BallinEurope is changing – but only slightly. After a long period of static design and linkage, BiE finally managed to find some time to add a few tweaks that will hopefully augment the whole reader-experience, social-networking thing.
First, a bit of sad news for some. The image-based logo featuring cartoon Ramunas Siskauskas tipping off against the guy we’ve informally called “Pau”, created back in 2008 by Matt Dyck, will most likely be retired from prominent use on the BallinEurope website. This has less to do with a tobacco-puffing European feeling outdated – Hey, when a country like Hungary bans public smoking, you know the Continent is seriously ciggie-free, this writer excepted – but more to do with the pragmatic issue of download times. This site’s technical consultant (BiE thinks of him as “Merlin the magician”) suggests that loading BallinEurope pages would become noticeably faster with what is, unfortunately, a rather “heavy” background.
On the plus side, Ramunas and Pau will live on in retro form and will continue to appear in virtual locations like Facebook, Twitter, et al. BallinEurope also plans a public vote among candidates for the new logo: Look for your chance to weigh in within a week or two.
The slickest update – just implemented today – is the tickertape feature running across the top of the front page. The past ten stories run on BallinEurope.com will appear in the ‘tape, thereby requiring no scrollage to check out articles from earlier in the “news cycle.”
BiE’s blogroll has also been cleaned up, and we ask readers to please note (and give a look-see to) a couple of quality ‘sites within the blogosphere, namely Dancing with Noah, a sporadically updated Joakim-centric webpage, and Hickory High, your spot for “basketball numerica and estorica since 2010.” And in the spirit of the Academy Awards, our “resources” section now includes links to a handy method for viewing Netflix in Europe and the official website of BiE cinematic obsession Who Shot Mamba?
We hope you like our tweaks and, as always, comments and criticisms are welcome!
