“As the new layout gradually rolls out, current users of Google Profiles will notice that their existing profile will automatically update to the new style.”

If you don’t see the new design changes yet on your profile, check back later. The new Google profiles are much cleaner and all the information is consolidated to one page. In the previous profile page, you had a different tab for the “About Me” section and a separate tab for the ”Contact Info” section. Those have been consolidated to the main column.

Photos

In the previous profile, you could choose between displaying images from Picasa, Flickr or other photo service feed. When you selected one of these options, you had the ability to select a particular album or your most recent photos. The photos would then show up like a slideshow under your name that you could scroll through and click on to view. When you clicked on one of these images, it would take you to the respective site for that image.

In the new profile, you only have the choice of selecting 5 images total from either your picasa web album or your hard drive. We essentially lost some functionality in this update since we have to now manually pick each picture. The nice thing for Google though is when you someone clicks on one of these images, they stay on the profile page and a lightbox appears with the enlarged image.

I see people in the comments on the google blog comparing this 5 picture display to the new facebook profiles and aesthetically this looks just like the 5 picture display on facebook. The major difference being on facebook when you add new facebook pictures, your display will change. For google profiles, you have to manually change the pictures when you want to refresh the look.

Editing Information

The previous screens for editing information was much more cluttered and busy with way too many boxes to look at. The new interface is more user friendly. Now to edit a section, you simply click that section and a edit box appears for just that section. Simple and elegant.

Conclusion

The new design changes were well deserved as far as consolidating the different sections into one and putting the most important information at the forefront. Visually the profiles look more in line with google’s minimalist view that we all love. The one change I’m not so happy about is the static scrapbook area for pictures. I liked the previous functionality where you could choose flickr or other web services as long as it had a feed. This way when you add new pictures to these services, they will show up on your profile. Maybe it’s something google will revisit. Who knows. With these new changes, I might have to reconsider whether I send people to my google profile or my about.me page.

First of all these are not my ideas but I wanted to share them with my readers as well. These tips are courtesy of Marshall Kirkpatrick, technology journalist for Read Write Web. I frequently listen to his “audio thoughts” podcast or cinchcast. I highly recommend following him on twitter and cinchcast. You will get an insightful look on his thought processes   In his most recent recording, Marshall discussions the seven ways a news blogger can add value to a news conversation.

1. You can be First

If you are first to comment or write about a breaking topic or news event, you are sure to get lots of traffic assuming its a topic people are interested in reading.

2. You can be Funny

Oh yes! Funny is the Number 1 thing women look for a man and there are more women on the planet then men. So there you go

3. Synthesize / Summarize / Clarify

Do so in a way that the conversation can be really used. This is key, especially for topics that are not easily digestible to the average reader. If you can take a complex topic and summarize it into layman’s terms, other news sources will go to you or at least copy you. Especially if you are First and Funny.

4. Curate other high quality perspectives

Curation seems to be all of the buzz today. Many of us out there don’t want to scour the net to find every single source over a single topic so we go to certain blogs that do all of the grunt work to find the best sources and put them all together.

5. Add new details

Add new details to an existing conversation.

6. Add a new perspective to the story

Find a new angle to a story that all the other stories out may have overlooked.

7. Writing in a more compelling way

Mechanically you put the writing together in a more compelling way than anybody else.

I’m sure Marshall was “thinking out loud” with he recorded this for an upcoming blog post so expect a more detailed writeup from him on Read Write Web. At the end of his recording he asked the audience for more tips, so if you have more tips for him, be sure to send him a reply on twitter.

Below is Marshall Kirkpatrick’s cinch

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, you’ve heard the news of Woot being acquired by Amazon. Well woot didn’t waste any time celebrating. Here is a video woot made to commemorate the occasion in true woot fashion!

I love the “no more rolling into work with our pajamas on” line.

Congrats Woot! Keep bringing us the funny and deals.

How did I get my hands on an invite to try out Digg‘s latest update to their site? I was one of the lucky ones listening to This Week in Tech‘s live show with Leo Laporte. He was interviewing Digg founder and CEO, Kevin Rose as he made the announcement that all of the TWIT listeners could have first time access to the Digg Version 4 beta site! This was a small time window too. The invites were only for one hour on the show.

I was as gitty as a little school boy when I got the news. As Kevin Rose points out during the show, “there hasn’t been any changes to digg in the last two years.” This is a major facelift and retooling of the site. Kevin says this will fix a lot of the major problems people have been complaining about in the past. One of the issues that has plagued many users as Leo brought up during the show, digg has never just shown the stories from the people you care about or as Leo puts it:

I want a twitter style situation. Where I get to choose who I care about and they can curate my news for me.

Keep reading for screen shots and more information about the new features in digg version 4.

Before I get to my experience with the new Digg 4, here is a video Kevin Rose released a month ago showing a preview of Digg version 4:

Now Kevin Rose did mention that this was a rough alpha for version 4 so these screens could change dramatically for the final release. He also mentioned that invites will be released to the rest of of the digg community in the coming days. If you want to get in line, go to http://new.digg.com and request an invite. Next is a run-down stepping through the new setup process in Version 4.

