Apologies to anyone who has attempted a password reset in the last week or so. That, along with emails for friend requests and article recommendations weren't going out. Everything is sorted now, so fire away!

As I'm sure regular Gritwire users have noticed, we look a lot different. The home page of our main site, www.gritwire.com, now includes a list of what our users think is the most worth reading on the Web. How is that determined? Check out the page on how we rate.

The original version of Gritwire, which we have been calling the WebTop, is now available at webtop.gritwire.com. We're planning to put out more concepts and cool toys, so we now have a Gritwire Labs Page to keep you posted on what we're up to.

The new version of Gritwire, available at my.gritwire.com, focuses more on the SpeedFeed Reader, and also on space efficiency. Several people had commented that the bottom toolbar took up a lot of room, so we've knocked that out of this version. Definitely looking for feedback, because as you see, we listen.

Features, features, and more features. I encourage you to explore www.gritwire.com and my.gritwire.com to find what's new and interesting. I'll post more about the new features, such as the user gritlists (here's my gritlist), in the coming days.

Thanks to Frank Gruber for his review of Gritwire in his TechCrunch post, The State of Online Feed Readers. I spoke with Frank earlier this week, running through the various features offered by Gritwire. He didn't mention where the post would land, just that it wasn't going to be on his Somewhat Frank blog.

As happens with a TechCrunch mention, there's been a flurry of signups and postings. I really appreciated this post from a new Gritwire user.

Thought I'd throw up a couple tips today for power users.

1. A quick way to maximize a widget or return a maximized widget to its standard size is to double click the header bar.
2. Double click on any story in the SpeedFeed Reader to pop open a new browser window with the full story.

We've got some fun new features brewing. Please keep the suggestions coming for things you'd like to see!

Continuing through the list...

New Feature: Folder and SpeedFeed Ordering

This feature was built into both the SpeedFeed reader and the QuickLinks widget. One thing people had asked us for on several occassions was the ability to order their folders, feeds, and quicklinks. That is now possible just by dragging and dropping on the main interface.

At the moment there's one small bug, but there's a workaround. If you try to drag something to the top of the list, it'll give you an "x" signaling it's not a place you're allowed to drop the item. However, if you just drop it in the second place down, you can then drag the top item below it. Yes, it's not perfect, but it gets the job done.

Apologies on the continuing weather issue. We're debating the merits of two possible solutions and still haven't made much headway on actually implementing either of them...

New Feature: Gritwire Recommends...

If you've seen the WebTop, you've seen our "Gritwire Recommends..." folders. There are recommended SpeedFeeds and recommended QuickLinks seen both when you first get to the site and after you have logged in. There were three reasons we added these.

1. We wanted to show some of our wares to those of you who have not yet signed up. However, it really didn't make any sense to show you empty SpeedFeed Reader and QuickLinks widgets. Recommendations give you something to play with to get the flavor of what we're up to.
2. There are still a lot of people who don't understand what this whole syndicated content thing is about. RSS, what? Podcasts, what? By giving some starter info we're hoping that those peole will find the site useful even without understand that it can be customized.
3. Lastly, there are more random and interesting sources of information out there than you or I or any one person knows. We'd like to use the recommends feature to keep you up to date on what's fresh.