We have gained quite a few new readers over the past month. It finally feels like Ontora has settled into its home at WordPress.com. However, we may be moving again — for the last time hopefully. In order to have better administrative control over the site, I need to independently host it. I have the […]

Digg released major updates to their site last week. The primary changes are to the design. Digg has been reverted to the traditional left-side content with the navigation on the right.

The changes are welcome, and it’s a nice little change for the holidays. There is no question that Digg is a full-fledged web 2.0 application […]

Several times a year the American Design Awards open their competition to graphic and web designers looking to get noticed. The group is geared towards students and amateurs in the field. While they are currently judging the August 2006 entrees, I thought I would make a special recap of last season’s winners for logo design. […]

Slashdot has finally announced the winner of their CSS redesign contest. The new look is definitely an improvement.
Overall, the design is just the same old Slashdot with a bit of dusting and desperately needed graphic overhaul. It’s only a wonder that the geekiest of sites manages to get away with such an ugly design for […]

Apparently Google is testing a new homepage design. I understand that Google is trying to organize their site, but this seems to only complicate things further.

Unfortunately Google has a specific selection process for testing design prototypes, so there is no way to test the layout unless you happen to be one of the lucky few. […]

It seems there is an abundance of under qualified web developers out there. Anyone that can plug a code into their MySpace is eager to call themselves a coding expert.
Robin Dindayal, corporate blogger and Lead Software Developer for iUpload, has been conducting interviews for a design position at the company. He has compiled a list […]

Douglas Bowman, an established designer with widely acclaimed designs for sites like Blogger and Wired News, has hopped on the Google bandwagon as Visual Design Lead.
“After a bit of negotiation and a lot of internal debate, I recently accepted an offer to join Google as Visual Design Lead, a position that did not previously exist […]

It was about time Yahoo! got a fresh design. The new look drops the fruity colors and offers an attractive and efficient homepage.
Old

New

I am not a Yahoo person myself. Their goal seems to be to own every possible type of web content and tool under the Yahoo brand. When I want to buy a car, […]

BBC.co.uk recently held a contest asking developers to redesign bbc.co.uk, bbc’s personal homepage. The winner was announced to be FF Ecosystem with his design “BBC Malkovich.”

Click for full view

What they liked about it
- The way that Andy (and his colleagues ?) have cracked how to reflect content, conversations and data taking place away from bbc.co.uk
- […]

Digg 3.0 was released Monday last week. The new version offers a variety of new features and a little shine to the design. My first impression of the new Digg was positive. It’s about time they expanded the categories.

After playing with things for several days, I have mixed feelings about it. 3.0 definetly improved things, […]