Step 1: Suggested Profiles

This is eerily similar to Twitter’s Suggested User List.  These are suggested profiles for you to follow based on all of the topics digg covers, or you can choose profiles on a per topic basis. One difference I noticed which I will point on again later on, the topics are only the major ones. You no longer have the sub topics under each major one. This is a step in the right direction. Less is usually better in my opinion.

Step 2: Find Friends

The next step of the new digg version 4 allows you to connect with your existing social networks and bring in your friends who are also on digg. Below are the screens that show your list of followers and those you are following. Once again, very similar to twitter in look and feel.

Digg Version 4 Followers Screen

Digg Version 4 Following Screen

These friends along with the suggested profiles you selected in the previous step will make up the content seen in the new “My News” section of digg.

My News

This is the brand new section of digg that will show you all of the diggs and user submitted stories by your “friends, tastemakers, and sources that your following all presented in one unified feed,” as Kevin Rose pointed out in the preview video above. If you think about it, its basically facebook’s “news feed” for digg. From here you can see the top stories that are dugg by all of the people you are following. You can also submit a digg link from this section. The process of submitting diggs is a lot simpler than before.

New Digg Submission Process

Submitting a new digg can be done in a few short clicks.

1. Paste your URL in the “submit a link” bar.
2. Digg grabs the images, title, and description from the site. You can choose to leave it as is or edit the content.
3. Choose a topic.
4. Click Digg It button to submit.

Top News

New Version 4 News Page

The current look of the News Page

Top News is the default view you are used to seeing on the current digg.com site with some adjustments. The topics in the current site used to run horizontally across the top of the page with the main topics and further sub topics broken down underneath. Now the topics are listed to the left of the page and vertical. You no longer have the subtopics. All you have now are the ten main topics. I live this simplified look and feel. It give it a less cluttered look, simple and to the point.

Import Feeds

Another leap forward in this new digg version is the ability to import your own RSS feeds from your blogs or websites. Digg verifies you are the owner of the site in a similar fashion to Google analytics. Once you add your feed, digg will give you a verification key that you have to embed in your latest post. The key can be in the title, body, or hidden in an HTML comment. I was able to perform this without a hitch but I feel not every user will know how to do this. I smell plugins being released very soon just for this feature.

Once your feed has been verified, every new post will automatically be added to digg! Now this is something that has been long overdue. No more submitting your post to digg and have another more popular user promoting your story to the front page and they get the credit.

Vanity URL

Another feature taken from the likes of twitter and facebook are vanity URLs. Your personal page will be http://digg.com/[username]. Since this is still in beta it points to http://new.digg.com/[username]. This page will of course show all of the stories you have dugg, links submitted, comments, imported feeds,and following/followers.

Final Thoughts

From the short time I spent on the new site before writing this article, it’s evident that a lot of work has been made to fine tune the experience on digg. The interface is much cleaner and simplified where needed. I have been a casual user of digg in the past where I would digg on stories occasionally but I was far from active. I tried adding my stories to digg only to see them get one or two diggs but never really getting much traction and the fact that it was a manual process to add stories, kept me from using the service. Having the Import Feeds feature in the new version is definitely a plus for me and I will be sure to keep active to see where this goes.

I like the added feature of following friends and other like-minded curators. I’m anxious to see what kind of new dynamic this will create for the digg experience. I like the direction Kevin Rose and team are taking us and I can’t wait to see the final product.

We are on our way to Seattle, Washington for vacation for a few days. So that means there will be no podcast this week I will try blogging while I’m there. If you want to keep tabs on me, be sure to watch my twitter stream. I’ll also be using posterous as well for pictures and videos.

I think I found something to” push me” forward. The program is called the One Hundred Pushups Challenge. Sean Loyless (a friend on friendfeed) turned me onto the program. The premise is very simple and its something you can do without a gym membership. You start off with an initial test of how many pushups you can do until you collapse in a sweaty heap on the floor. This gauges your fitness level and determines how many sets and reps you will do for your first week. I did my initial test today and was able to do 28 pushups. Yay me!  I won’t go through the whole program in this post but I will say that I will be starting this program next week and keep you guys updated on my progress. The cool thing is there are a number of ways to track your progress. The site has a iphone app or you can track your progress on the 100pushups site. Leave me a comment if you’ve had any experience with this program or you want to join me in this quest.

UPDATE: If you are on Friendfeed and want to participate with us, join the Hundred Pushups Group and share your progress with us.

Try to get some rest this holiday because tomorrow there will be double the work ! Thanks to all our men and women working hard in factories, schools, cubicles, high rises, low rises, on the streets, in shops, and everywhere in between.

I just recently purchased an iPhone 3GS and these five apps are ones I found while doing some research for myself.  Now be warned, I don’t have deep pockets so I have not purchased any of these apps with the exception of Roadee. So instead of being a review, this is merely a list which showcases each app as described in the apple app store. Each of these apps should work with an iPhone 3G or 3GS. They will not work with the original iPhone since it did not have a GPS built-in.  Keep reading to find out more about the AT&T Navigator, CoPilot Live, TomTom, Roadee, and OSMTrack.

