Folks:
Does something look…. different?
No, I haven’t changed my hair, but thanks for asking.
Yes, at long last, the new release of TTLB is here. As I hope will be apparent, a great deal of thought and effort has gone into this new release, which essentially amounts to a top-to-bottom redesign of the site, including oodles of new features. Things are still a bit rough around the edges, and I’m still polishing, polishing, polishing: but the fundamentals work, and it’s time to let this baby leave the nest.
Here’s a quick summary of some of the goodies you’ll find:
Posts : Summaries of the most-linked posts across the blogosphere over the past few days. The creme de la creme of bloggy goodness.
Topics: Topic pages aggregate the latest & most popular posts on specific topics. What’s hot in the blogosphere now? TTLB’s topic pages will tell you. And if the topics I’m currently tracking don’t fly your flag, you can also create your own custom topic page on whatever subject strikes your fancy.
Communities: Similar to topics pages, community pages focus on pre-defined sub-groupings of weblogs. Example communites are groups like milbloggers, or Canadian Bloggers. Each community has a community page which shows the latest & most popular posts from within the community, and a special Ecosystem-like listing which ranks the community members against each other.
UberCarnival: A directory page which shows the latest ‘carnivals’ around the blogosphere. Now you don’t ever have to worry about tracking down where the latest edition of your favorite Carnival is this week: TTLB will do it for you.
And of course, the old Ecosystem by-links and by-traffic ranking pages are still around, along with some incremental improvements to the individual blog details pages, including the display of actual blog-post titles on the ‘most popular posts’ listing as opposed to cryptic URLs.
So: take a look around, enjoy, and by all means, let me know what you think. I’m just getting started, and so, must inevitably quote Sir Winston:
“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Update: Thanks to all for the kind words and the links. One question that is coming up is “how do you select communities, and can I suggest a new one”? The answer is that the communities you see today are merely a starting point, meant to demonstrate the direction I’m taking TTLB in. I’m actively seeking suggestions on additional communities that would be useful to add, so if you’ve got one in mind, please, speak up.
And one specific note on that subject: while I have my own political views and will continue to express them on my blog page here, I try to keep the rest of TTLB nonpartisan. So I’d definitely like to add some communities and topics that would be of interest to the left side of the blogosphere. If you’ve got a suggestion, let me know!