We're going to keep this short and sweet (Frank and birthday vgifts will be back next week). You've probably seen the updates to our main menu. Don't be alarmed. You'll find everything you need, just in slightly shifted format. Just so you know, we based these changes on input from both experienced and new users who were not familiar with LiveJournal. Our goal was to reduce barriers to usability and make LiveJournal more accessible and easy to navigate. Please note that this is a work in progress. We welcome your detailed suggestions in feedback. We thank you, in advance, for helping us improve your LiveJournal experience.

We've updated the global navigation menu:

Here's a quick breakdown of what you'll find where:

• Scrapbook can now be found under Profile (thanks for your feedback, btw), along with Settings, Stats, and Edit Profile.
• You'll find all the tools you need to post and update entries under Journal, which includes posting and editing entries, managing comments and tags, and customizing your journal's style.
• Friends contains all of your friend settings, from filtering your Friends page to adding, removing, and finding new and existing friends on LiveJournal.
• Under Communities, you'll find links to manage your communities, accept community invites, and create new communities.
• Explore includes search features, RSS feeds, Question of the Day, and FRNK radio.
• Under Shop, you'll find links to upgrade or give a paid account, buy virtual gifts, purchase LiveJournal merchandise (like T-shirts), and view your payment history.

LiveJournal Mobile update:

We've enhanced LiveJournal's mobile site to improve usability and load times. We've made more of LiveJournal's features accessible via mobile, including posting comments, uploading photos, reading and commenting on friends' posts, finding and messaging friends, and more. We look forward to reviewing your feedback and recommendations for future improvements.

Other important changes:

• You can lock comments to prevent further commenting on a post, while leaving existing comments visible.
• We replaced the "Tell a friend" link with a new "Share This" widget that lets you share LiveJournal posts on other social media sites, including Facebook, Digg, Twitter, etc.
• We changed some of the icons on entries (you can hover over the icons to view descriptions).
• You'll see a Tag count on your Tag management page.
• You'll now see the 10 most recent vgifts on your profile page. To remove vgifts, left-click on the vgift and choose whether you want to remove the vgift from your profile or delete it entirely.
• We've added options to help you control receipt of vgifts, which you'll find in My Stuff under Edit Profile. You can now enable vgifts from friends or everyone and disable anonymous vgifts.

We've got your fix:

• UPDATE: Rolling several updates into one listing here -- 1) Scrapbook should be back and working again. 2) The problem with the Update Journal page in IE6 and IE7 should be fixed now. 3) The problem with the userpic add-on package pricing has been fixed and refunds issued to anyone who was overcharged while the erroneous prices were in place.
• Non-conforming images will now be automatically resized for custom mood themes.
• Line breaks no longer count as two characters against your entry's character limit.
• We fixed a bug on the Manage Tags page so you can clear all tags and add new tags.
• We corrected the UI for the update.bml page so it displays properly in IE8.

Thanks again for joining us. Frank and company will be back next week!

Tags: custom mood themes, global navigation, mobile app, tags, vgifts

I missed my office cab today morning and since I had plenty of time ahead, I decided to take the BMTC. I rolled up a 10 rupee note in between my palm and fingers and boarded a bus. I was standing holding onto a metal railing in the bus, when the driver applied slight brakes before speeding up on the flyover. The 10 rupee note flew from my hand, and fell on the gear box and had a smooth exit out through the front door of the bus. Few women started making loud screams, I didnt want the driver to panic and a scene following, so I signaled them that it was okay and took a seat which got vacant and pulled out another note from my wallet. I made a small prayer hoping the money lands into someone needy. I dont think anybody walks on the flyover, the note will take some time, before it travels/flies to the next owner. I was just relieved it was not a 100 rupee note :P

Some of the women who saw the note flying out, gave me unusual glances. May be they were surprised that I was so cool about it. Well, I had no choice but to let it go, bcos stopping the bus, hearing the driver abuse me for my carelessness is even more embarrassing for me. And who knows a couple of minutes of halt to retrieve my 10 rupee note would turn out to be more costly for some other innocent passenger in the bus.

