As much as I love the current design, change is good. In the near future I will be rolling a new design.

Why you might ask?

Well, as you may all know wordpress is now 2.5.1 and made some pretty significant changes. So I want to play around with some new ideas here. My current design was created back in 2.2 or 2.3 and since then, wordpress has added widgets and a little bit more capability.

Also, I want to explore some new ideas here, principal among those is branding. As a sometime freelancer, I would like to start creating a consistent web brand so as to possibly get new gigs now and again.

So what to look for?

In the interest of you the reader getting to know me better, I will be incorporating my flickr stream, tweets, podroll and such. I will take another look at my previous posts, and categories and such. I will try to post articles that are more geared to web design, tech, random geekness, but will continue to keep you up to date with important happenings in my life.

That’s it for now, you may return to your regularly scheduled surfing…

Just announced today!

This year’s Webmaster Jam Session will be on October 3 and 4 in Atlanta. I attended WJS 2007 in Dallas and learned a lot about the business and had a great time meeting people who do what I do from around the world. I have been eagerly awaiting this announcement as I will most definetely be there in October.

I like to follow various web gurus via Twitter.

This morning I read about a new site called Viewzi from Robert Scoble (twitter: Scobleizer). I checked out the site and signed up for an invite and was able to grab a spot.

So, What is Viewzi?

This is what their website had to say

Viewzi is a whole new way to experience search. Instead of one big list, you get nice visual Views tailored for the content you are looking for.

With traditional text-based search engines, no matter what or how you search, your results are basically the same. Searching for Bono looks the same as searching for chicken recipes or sports cars

Pretty cool huh?

I played around with it briefly and my first search was “Battlestar Galactica.” Aside from some Flash Player 9 errors the application was really cool. It currently in private beta, so you have to sign up for it. (Maybe the people at Viewzi will see this post and will give me some invites [hint hint nudge nudge].

I will be playing around with it some more today and will keep this post updated of cool things I discover.

As a web professional, I like to browse around at what’s new that’s coming out. I like to play around with new applications and see if they have ideas worth trying to expand on.

While LinkedIn is not really a new site, it does have some new ideas. First, I would like to clarify that LinkedIn is not meant to be another Myspace/Facebook. It is a site for professionals to list things they would normally put in their CV/Resume, including past experience, professional groups you are affiliated with, and your specialites.

This application has several new ideas that boost the normal resume/job search process. First among these is the social networking aspect (the function is facebook-ish, but not the content). Users can connect with past employers or colleagues and form connections as you all establish your careers.

Another idea expands on the social networking and connections. LinkedIn has developed a process that will run through the information you provide and suggest other people that you might know who are already existing users.

Also another expansion on the traditional resume is the ability to recommend or endorse another person. For instance, if you come in contact with a former boss that felt that you did great work for him/her while you were in his/her employ, they can add an endorsement to your record for potential future employers to see.

LinkedIn has two categories of job searching. When a user fills out a job search query it first checks to see if your search matches any jobs that your connections are offering. If there is no match, then it references an affiliated job search engine: SimplyHired. LinkedIn will still notify you if you have contacts that work at companies that are offering jobs.

So if you are a professional out there, you should consider giving this application a try for yourself.

Additional Reading

• Ten Ways to use LinkedIn | Guy Kawasaki
• LinkedIn Profile Makeover
• The official LinkedIn Blog
• 20 ways to use LinkedIn more productively
• I’m on LinkedIn - now what? [via lifehacker]