September News

[news]

Beta Test the New Customize Area
Does your journal need a makeover for fall? We've launched the beta test for the Customize Journal area and now it's easier than ever to make your journal look exactly the way you want it. The new and improved Customize Area has been thoughtfully streamlined into a user-friendly, two-step process, with some pretty significant changes.

Highlights include:

• New thumbnail screenshots for all 600+ theme choices.
• Categorized themes. (Themes can still be filtered by layout name in View "All" or when viewing by specific layout.)
• Consolidation of all sections into a brand-new, streamlined layout.

Read about the exciting improvements in this lj_design post. We know this is a huge change to a popular area of the site and we can't wait to get your feedback. Become a beta tester, then go to the Customize Journal page to check it out. You can provide your thoughts about what's working, what's not working and where we can improve at feedback.

Color Us FRANK Happy - LiveJournal's Very First Photo Contest!
Speaking of makeovers, Frank has been begging us to give him one for a while. But we decided a task of that magnitude is best left to all the crafty, creative people here on LJ.

Here's the challenge: Color in a picture of Frank (with markers, colored pencils, crafts etc. - no digital artwork, please) and take a photo set in any location or background. Frank's a pretty adventurous goat, as you know, so be creative! Your picture of Frank will be judged on your artistic skills and the originality of your photo backdrop. See our creation below:




There will be three winners: One "Grand Prize" winner and two "Runner-Up Prize" winners selected by the members of the LiveJournal community from a list of finalists that we'll choose. The Grand Prize winner will receive a one hundred dollar ($100) gift certificate from Amazon.com, and the Runner-Up Grand Prize winners will each receive a fifty dollar ($50) gift certificate from Amazon.com.

Go to this post in lj_photocontest for all the official rules on how to submit your photo of Frank.

Picture This
We've added a new tool from Snap.com so that you can have visual previews on external links within your journal.




Enable these graphic previews within your journal at the Viewing Options page (under "Graphic previews"). Don't want to see these images on other journals? No problem Click on "Options" in the upper-right corner of any preview to disable previews on "THIS Site" (throughout LiveJournal) or "All Sites" (all websites).

We plan to add more features in the next few weeks, so try it out and let us know what you think.

A Return to Six Apart
After an 18 month hiatus, daveman692 has rejoined Six Apart as the Open Platforms Technical Lead. While he was away, David focused his efforts on moving OpenId forward, and was recently recognized by Google and O'Reilly as one of the recipients of a 2007 Open Source Award... the youngest recipient in the history of the award, we might add.

For those of you who are curious as to what David has been up to since his return, you may want to check out his recent post "We Are Opening the Social Graph" in Six Apart news. At Six Apart, we want to bring the kind of control that, as LiveJournal users, you have over your friend lists, identity, and privacy to all of the sites you use on the web. One of the first concrete steps we've taken is adding support for Microformats to parts of the site. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the tools we can bring to LiveJournal to continue helping you manage your friends and privacy.

EDIT: We're working through some style kinks from the release that may be affecting your journal and community pages. Hang tight!
EDIT EDIT: The S2 errors should now be fixed. Thank you for being patient with us.