I think its same with people in our lives. Sometimes we hold on to people in our memories even after they have exited out of our lives. We keep hoping and trying to bring them back without realizing how much of discomfort it would be to us, them or even others who are not involved in the whole process. It all depends on how much value or importance you attach to a person or thing. Even if you are gripping tightly to something or someone, I think if it is destined to move out, it will happen. One can move on only when you attach less importance to exited things. Atleast you have not lost everything, there is more to look forward to. Everything and everyone will land up to their destined owners some day.

Tags: money, people
Current Mood: peaceful

We're finishing up a few odds and ends before our next major release. Our mighty Ops guys continue to slay spambots and balance load times on a highwire without a safety net (which is kind of tough dressed in full ninja gear). Down on solid ground, we're celebrating this week's virtual birthday party with a warm toast to pants. If you can rearrange the letters of your favorite city, state, and/or country (feel free to combine these elements) to spell one of Frank's favorite treats (e.g., pants, wire, paper, etc.), he'll send you over a can of whipped cream to top it all off (provided you return the empty can for his midnight snack)! And, with that, let the word scrambling commence!

Stuff you should know:

We're still working on the delayed/missing notifications issue. Sorry, we're frustrated too. We'll keep you posted. Last week, we became aware that a recently-implemented script was overwriting affiliate referral fees for some of our users. Once we confirmed this, our Ops team quickly removed the script. Please be aware that, while we may beta-test other affiliate scripts down the line, we will take greater measures to ensure that no existing user-referral arrangements are impacted in any way. While we plan to stick to a weekly news schedule, if we have a release in between regular newsletters, we'll post here to keep you informed. You can also check lj_releases for current release information.

To our paid users, we send squirrels in love!

If you have a paid or permanent account, you can send five free Squirrels in love vgifts through Monday, March 15th at 4pm, PST! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 squirrels displayed until they've scurried off to their new homes. Please send only one vgift at a time. In other words, you'll need to complete check-out and start a new order for each vgift you send. If you're not receiving vgifts (from friends and/or Frank), you may have disabled them. To enable vgifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and select 'Do not disable' from the drop-down menu. Have fun!

Help is on the way!

We're pleased to announce the winner of our first charitable vgift poll, Doctors without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières, which provides critical medical care to under-served populations around the world. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of the proceeds we raise from the sale of this vgift (we'll cover credit card fees). We invite you to start recommending nonprofits for our next fundraising drive at ljnewscontests. We'll take suggestions through the month and post a poll in the news during the first week of April to let you choose the recipient. We thank you, again, for your passion and generosity.

We've crowned a header

Congratulations to ohterlus for submitting the winning header, which will go live next week and keep us leafy through mid-April! You can submit designs for our next header contest at ljnewscontests now until March 31st. We'll post a poll in the news to let you decide which header will sit at the top of LiveJournal from mid-April to mid-May. All artistic interpretations are welcome. The winner will get a $25 LiveJournal gift certificate. All other contributors will receive $5 gift certificates. Our heartfelt appreciation for sharing your talent and creativity!

For this week's winning photo and more adventures with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut!

( Read more... )

Tags: charitable vgift drive, frank & meme, lj_photophile, march header contest, notifications, squirrels in love, tinyurls

Rooftop cafeterias would indeed be the preferred idea for designing a cafeteria in a  multi-storey corporate building. It gives employees a total new ambiance from their boring cubicle structures. There is nothing more refreshing than standing on a 9th floor rooftop cafeteria and getting a glimpse of the city you live in. However I am not sure, how much power-efficient this design is.

Almost everyone from Level 1 to Level 7 use the Lift to reach the Cafeteria. Assuming there are 300-400 people per floor, and the Lift capacity being at max 20, average Lift Usage would be (400/20)x7 ~= 140 !! And this is just for moving up. And assuming not everyone uses the Lifts at the same time, we can hope that some of the downward usage of the early lunch people will coincide with the upward lift usage of late lunch goers, so total usage may not directly be double. However the total usage number would further increase, assuming there will be people frequenting the cafeteria for breakfast, mid-tea breaks, snacks, dinner etc.

I am beginning to wonder what would be the ideal location for cafeteria in a mutli-storey building design considering to economize Lift usage as well ?

Tags: cafeteria
Current Mood: lethargic