Webware

A look at the newly tweaked Facebook homepage.

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook members will start to see a new look for their home page "news feeds" on Friday, with the design now featuring a toggle view between a main view, featuring the top stories from their friends list based on their Facebooking habits, and a "live feed" featuring real-time updates from their whole network.

"When the user wakes up in the morning, you go to Facebook and you see (the) news feed," product manager Peter Deng told CNET News. "You see the stuff that you missed, the best of the previous day, to basically catch you up on what your friends have been up to."

This is sort of bringing Facebook's design back to an earlier version. This spring, likely inspired by the hype surrounding Twitter's "stream," Facebook converted its home page news feed into a feed of live updates and relegated "highlights" to a small column on the right side of the page. Plenty of members absolutely hated it, even though Facebook execs have since said that the redesign didn't result in a drop in traffic or usage.

Deng said that the design released Friday, which will be rolling out to the social network's massive user base over the course of the day starting at 10 a.m. PDT, was put together by "responding to a lot of feedback along the way."

Birthday and event alerts are now more prominent, and the news feed also contains stories that stopped appearing when Facebook launched the stream-inspired home page: relationship status news, photos added and tagged, and the like. Brands' fan pages will be worked in there, too, but Deng said Facebook does not allow them to pay for higher placement or prominence. User controls will stay the same: you can opt to see fewer updates from a given person or fan page.

The upcoming redesign was leaked earlier this week via a document distributed to advertisers. But Deng said that the company has "made a few user interface tweaks since then."

Facebook's Groups feature seemed to have long since taken a backseat to the "fan pages" that the social network has encouraged companies and brands to create. But they're far from obsolete.

In a Monday blog post called "Giving Groups a Stronger Voice," Facebook has announced a number of ways it has improved Groups, to better match the rest of the site and more closely tie to members' activity feeds.

"Group activities, which previously only appeared in the group, will now be delivered to your news feed," the post by Facebook engineer Knot Pipatsrisawat read. These updates will be restricted to those that come from people already on your friends list, which is key, since many groups have thousands--or even millions--of members.

"For example, you now will see a story when your friend uploads photos from a recent party at your high school alumni group, or when one of your friends posts a message on the wall of your pick-up soccer group, saying that there is a special game this week," according to Pipatsrisawat's post.

A look at the new 'Groups' design on Facebook.

(Credit: Facebook)

Additionally, the home page of a group has been modified to look more like a regular member profile or fan page, complete with a news feed and "publisher" field. Basically, this gives yet another Facebook feature a dose of the "real-time stream." The blog post adds that this is currently available to a small number of users and will be available more widely "in the coming days."

The updates come as Facebook previews some home page improvements to advertisers. But the Groups redesign is geared toward ordinary users, not brands, Facebook says.

"Groups are for fostering member-to-member collaboration, while Pages remain the best way to broadcast messages to your fans, if you are a business, organization, public figure, or other entity," Pipatsrisawat's post explained.

Meanwhile, the other big player in real-time content, Twitter, started the beta test rollout of its own grouping, or "lists," feature last week. Those are fairly different, though, as Twitter users are encouraged to create their own lists of recommended members that other users can follow with one click.

Guess what? Facebook is tweaking its home page design yet again--something that invariably seems to tick off members at first before they realize they actually don't mind that much. The company seems to have been previewing the new look to advertisers, one of whom forwarded the details along to industry blog Mashable.

It doesn't look too different. The biggest change is that Facebook's home page news feed will now be divided up into "top news" and a more real-time "recent activity" view.

The explanation:

"Facebook is simplifying the user experience on the home page by introducing Top News and Recent Activity streams. Now, when users log on to Facebook for the first time in a while, they will see the most important stories that they missed while they were away. From there, users can navigate to the real-time stream and toggle between both views throughout their sessions. In addition to making it easier for users to view content that is most relevant to them, this change also speeds up the time it takes for the home page to load and makes birthday reminders more prominent."

A screenshot from a document that Facebook sent to brand advertisers about an impending redesign.

(Credit: Facebook)

Note the mention of birthday reminders. On a given member's birthday, a pop-up version of Facebook's "gifts" application appears on that user's profile so that friends can purchase virtual gifts to display. The "gifts" feature is also currently the center of the fledgling e-commerce plans that Facebook has been bouncing around for quite some time now: It's currently the hub of its "credits" virtual currency, and advertisers can purchase sponsored gifts that members can give to one another. These have also been tested out with a select number of nonprofits.

For users, it sounds like Facebook is correcting some of the changes that members seemed to complain about the most with its last redesign. "Facebook has also put information back into the stream that people have asked for, including photo tags, friend acceptances, relationships, event RSVPs and group memberships," the explanation obtained by Mashable read. Also in there will be information about what a user's friends do on brands' "fan" pages, potentially increasing the exposure for advertisers and marketers looking to jump on the social-ads bandwagon.

Why so much redesigning? Facebook's executive team likes to pitch the company as a living, evolving product. At an event last week in Palo Alto, Calif., Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg underscored Facebook's belief in constant "iteration," a term you'll also often hear CEO Mark Zuckerberg using.

"The great thing about Facebook is (that) we are constantly evolving the site and constantly evolving the usage," she said. "People protested the new home page redesign, but engagement went way up and users continued to grow."

If you're not an advanced Web designer, and you don't want to pay a company to create a Web site for you, there are services across the Web that can help you create the site you want. All of the tools listed below are designed specifically for beginners. If that's you, give them a whirl.

Get your design on

Color Wizard: Having trouble finding the right color for a portion of your site? Color Wizard will help you determine which color works with your current color scheme.

When you get to Color Wizard's site, just input the color you want to match. From there, the service will spit out several colors that match well with your base color. If you're unhappy with all the colors on your site, you can also use the site's sliders to create a color you desire. It then gives you a color tag that you can place in your site's HTML. It's a simple, neat tool that I use quite often.

Color Wizard helps you match colors or create your own.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

CSS Typeset: If you're looking to quickly edit portions of CSS from your site, CSS Typeset is one of my favorite tools to do just that.

The premise of CSS Typeset is simple: take some CSS from your site, modify it with the drop-down lists featured at the bottom of the page, and CSS Typeset generates the CSS code you can paste back into your site. You can change the font type, its color, alignment, and more. If you need a little help with CSS, CSS Typeset is the service for you.

CSS Typeset will help you change your site up.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Dear Person Who Constantly Tweets About What He Or She Is Eating For Breakfast,

Twitter is not all about you anymore. Now go drown your sorrows in a bottle of delicious maple syrup that you're about to pour on that giant stack of blueberry pancakes.

Indeed, the microblogging service unveiled Tuesday its revamped home page, which doesn't change anything for people who are already using Twitter--it's just a different look and feel for twitter.com if you haven't logged in.

"Helping people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction lowers the barrier to accessing the value Twitter has to offer and presents the service more consistently with how it has evolved," co-founder Biz Stone wrote on the company blog. "Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be."

Deep.

So what's new? Well, the interface is cleaned up and is a little more aesthetically pleasing, with Twitter's bird mascot now fluttering around a Twitter logo vaguely set up to be a sunburst emerging from some fluffy clouds. (They sure do think highly of themselves over there!) There's a big Twitter Search button to "see what people are saying about" a given topic, putting the service's utility front and center. Then there is a roster of trending topics by the hour, day, and week.

Twitter's mantra has changed from "What are you doing?" to "Share and discover what's happening right now, anywhere in the world." Chances are, new visitors to Twitter.com are checking it out because they've heard about it in the news--or even integrated into news coverage, as the likes of CNN and MSNBC have started doing. The new language reflects that.

And when you click the "Sign up now" button? You're invited to "join the conversation." Yeah, that's right. Now think about whether "the conversation" really wants to hear about that pint of Ben & Jerry's you're about to dig into.

"We're eager to see if encouraging a sense of wonder and discovery leads to a better first impression of Twitter," Stone concluded in his blog post. So let me get this straight: Twitter has evolved into a 140-character magical mystery tour with a pretty cartoon bird to lead the way. Insert your favorite Harold and Kumar joke here!

Twitter will give your business wings, or at the very least, it will send along some cute cartoon birds to carry your briefcase for you.

(Credit: Twitter)

Twitter's home page definitely gets some Zen cred by consisting of little more than a text field that asks, "What are you doing?" But that's apparently about to change.

According to Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, there will very soon be a major revamp to Twitter.com.

The reason is to give potential Twitter users--you know, the ones who are curious about what these "tweets" on CNN are--a better idea of exactly what the service is and what they can do with it.

This is slated to launch next week.

"You can try (Twitter) out without having to sign up, so you can get an idea of what Twitter is before you use it," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told AllThingsD. "We need to do a better job of explaining ourselves to people who hear about us and then have no idea what do to."

Part of this has gone live already: a section called "Twitter 101," geared toward businesses that want to use the microblogging service for publicity, marketing, or customer relations. Co-founder Biz Stone announced this in a blog post on Thursday evening.

"We coordinated with business students and writers to surface some interesting findings, best practices, steps for getting started, and case studies," Stone wrote. "The results demonstrate how customers are getting value out of Twitter and suggest techniques businesses can employ to enhance that value."

This is important because of troubling (albeit unofficial) statistics that Twitter's ubiquity may be fleeting. The majority of new users reportedly don't stick around, and third-party studies have found that a small number of active members are responsible for the vast majority of "tweets."

Getting a "real" home page could also be key for future revenue opportunities on Twitter's end. The site is so lightweight that many avid users rarely access it at all, instead using third-party clients like Twhirl or TweetDeck. For Twitter, which still doesn't have a head of sales, getting people back to its homepage could be the first step in making a buck or two off it.

Now that summer is finally here, homeowners will be spending time outside, fixing up their homes' exterior and improving the backyard. Whether they want to do some landscaping in the front of their home, build a deck in the back, or paint the house, they'll be able to design great outdoor spaces with the help of these tools.

Home design tools

Dave's Garden Dave's Garden is a social network for landscapers or people who enjoy landscaping. Once you register for the site, you'll be able to create your own gardening blog to inform other users about the improvements on your home. Dave's Garden also lets you trade seeds with other gardeners who want to barter. It's a neat site that is ideal for landscaping, but I would like it more if it had a more attractive design.

Dave's Garden lets you barter for seeds.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Deck Designer Deck Designer is a great tool for anyone who wants to add a deck to their house. The tool walks you through all the steps of adding the deck, including how tall it will be, whether you want to add benches, and more. Once complete, it produces a full list of all the materials you will need to build that deck. It will even provide you with step-by-step instructions on installing it.

Deck Designer helps you build your own deck.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

DIY Network Gardening At first glance, the DIY Network's Gardening & Landscaping page won't look like it can be of help. But when you start digging a little deeper, you'll find a variety of great how-to videos on landscaping. The site has videos on topics ranging from installing torches in your backyard to adding art to a tomato garden cage. My favorite video taught me how to install a weatherproof cedar TV cabinet.

The new Facebook inbox.

(Credit: Facebook)

Well, according to a post on the official Facebook blog, the social network's messaging feature is getting a much-needed revamp from its cruddy, bare-bones state. Select users have the new in-box now; it'll be rolling out to everyone else over the next few weeks.

The catch is that there aren't actually very many new features, just a better presentation of existing ones for the most part. You'll now be able to accomplish such technological marvels as filter your in-box for unread messages (wow!) and flag unwanted messages as spam.

There's also a more clearly delineated division between messages from friends on your friends list and updates from brands' "fan pages" that previously all went into the same in-box.

Some more updates are on the way. "Over time, we plan to migrate messages from Groups and Events to Updates as well, so you have more control over the communication you receive," the post by Facebook's Scott Marlette read. That means the message from the guy who just reconnected with you on Facebook after not speaking to you since the fourth-grade spider-in-the-lunchbox incident will have a different destination than the message to all guests of next week's Bocce ball tournament.

So, no, Facebook probably won't be replacing your e-mail client yet. But more importantly--it's prettier. Oh, and you can flag spam now--that's important.

With the housing market in such rough shape, sellers are pressed to make their home as functional and inviting as possible.

For everything from quick fixes and complete remodels, do-it-yourselfers are increasingly looking online for design guidance. These tools will help you create the designs you've always wanted (or at least the ones that will help you move to your next home).

Home design tools

Armstrong makes it easy to pick your flooring.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Armstrong Design Tools Armstrong's Design Tools lets you pick any room in an imaginary home, and mix and match potential wall colors, flooring, trim, and countertops. Once you change everything in the room to fit your desire, you can save the room's design and share it with friends.

Color-a-Room Better Homes and Gardens' Color-a-Room tool lets you change the paint schemes of any room in the house. Once you pick the room, you can choose the color you like for your walls. From there, you can find window treatments and save the room for future viewing. If you want to work on the outside of your home, you can pick the paint colors for your roof, siding, shutters, or window trim. As with the Armstrong tool, you won't be looking at a representation of your home, per se, but it will give you a better idea of what might work in your space.

Deck Designer If you're planning on adding a deck to your house, Deck Designer is a great place to start. The tool lets you choose the size, shape, and color of your deck. You can decide where to put it, add stairs and railings, and save as many designs as you want. When complete, you can print out a full listing of the materials you need, as well as tips on how to install it.