Redesign

Now that the iPhone 4S is rapidly becoming Apple's best-selling device, the rumor mill turns its attention to the forthcoming iPad 3, widely expected in the first quarter of 2012. Today's rumor offering comes from a part leaked on TVC Mall's site that reportedly is a replacement microphone unit for the iPad 3.

The unit (originally discovered by Cydia Blog), when compared with the iPad 2's current part, shows a major change in the shape of the device. With a change this major, one might assume that the entire interior of the iPad 3 could be … Read more

Twitter's new look will get its share of cheers and jeers, but in the end the current users may not be the focus.

The redesign is about growth: keeping you on Twitter longer, encouraging more interaction, and with any luck, being less scary to the uninitiated.

Let's face it: old Twitter could be a bit jarring to newbies. What's unclear is whether Twitter's bid to look and act a bit more like Facebook--brand pages, tab menus, simpler designs, timelines on the right and enhanced profiles --will juice growth more. For good measure, Twitter launched two … Read more

After reading through Walter Isaacson's new biography of Steve Jobs, any technology lover is left with myriad regrets. Here's another: Too bad Jobs never got a chance to design Twitter.

Twitter has been a smash success almost from the moment it hit the transom in 2006. Moving beyond the circle of early adopters into the mainstream, it fast became an indispensable tool of communication, and in North Africa, a handmaiden for revolution. But that doesn't mean it was elegantly laid out or easy to understand. Anything but.

Maybe one of the founders was born under a lucky … Read more

Google's site facelift isn't finished yet.

After rolling out redesigned Gmail and Reader interfaces, the search giant announced in a company blog post today that it has turned its attention to its search bar.

"It's time to unify, simplify and say goodbye to the navigation bar," Google says in a video (see below) introducing its new Google bar.

The horizontal black bar at the top of the page with links to Web, News, and Images--which actually hadn't been around all that long itself--is now history.

Instead, users will now have three tools that will … Read more

The new YouTube design is slowly rolling out to users, but if you aren't the waiting kind, there is a way to enable it right now. … Read more

You know something went wrong with your Web site's redesign when two people who used to work on it publish detailed, scathing assessments.

Google Reader, revamped this week, falls into that category. Google gave the RSS site the new red-and-black look that's sprouting at Gmail and elsewhere and, deeper down, changed the mechanics of how people can share posts they're interested in.

Former Google Reader product manager Brian Shih took Google to task for a monochromatic user interface (UI) that squanders too much screen space on a header bar and for making it harder to share posts: &… Read more

It's a pretty old story. At some point, when your team is up by 20 or 30 points headed into the fourth quarter, a little complacency sets in. You get cocky, thinking you've got it in the bag. You bench your starters and let the new guys with the big ideas start trying out some new things. You start tinkering with the formula, running some new plays, maybe even showing off a little.

And that's exactly how you end up in the losing column of the greatest comebacks of all time wrapups that will inevitably include the … Read more

Facebook users were searching for a "dislike" button to express their annoyance with the social network's revamped news feed.

Facebook today rolled out a new version of its news feed, which breaks up top stores and recent posts into separate columns and adds a new ticker-like column with live updates from friends. It's an effort by the social network to further emulate Twitter's real-time messages and updates.

But the changes have drawn a wave of complaints as people took to social networks--including Facebook--to express their annoyance, with many complaining about the clutter and confusion of … Read more

Amazon.com gets a redesign, Toshiba releases what it calls the world's thinnest laptop, and iPhone 5 rumors heat up with employees at Best Buy and Apple stores leaking release information.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded: