Neowin.net today released an update to their site called “Finity” or Neowin v5. IMO this is probably one of the better redesigns I’ve seen in a long time. Very sexy!
And if you enjoy the Neowin.net Forums, they have a spiffy iPhone and Windows Mobile version available as well. Yeah, they are that cool. 
Source: Neowin.net
Neowin.net is celebrating their 8th birthday, and as part of the celebration they have released a form skin for Windows Mobile and iPhone users. No change is required on your part, simply load up neowin.net/forum in your mobile device, and it should automatically load the skin for you. There’s even a link at the bottom to view the forums in all of their non-mobile glory.
Source: Neowin.net
Neowin.net turns 8 years old on October 1, 2008 and to celibate they are having a little challenge. If the Neowin forums can reach 8 million posts by 10/01/2008 then they will be selecting one active member and giving them a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate.
Ok, so it may not be the best price to win, but its sure better than buying the OS.
What are the chances of hitting 8 million posts by then? Pretty good. 7 days left, they are already sitting at 7,984,042 total posts. All they need is 2,300 posts per day. Not a hard task if everyone helps out. When the contest was first announced (May 7th) they were sitting at 7,640,544 total posts which means they’ve been averiging 2,471.2 posts per day. See, we should be able to make it no problem!
Just saw an interesting item over on Neowin.net. Stardock has launched a new platform called Impulse. It allows users to assign software (applications, games, utilities, etc) to a single account for easy updating and installation.
I’m in the process of downloading the setup file right now. If you’ve used Steam from Valve, it’s like that, but with a much broader focus.
Source: Neowin.net
Ok, so yesterday I wrote a message about Plurk. I must admit, after playing with it for a couple of days and communicating with my Neowin friends, I’ve become somewhat of an addict. For me, it has been so much better than my short run at Twitter (which I still update via ping.fm).
For those of you that have never used a service like Plurk or Twitter. They are often referred to as mico-blogs, to be honest, I hate that term. Think of it is a semi-live chat/form. You post something, and other people can reply. You can give a status update (i.e. d3bruts1d is off to take a nap), share videos and pictures, or have a conversation. – Unlike forums that are generally geared toward specific topics (Neowin, TR, OCC, etc.), these kinds of service are usually far more open. Allowing you to discuss your favorite foods, beer, movies, tv shows, talk tech, the weather, sports, or whatever floats you boat. And it’s fun, ask just about anyone that is plurking right now.
So, if you aren’t plurking yet. Go ahead and give it a try. Feel free to add ‘d3bruts1d’ to your friends list if you want someone to talk with. 
I was looking at my site’s stats for the past year via Google Analytics, and found some interesting stats. Well, at least they were interesting to me, you might not care one bit about them. :p According to the data reported:
There is a thread over at Neowin.net where a member has asked what were your most disappointing games for the past year. I was surprised to see what other members have listed as their top disappointments. Games topping the list (I’ve not played any of these) so far are Crysis, Need for Speed: Pro Street, Halo 3, and of course Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
A number of people have also listed Assassin’s Creed and Hell Gate: London. I played the HGL demo for a day or two and admit I wasn’t that impressed with the game. Now, AC is a game I’d have to argue against. I loved the game. I’ll admit, it did get a bit repetitive but I loved the story, the plot twist, and the environment.
If you haven’t seen the show Dexter, you need to. It’s fraking great! I first found out about it after seeing this thread on Neowin.net. I’ve been hooked since the first episode, and finished watching the first season on Comcast OnDemand. Oddly enough, there were three episodes that Comcast was missing. Not to worry, I found a way to watch them.
Now, I’m waiting for Season 2 to pick up on Showtime next month. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it!
I’ve updated my list of profiles on the right side. Hopefully it’s a bit more organized now. If you’re on any of the networks, feel free to add me as a friend. I’m most active on Last.fm, Xfire, Neowin, and pownce.
I use to visit a lot of sites each day, and now I don’t. Why? Well, I really don’t have a real reason why. I guess I could chalk it up to being lazy. The fewer sites I have to check, the more time I can spend on them (and the less bookmarks I have to click!).
Digg (http://digg.com)
This is probably my main tech news site these days. I use to be a regular visitor to Slashdot.org, but lets face it news is posted on Digg far faster than on Slashdot. Not to say that /. is a bad site or anything, it’s just that I prefer to see what’s interesting right now, not what was interesting 4 or 5 hours ago. For those of you that enjoy the /. comment flame wars, the Digg comment system is just about the same… though I’ll admit, the recent update to the Digg comment system sucks.
Neowin.net (http://neowin.net)
I’ll admit, I visit here more for the forum than anything. Neowin’s forum is huge as well as highly active. My favorite sections are The Media Room and The Gamer’s Hangout… enjoy a TV show? I can almost guarantee that you’ll find others discussing it. The thread for Heroes (Season 1) had 156 pages and 2,335 replies, while the thread for Lost (Season 3) had 292 pages and 4,371 replies. Now, that’s what I call discussion topics! Sure, there is more to Neowin than games and TV shows… that’s just the sections I spend most of my time in. They’ve got areas devoted to Linux users (I should be there), Windows Users, Mac Users, and even those of you still interested in hardware, modding, and overclocking.
Mashable (http://mashable.com)
I started visiting this site a few months back, but only registered as a member last week. This is probably the best site around for information on Social Networks. To keep things active, they’ll also throw in “popular news” here and there. It’s basically like Techcrunch, but without all the skewed charts and graphs and a little less Web 2.0.
Engadget (http://www.engadget.com)
This is still one of the best places to visit for anyone who enjoys technology. There is a reason that “gadget” is in the name.
iGoogle (http://www.google.com/ig)
Though not a tech news or community website, Google is still important to me… especially the iGoogle. I use Google Bookmarks to manage my bookmarks, this way things are synchronized no matter where I am or what browser I’m using. Firefox at home? Opera at work? Easy access to my bookmarks right from Google. It also give me the ability to monitor my personal (Gmail) email from work. While I cannot access my mail directly, I can still see what mail has come in and from who. With the ability to add various other “gadgets” to my page, I have quick access to weather, news, RSS feeds, and more. Not to mention Google Search. It’s basically my one-stop-shop for everything I need. No wonder it’s my homepage.
There are still a number of other sites I visit on a regular basis (d3bruts1d.com, OperaWatch, FilePlanet, and even MySapce to name a few). Now that I’ve listed my “Top 5″ websites that I visit, which sites would you call your top 5?