Dark Reading Gets a Facelift

12:20 PM -- OK, at a little more than a year old, Dark Reading is young for a facelift. We considered phrases like "botox surgery" or "performance enhancement," but they didn't seem quite right, either. Anyway, you get the idea.

If Dark Reading looks a little different to you lately, don't worry -- your eyes aren't going. In recent weeks, we've put in some new features, and fixed some old ones, in an effort to make our site more useful and interesting to you.

One of the biggest and most obvious additions is the addition of a YouTube-style video player, which you'll find at the top right of our home page. This player, which now runs natively on our site, currently features nine new video interviews of top security researchers and experts conducted at the Black Hat conference last month.

We're excited to bring you video of these industry figures, some of whom are seldom seen beyond their anonymous computer handles on the Web. If you have any trouble using the new player, or if you prefer the old Dark Reading TV player, you'll find these same videos are also available to you lower on the home page (and on secondary pages) via DRTV.

This week, we've also added a new feature, "Keyhole," which you'll find on the top left of the home page, right next to the News Analyses. Keyhole is the place where you'll find some of our more offbeat items -- funny stories, interesting facts, early news developments, and other material that might not be quite ready for prime time. We hope it will give you a peek at some amusing and interesting bits of security news, and maybe give you something to talk about while you're waiting for everybody else to show up at the next staff meeting.

We've consolidated two previously separate features, Best of the Web and News From Other CMP Sites, into one single compendium of news and information from around the Internet. We hope this will make it easier for you to find the most interesting security stories on the Web, whether they come from regional newspapers, Dark Reading's rival trade publications, or our sister sites here at CMP Technology. Our goal is to give you a single place to find the latest breaking security news -- no matter where it comes from.

We've made some more subtle changes as well. For example, if you subscribe to our daily newsletter, you'll notice that you're now receiving it at around 10 a.m. Eastern time, rather than 6 p.m. This means you'll get your security news earlier in the day, when you can really use it, instead of at the end of the day, when you're ready to head for home.

We're also trying to stimulate more discussion on our message boards. If you look at the most recent postings, you'll see comments posted by some of our top bloggers and columnists, including RSnake, Cigital's Gary McGraw, and John Sawyer from the University of Florida. We hope the participation of industry experts such as these will make the message boards more useful as a means of asking questions or starting discussions about security issues that are important to you. Try posting a message and see how the conversation goes.

These are just some of the new features we've put in place recently in an effort to make Dark Reading a more useful and entertaining place to visit. In future days, you'll see even more updates and changes, including exclusive coverage of this year's FBI/Computer Security Institute research, which is scheduled for publication in the coming weeks.

We want to make Dark Reading a better site. As always, we invite you to submit suggestions, ideas, and news tips to us at any time, either through the message boards, through our "feedback" email system, or directly via [email protected]. Let us know what you like about what we're doing, and what you don't.

Even a young face can use a lift once in a while.

— Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading