I was just surfing on Techcrunch and in one of the comments there was a link with the new design for My MSN - Microsoft’s version for Netvibes, iGoogle, My Yahoo! and my favorite Feedly. Oh, I must mention that the post was regarding My Yahoo! small retouching session.

So, I followed the link and discovered that Microsoft is working to improve My MSN image. As I was telling you several months ago, Microsoft is going through a big redesign process.
Back to My MSN. This service is not on everybody’s favorite list. That is because MSN is not exactly a trend setter or innovator. Regarding the new design, a big annoying thing pops into my eyes: GLOSSY buttons. C’mon guys, admit that Vista was not a big hit and go on. I mean, every mature designer will tell you that glossy is history.
But, beside that, the overall look is OK, not far from the existing one. It has more spacing and obviously more options. The response time is a little bit bigger than Netvibes and My Yahoo but it might be my connection. I really like the big and spacious header. It is quite clean and I’ve seen it used in many designs. Big headers are now not a problem but a solution in creating a good user experience.

Some recommendations
In the end I would say that the buttons can have a simple style, the white background behind the content should be changeable, the text in some content boxes should have a proper typography.

I think that the final product should be more polished but, it is a good move.

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A year ago, I was the proud user of Netvibes services. I had a custom page with different RSS feeds and interesting information at that time. Well, after several months, I was already bored with those services. And instead of using Netvibes, I was visiting all the information I needed individually. Up until I’ve discovered Feedly.

So what is Feedly?
Feedly is described on their site as: a more social and magazine-like start page for Firefox! And Yes, that is exactly what it is. A good interface with interactive features, presenting you custom information. It has a starting wizard that will populate your start page with feeds from your area of interest. You can add custom feeds, your feeds. But the main feature of this wizard is that it can learn from your existing preferences like My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Netvibes, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Friendfeed - and apply them to your feedly.

It has a clean design with no additional graphic elements. It is simply usable and provides the user with a great user experience. Also the social part is great. You can clip certain information and share it with your friends. Also it has a built in feature that attaches your Twiteer account to Feedly.
You can recommend a post or remove subscription to any website. Also, Feedly is well integrated with Google Reader, so it means that once you added a subscription to Feedly, it is automatically added to Google Reader.

The only drawback that I see at this moment, is that Feedly is restricted to Firefox. But on the other hand it could be an advantage. I don’t know. We will see how the users will embrace this product.

Conclusion
Overall, this product is brilliant. Two thumbs up for the idea and implementation.

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