1). AT&T Navigator: $9.99/month

Basically once you download the app, you’ll be billed monthly on your AT&T wireless bill. I would suggest this to anyone that just needs a GPS application temporary like for a vacation or long road trip. The notes on the apple store page says you can cancel at any time.

FEATURES:

• Voice-Guided and 3D onscreen navigation
• Automatic rerouting
• Automatic map updates
• Real-time traffic updates

REVIEWS:

Review: AT&T Navigator for iPhone – Geek.com
AT&T Navigator GPS Review – PC World

SCREENSHOTS:

2). Copilot Live North America: $34.99

Copilot Live is developed by ALK Technologies and they make GPS software for mobile devices such as the the iPhone, Android and as well as laptops. Unlike the AT&T Navigator, all of the maps are stored on your iPhone itself so the application itself takes up 1.1 GB.

FEATURES:

• Turn-by-turn voice directions
• Rather than streaming map information, all of the map data is stored on your iPhone
• Portrait/landscape display auto-switching
• Automatic day/night mode
• LiveLink - apparently you can do location sharing and messaging with other CoPilot users.
• Live Weather information
• RV mode provides guidance for larger vehicles

REVIEWS:

CoPilot GPS Live navigation app comes to the iPhone – geeks.com
Co-Pilot Live for iPhone Review – PDA 247

SCREENSHOTS:

3). TomTom for iPhone: $99.99

The most widely known name in GPS finely has a GPS iPhone app but it is expensive! This app is brand name and just came out August 15th.  Just like the CoPilot, all of the maps on the TomTom are stored on the iPhone so the application takes up 1.2 GB.

FEATURES:

• Turn-by-Turn voice navigation
• “Tap and Go” – basically tap point A to point B and TomTom displays all the best routes
• Portrait/landscape display auto-switching
• Find an entry in your contacts list and TomTom will find the way there (assuming you have their address in the contact list)
• IQ Routes – TomTom’s trademarked smartest routes.

REVIEWS:

TomTom iPhone App GPS Review – GPSReview.net
Hands on: TomTom for iPhone review – TechRadarUK

SCREENSHOTS:

4). Roadee: $1.99

The Roadee is the cheapest of the bunch at just $1.99. The reason for it being so cheap is because it’s based on an OpenSource project called openstreetmap. “Openstreetmap is like wikipedia for maps,” quoted from the app description. The routing information is calculated and provided by another OpenSource project called CloudMade. I did purchase this app,  so I can talk a little bit about its features first hand. This app is not going to win awards based on its looks. It does some of the basic features needed in a GPS like turn-by-turn “voice” directions.  The developers says they are constantly fine turning the application so expect some updates soon. One of the caveats like AT&T’s offering, the maps are loaded on the iPhone and are downloaded as needed. So if your connection drops  or you have a slow internet connection, this may affect your map and routing info.  The install is only 5.1 MB.

FEATURES:

• Turn-by-Turn voice directions
• Ability to plot a course from your home to an address stored in your contacts
• Rudimentary points of interest
• Free Driving

REVIEWS:

None

SCREENSHOTS:

5). OSMTrack: Cost $0.99

This last application is not an application for giving you directions from point A to point B. This application is a tracking app that interfaces with OpenStreetMap project mentioned in the previous app. Had to throw a zigger in there to throw you off. This app is designed for people who would like to contribute to OpenStreetmap development in creating better maps for the OpenSource community. This is for the gungho adventurous types that want to go out there and fix all the wrong map data in the world or at least in your own community.

FEATURES:

• Direct upload to the OpenStreetMap
• Supports multiple tracks
• Precise information on current GPS accuracy
• Compass Rose
• Supports interruptions (basically has a pause recording button)
• Both standard and metric systems

REVIEWS:

None

SCREENSHOTS:

As Veronica Belmont pointed out in a recent tweet. August 13th is National Left-Hander’s Day. As a fellow left-hander, I’m proud to be the members of society that are in our right minds.

Here are some ways to celebrate this great national holiday from LeftHandersDay.com:

The website even has some posters you can print out to celebrate the holiday

Here are places online to buy Left Handed Goods:
Lefty’s Left Handed

Anything Left Handed

We have been looking for a house to purchase in Beaumont since we moved down here back in November 08. We are almost done, just playing the waiting game now on financing and paperwork. The house is really nice. Its got a clean look and feel to it. It has all the features that Sarah and I were looking for, minus a 2 car garage for me

We must have looked at 20+ houses before we settled on this one. We found the house early on but wanted to see if anything was better or cheaper. There wasn’t anything better in our price range, with the features we wanted.  Since we have animals, we like hardwood floors, so that was a requirement. It also needed a nice size backyard for our dog Siena and so Sarah can plant some flowers. We also wanted to have a house that wasn’t a “fixer-upper.” I am ok with minor repairs here and there but I’m far from being a handyman. This house is a 3 bedroom so we have our guest bedroom and an office for me. I think it will be a nice fit for us.

Our closing date is scheduled for May 22nd.  Hopefully everything will go well.  I will keep everyone posted.

Check out the slideshow below if you want to see more pics.