abirdtold.me

Back in 2007, we wrote about a plan to add different colors to various WikipediaWikipedia edits, signifying the level of their trustworthiness. It’s easier to trust editors with a high number of entries and revisions than those who are new to the site, and now registered users will be able to easily discern between the two by looking at the color of the text’s background. If an untrusted source adds text to Wikipedia, it will have a bright orange background; text from trusted editors will be lighter. The background color will change over time; as more people view and edit the new entry, its background will slowly change color to white, signifying that it is getting more and more trustworthy. This feature, called WikiTrust, will be available for registered Wikipedia users…
Read on at mashable.com

Late last month, one of our readers caught something interesting: a redesign of YouTubeYouTube. It boasted a new masthead, a trim and streamline interface, and new navigation. However, only a few users could see it at the time. Now that redesign is going live for all users. If you take a look at YouTube.com, you will see the new interface for yourself. YouTube has also blogged about the redesign, explaining some of the new features and a few that were removed. Click here for a screenshot. Read on at mashable.com

GoogleGoogle is clearly enamored with the netbook space. We already know that it’s serving as an entry point for the new Chrome OS, but Google isn’t just going to sit around and wait for that, it’s starting to optimize its experience for netbooks already. Tonight, Google has just released a small new feature in Gmail Labs so that users can optimize their email service for viewing on netbooks. It’s a small, but noteworthy setting as netbooks have become popular, yet most still run sites just as full-sized laptops would. GmailGmail’s engineers apparently had a problem with that, so they launched the new “Remove Labels from Subjects” feature… Read on at TechCrunch.com

YouTubeYouTube may be testing changes to its navigation design, according to reader Eric Calouro. While visiting the site’s homepage today, he grabbed a screenshot of a previously unseen design that puts a large search box at the top of the page, removes the “Broadcast Yourself” tagline and de-emphasizes all menu items. In other words: the site looks increasingly like a video search engine. However, the change has not been rolled out to all users: Eric’s is the only report we have so far, seen in Google ChromeGoogle Chrome on the PC – in FirefoxFirefox, he sees the old design… Read on at Mashable.com

TwitterTwitter now has a brand spankin’ new homepage. Of course, if you’re a regular Twitter user, you’re rarely going to see it because you’re already logged in. But for the 5 billion+ people Twitter has yet to convert, it provides the company’s big chance to get them to sign up and stay on their website. So what’s Twitter’s big ace-in-the-hole? Well, just look at what the company puts in your face when you arrive: trending topics. Not just 8 or 10 topics, but 23 topics that represent the collective discussion of the entire world. Twitter’s no longer about updating your friends, but about being THE place for global events… Read on at Mashable.com

TwitterTwitter just announced its new home page redesign complete with trending topics and search. Publicly launched at the 2006 South by South West interactive festival, users first flocked to the site as a way to communicate with friends and festival attendees. However, as we’ve seen in the past few years, the site has evolved into a multifaceted real-time tool. The community has given timely updates on earthquakes, the IranIran election and we’ve even seen professional poker players bluff in real-time Tweets. Twitter has evolved into a community where users can discover breaking news and trends and the new home page certainly matches that… Read on at ReadWriteWeb.com

Yahoo, the often-forgotten web behemoth, has been hammered by bad news, bad decisions, and shrinking market share. Last year Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo for a hefty premium, but co-founder and then-CEO Jerry Yang did everything he could to kill the deal. The result? Yahoo tanked, Jerry Yang was ousted, and Carol Bartz was hired to bring Yahoo back to prominence. One of the biggest pieces of the Yahoo reinvention has been the much fabled Yahoo redesign… Read on at Mashabe.com