Songbird is a desktop media player mashed-up with the Web. Songbird is committed to playing the music you want, from the sites you want, on the devices you want, challenging the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 25% [?]

Techcrunch managed to get an exclusive look at the upcoming Delicous 2 site. There are numerous new features, and Delicious says that they have done a complete code rewrite this time around. One of the most notable things, however, is that they are dropping the Del.icio.us branding: they are moving to Delicious.com instead of the Del.icio.us that we’re all used to.

Here are some of the new features aside from the upcoming name change and new layout:

* There are four main categories on the Delicioius site: Home, Bookmarks, People and Tags
* New sorting options
* Bulk tag editing…thank goodness!
* Autocomplete on the tag bar
* Organize and sort your friends
* New search engine with contextual search - search your own bookmarks, all bookmarks, or a network of bookmarks

The Delicious 2 preview page is available, but you have to be invited before you can login. I wouldn’t search around too hard for an invite though, because any changes you make on the preview service will be lost once the new design goes live.

So I think the more important question is what do you think about them changing the name?

Popularity: 5% [?]

After a premature exposure earlier today, the all new Digg design is up and running. As promised, there’s a new “All” tab plus cleaner navigation. The images section has yet to appear; based on Rose’s recent posts, October is the latest you can expect that, and hopefully before.

[Via | Mashable]

Popularity: 6% [?]

The second largest social network on the web has completed a ‘redesign’, adding new icons and some blue rounded corners. Comscore proves that Orkut has the second largest user base of people ‘networking’ online although they don’t seem to care. The new look is hardly a step up from the previous dull interface and no new functionality to report of.

From the official Orkut blog

When you think Google, you picture primary colors; when you think orkut, you see blue. And though we’re updating the look, we’re staying true to blue. We’ve added some rounded corners and new icons that make orkut look a little more sleek and modern. Check out a screen shot of the new homepage.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Facebook has created a group called “Facebook Sneak Preview”, where they’ve posted screenshots of the upcoming changes to the social networking site’s layout. Last year a set of privacy chages to the site sparked international outrage with some saying that the “drastic new change to our Facebook home page crosses the line between quiet stalking and outright invasion of privacy.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 78% [?]