Webware

MTV.com announced a new homepage design Tuesday that focuses more on content, rather than aesthetic changes. It will launch Wednesday morning.

MTV.com's basic color scheme will remain the same. The navigation at the top of the site will also remain unchanged. Even the prominent promotional box toward the top of the page, which MTV calls "The Marquee," will maintain its position on the new home page.

Not much has changed from the current page.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

The biggest change made to MTV.com comes in the form of a new module, called The Daily Fresh. Placed just below The Marquee, The Daily Fresh will feature content MTV grabs from both its own pages and third-party sites.

The Daily Fresh is basically a news feed. As MTV.com's editorial staff creates more content, the best stories will be hand-picked by MTV editors and placed in the feed. Those same editors will also place user-generated content that relates to one of the company's television shows, music videos, or news stories into the module. To accommodate those site visitors who want content outside of what MTV provides, The Daily Fresh will feature articles or videos its editors find from other sites across the Web. Eventually, MTV.com plans to feature a "submit" link to give site owners the opportunity to have their content featured on the music site.

The Daily Fresh underscores what is a slightly modified strategy for MTV. Instead of being a place for visitors to check out music news and the latest music videos, MTV wants to make MTV.com a hub for all the other online content MTV Networks offers on sites like VH1.com and MTVU.com. To do so, MTV.com will now syndicate some of the better content from its sister sites to the home page.

MTV also wants to give users a voice. To do so, it has partnered with a video technology firm called Innovid. Through its partnership with Innovid, MTV is allowing users to tag specific moments in videos, write a comment about the moment, and share that with friends on Facebook and Twitter. Those comments are also featured in the video's timeline. So far, the feature has been rolled out in a few videos on the site, but the company hopes to make it available on every video the site offers in the near future.

Although MTV wouldn't divulge exactly how it plans to "create more innovative ads"--a key component in its strategy for quite some time--it did say that it plans to hold a special advertising event on September 9 to celebrate the release of The Beatles: Rock Band on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii.

The new site, complete with The Daily Fresh

(Credit: MTV Networks)

When visitors get to MTV.com on September 9, they will see an ad that will display exclusive, unreleased content from the game. MTV said that the ad will feature seven "touch points" that visitors can click on. When they do, they will see in-game videos, sneak peeks of gameplay elements, and other features it wouldn't disclose.

MTV plans to offer Facebook Connect support at some point in the future, but it wouldn't say exactly when. Based on how the company's executives were talking, though, I'd expect to see it sooner rather than later.

Although I didn't have the chance to demo the new home page, it looks like an iterative update. The top half of the site has barely changed, while the bottom half features a few new modules that some users might find useful. If they don't find them useful, MTV said that it's willing to change. According to the company's execs, the update is experimental and it plans to modify the site's design based on usage patterns.

With its new home page, MTV wants to become one of the many sites Web surfers visit every day. It wants to be a media hub for entertainment. It's certainly possible. But whether visitors will respond well to the site's few changes when it launches Wednesday morning remains to be seen.

Up until this weekend I hadn't really been too excited about seeing the upcoming Simpsons feature-length movie. That was until I laid my eyes on the film's Web site.

Like most other movie marketing sites out there, it's full of a lot of Flash with bouncy navigation and a nearly unbearable amount of sound effects. There are the usual mini-games (both of which I might add are quite enjoyable), and links to the movie's MySpace profile (it is Fox, after all). The real gem however, is the Simpsons avatar builder--a piece-by-piece character maker that lets people create their own Simpsons-esque persona right down to nose shape and facial hair coloring.

I've played with two other high-profile avatar creators before, one emulating Nintendo's Mii maker, and another that lets you make your own Picasso--missing ears and all. The Simpsons version is a little closer to Nintendo's offerings, giving users a wide array of body parts to choose from, along with a color pallet for further customization. There's also a "roll the dice" button that will spit out a randomized character.

When you're finished, you can print your character out to stick on the fridge, or save it for use around the Simpsons Web site. What it's really missing is the option to save it as an image file, IM buddy icon, or as a good size for social-networking profiles--the typical fodder for viral marketing.

Related: 7-Eleven stores turned into Kwik-E-Marts (Flickr photoset)

Design your own Simpsons character piece by piece with this avatar creator.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The BBC's iPlayer will be making it's official, public beta debut July 27 to U.K. residents who are legal TV license holders--a yearly taxation system that pays for TV ownership and usage. The small desktop software client allows users to download and view episodes or entire series of BBC television programming on their PCs.

Lucky U.K. residents will soon get to enjoy the iPlayer on their PCs, and then Macs as well.

(Credit: BBC.co.uk)

In addition to launching the Windows client, the BBC will also be rolling out integration of the iPlayer to the BBC's U.K. site, and later to YouTube. The team behind it is also working on versions of the iPlayer client for Macs and Windows Vista.

The BBC is in talks with Virgin Media to create a set-top box equivalent, akin to a DVR with on-demand capabilities for watching archived programming. It will also be adding the option to subscribe to a series, and to watch shows right away without having to wait for them to finish downloading.

Also, as a tidbit, from this promo video that was uploaded to Vimeo two months ago, it looks like there's also Web interfaces in the works for Nintendo's Wii and Apple's iPhone. File it in the rumor bin for now.

Nintendo Wii owners who have been enjoying their updated Web browser can now enjoy a special version of Google Reader designed exclusively for their Wii remotes and TV screens. Google has made the text a little bigger and changed the interface from a two-pane look to a simple feeds list.

One big change regular Google Reader users are bound to notice is the updated control scheme. To jump between feeds just hit the "1" button, which pulls up a slick looking pop-up with a listing of all your feeds. It's almost an easier system than the one Google currently uses. Also changed are keyboard shortcuts. Google Reader users on the PC are used to 24 shortcuts; Google has simplified things down to 8 to compliment the somewhat limited Wii remote.

To give the Wii version a spin on your computer's Web browser, click here.

[via ZDnet]

To pull up a listing of your feeds, just click the 1 button on your Wiimote.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Here's CNET's very own Rafe Needleman. The beard is a bit off, and his hair isn't nearly as shiny, but the resemblance is striking.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

It's no secret the Nintendo Wii has been doing extremely well as a gaming platform. One of the best things to do out of the box is play around with the Mii channel, a personal avatar creation tool for tailoring every aspect of your virtual persona. It didn't take long for an enterprising developer from Adobe to re-create the same experience online, which has resulted in the Mii Editor.

Mii Editor is a near-perfect recreation of the Nintendo Mii creation tool, right down to the interface. Users can change face shape, hair, eyebrows, eyes, and small details like glasses and facial hair. The entire setup runs in Adobe Flash, so there's no load time or need to refresh when making changes.

When you're done, there are several export options, including social-network friendly JPEG files and a URL permalink to send to friends. While some of the Wii magic is lost doing this with a mouse and a computer screen, making these things is a blast.

Related: Crave: Let it Bii

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(Credit: Opera)

Have you ever wanted to browse the Web on your Wii? Well now you... have been able to do it for a few months. Okay, so the Internet Channel has been available for a while now. That's not really the point. The real news is that Opera has released the final version of the Internet Channel. The browser released in late December was a beta version so Opera could tweak it before releasing the final product.

This final version of the Internet Channel adds several new features to the program. The most notable changes are the addition of a search bar to the browser's starting page and toolbar. You can now choose to search with either Yahoo! or Google, directly from the browser's toolbar. Opera also added a new option in the settings menu to let you choose whether the toolbar is shown, stays invisible, or automatically hides when you're browsing pages. This is a major improvement over the beta's toolbar. Besides these changes, the Internet Channel also got a fair number of smaller tweaks, such as an improved zoom function, a scrolling guide for new users, new interface graphics and sound effects, and even support for multiple pointers. Only one pointer can browse at any time, but you can use your other Wiimotes to point at interesting things on the page you're looking at. Or just to really irritate whoever is doing the browsing.

Just like the beta, the final version of the Internet Channel is free for now. Opera will start charging for the browser on June 30, but if you download it for free before then, it will stay free for as long as you have your Wii. It's not a bad deal, really.

As any avid--and increasingly, non-avid--gamer can tell you, the Nintendo Wii is harder to find than an urban square mile without a Starbucks. Up until recently, I was one of those people vainly rechecking Amazon.com and calling every Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA within a 30-mile radius to see if they had any in stock. It was frustrating, of course, but not for the reasons you may think. Constantly hearing "not in stock" wasn't the problem; rather, it was annoying because the whole process took a lot of work. And this was after I thought I was smart to wait a couple of months after the initial release.

Nintendo Wii Finder Widget

(Credit: Yahoo)

But then I discovered a much lazier, but ultimately more effective, approach when I stumbled across a Yahoo widget from OuttaStock.com. It constantly scans a selection of online stores to see who has them in stock; both the $250 standalone system and the pricier--and totally unnecessary--bundle with all the games that can run more than $600. And yes, these are real stores, not the repackaged systems sold on eBay. I downloaded it last Thursday, February 22, and when I logged onto my computer the next day, it told me Amazon had them in stock. I clicked through immediately, placed my order, and that was it. There was no hassle, no waiting in line, and no running to grab the last box on the shelf. After the five minutes it took me to place my order, the Wiis had already sold out and the Wii finder again went dark. And best of all, even though I chose the slow, free-shipping method, I received my Wii the next business day. If the above method doesn't work, try FindNearby.net, which Rafe Needleman covered last month.

I got a press release about Nintendo's new social democracy channel this morning, but not before I had already noticed it while checking the Wii's weather channel between bites of cereal (yeah I'm that guy). The new channel--called "Everybody Votes"--is a simple yes-or-no voting system with a gorgeous interface. It might be the most colorful and well-designed Wii channel yet.

Everybody Votes allows Wii users to vote on simple questions. It also allows you to suggest your own poll to be featured on the service. The entire voting process is done using your self-created Wii profiles called Miis. Your Mii is your vote, and to cast it you simply need to pick it up (using the remote of course) and drop him or her onto your answer of choice. There's also the option to predict which side of the argument will have the majority, which gets tracked in your Mii's profile. After you've voted on a number of issues, the channel will provide you with more advanced statistics, like how "tuned in" you are, and alternately, how much your vote differs from the popular opinion.

The service is reminiscent of several Web voting platforms (see EasyPoll and Buzzvote), but what really gets me is how much more enjoyable of an experience this is than an actual election in person or by mail. If we could get a system this simple and efficient for state and federal elections, I think most people would prefer remote control voting in their pajamas.

Below is a video overview of the service from YouTube user VOOK64: