overhauls

Apple is planning one of the biggest overhauls of its iTunes music store since its launch nearly a decade ago, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.

The revamp will increase integration with the company's iCloud storage service, allowing for greater access to stored content such as music, videos, and apps on mobile devices, these sources said. Apple is also planning to launch new features for music sharing with the new store, which is expected to be unveiled before the end of the year.

CNET has contacted Apple for comment and will update this report when we learn … Read more

Apple's trio of digital storefronts are getting a visual overhaul soon, according to a new rumor.

Citing anonymous sources, Apple blog 9to5Mac said today that the iTunes Store, the App Store, and the iBookstore are getting visual overhauls that will bring "more interactivity." What that actually entails is unclear.

The report adds that the change will also add more social features to store pages. Presumably this would go beyond the current "tell a friend" option that lets you send a quick detail page about the app to someone else by e-mail. 9to5Mac suggests Apple will … Read more

It's been two weeks since Google embarked on its biggest overhaul since its inception and...so far so good.

The Internet giant said it has had a clear increase in search activity over the past couple of weeks, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Early indications are that people are interacting with it more, learning about more things...and doing more [search] queries," top Google search executive Amit Singhal told the Journal in an interview. "It's stoking people's curiosity."

Google spokesman Jason Freidenfelds also told the Journal that more people are doing more … Read more

Carol Bartz is out at Yahoo and the stock is up, which has got to hurt. They're still raking in the cash, but shareholders hate nothing more than a plateau. Plus, Netflix swears that at least this time, its jerk move (restricting users to only one stream at a time) was a total accident, and they're definitely not doing that. Promise. Plus, Groupon's IPO roadshow is off and the IPO itself may be off for good, and the Droid Bionic has finally arrived. Hooray!

As an Evernote user on several platforms (Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, Android, Web), I've always felt as if the software has had a Jekyll-and-Hyde divide between its offering on the Mac and PC. The Mac version ran better, and had a more consistent interface, while the PC version looked and ran like it had been pieced together out of spare parts.

Luckily, that's about to change.

Evernote is set to release a new version of its note-taking and Web-clipping Windows software this morning that improves speed, looks, and functionality. In short, it leapfrogs the old version, and then … Read more

It may be a little too early to do a roundup of the best redesigns of 2008 like we did last year, but with Thursday's one-two punch of new looks for social sites Twitter and FriendFeed, it's a good chance to take a look back at some of this year's redesigns and talk about what was changed or fixed.

I've picked 10 of my favorites below, listed in no particular order. See also the honorable mentions section at the bottom of the post, which includes content sites or other places that didn't quite make the cut.

1. Twitter

Twitter's redesign was a twofold change: one part to simplify the interface, and another to reduce the resources needed to host the site. Now when users hop between various functions it doesn't reload the entire page, meaning a faster experience and less data to serve.

The most interesting part of the redesign is actually something we don't know about. The tabbed interface on the right was apparently set in place to make room for additional features as they become available. It could be the new things from Twitter itself, or the foundation for special developer-created applications users will be able to use without leaving the service.

2. Facebook

The "new" Facebook was one of the most drastic changes of any site this year. Like Twitter, tabs took center stage, as did the chat which shares screen real estate with what's essentially the "start" button on Windows. This new menu let users launch networked applications from any page they're on. The change also embraced widescreen displays, making use of the extra room to let users build out the experience horizontally instead of having to scroll up and down.

You can read more about it, and the user backlash, here.

Continue reading the rest of this article after the jump.… Read more

Correction: I updated the blog to correct a misspelling of Don MacAskill's name.

SmugMug, a site popular among photography aficionados, has been retooled with a more adaptable interface and overhauled video-sharing technology.

The new interface, which the Mountain View, Calif.-based company calls SmugMungous, automatically displays one of nine different sizes of a photo on the screen, with a patch of thumbnails of related images to the left side. The reason for the SmugMungous name: the largest of these images is 1600x1200 pixels, enough to fill up very large monitors.

In addition, the new site comes with an iTunes … Read more