Facebook launched a redesign of the profile pages, the new design looks clean and clutter free. The new interface is live for some users, if you don’t see the new interface you can access at new.facebook.com

The biggest change is the content stream combining status updates, wall posts and news feed items. Applications are pushed from the front page, they can be accessed from the right sidebar or there is a tab on the navigation bar from there you can access your applications. The profile pages looks similar to friendfeed content stream and on top there is message box to post your status message, the box seems to be inspired from Twitter. More at Inside Facebook, All Facebook

Overall the redesign looks clean and easy to navigate. What do you think?

Livestation is a Microsoft backed startup that provides streaming TV channels for free on the internet. Initially they stared their private beta focusing on news channels, at the time of the launch the listed channels are BBC World, BBC World Service, Al Jazeera (English), Bloomberg, Euro News (English & French), France 24 (English, France), i>Télé, Sky News and BBC Radio 4. These channels may differ for you based on your location.

News channels are great but that is not enough to please everyone, Livestation realized the fact and offered its users a way to watch their other favorite channels using Livestation player. Users can add any channel they want to watch to Livestation, you need to know the MMS stream of the channel. If you know the channel stream you can add the channel, you can decide whether you want others to watch this channel or not.
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Flock is a social browser based on Mozilla Firefox engine. Flock 2 beta two released now, this version is based on Firefox 3 and Flock 1 beta 1 is based on Firefox 3 beta.

The new version has all the great features of Firefox 3 and the Flocks social features. If you are already using Flock beta 1 then you can upgrade to this version. Remember this is a beta version so backup your profile, bookmarks etc. via Mozilla Links

Wordpress official theme directory stopped accepting new themes long back and it is almost dead. Today they re opened the directory at Wordpress extend, plugins directory is also located here.

Matt promised a theme marketplace in November 2007 but that never been released and there is no news on the progress of the project so far. Now atleast they have opened the theme directory which is beneficial to both theme developers and users.
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Google Operating System is reporting that Gmail and Google calendar may get offline access using Gears technology. Google reader and Google docs already support offline access using Google gears. According to Andrew Fogg who saw the a preview of the integration we may get offline support for these two apps in 6 weeks.

If we reall y receive offline access to gmail and google calendar that would be a nice feature. GOS also notes that Google will add SyncML support for Gmail contacts. SyncML is a standard for data synchronization supported by a lot of companies. “SyncML is most commonly thought of as a method to synchronize contact and calendar information between some type of handheld device and a computer (personal, or network-based service), such as between a mobile phone and a personal computer.”

Google Docs became more useful with the new templates. Seriously with out templates it is hard for users to start, a blank template is un usable at times. The new templates are available for Google Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations.

The templates organized in categories from Albums & Flipbooks, to Business templates. These form a starting point to your presentation or doc, you can edit these templates for your needs. These come with preset text and designs, a total of 309 templates are available at this moment to use.
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Marshall had a nice post on Readwriteweb where he discusses about people entering URL’s in the search bar rather than in the address bar of the browser.

Google’s search share is growing like a weed, Latest Hitwise search market share data for June shows that users are entering URL’s and domain names with out extensions in the search bar.
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Today .Me domain registrations are opened for general public at 11am ET and GoDaddy is one of the registrar. GoDaddy totally screwed up the domain registrations, i myself got the confirmation for 2 domains and after 1 hour received a mail saying the domains were not registered.

Dear Ram Reddy,

The following domain name has failed to be registered:
RAM.ME
Error: RAM.ME: cannot register - already registered
We will evaluate this error and retry the registration if appropriate.
If we are unable to successfully register the domain name, your account will be credited accordingly. Please allow one business day for the refund to be processed.
Please contact GoDaddy.com, Inc. if you need any further
assistance:
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/support.asp?prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=gdbb14
Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com, Inc.

Lot of people experienced the same thing and some domain names were confirmed for more than 10 users. GoDaddy didn’t prepare for the rush and totally messed up with the registrations. GoDaddy calls themselves the #1 domain registrations but totally failed to handle the rush, the funny thing is they are also a hosting company and their servers couldn’t handle the traffic.