Wow - thanks for all of the suggestions, guys! We've done quite a bit of work upgrading Neatorama these past week or so.

First of all: load time by Nick, rianfike, and everybody! By far it's the biggest complaint most people have.

I think we've managed to make Neatorama's posts load faster. For the most part anyhow. I notice that the post content now loads much, much faster on Firefox (not sure about IE).

With one (minor) sacrifice: when a post gets very popular, like when it's dugg, the server will automatically use a memcached version. This means that if you comment, it won't show up for a minute or two.

Neatorama's front page is always cached. This is why there is a lag before author's posts hit the front page.

Re: Neat-O-Meter or Neatness Factor by rianfike and others. This is actually something I had been trying to work on for oh, about a year or so. Haven't gotten very far (obviously!) Neat idea, though.

Re: Title Link to Story by X-Shark. This is hard, because it would require a serious hack into wordpress and altering the way authors write their posts.

Re: Previous and Next Posts. What an excellent idea, DaMamaJama! We used to have something like this on Neatorama, but a few skin upgrades later, we discarded it. Now it's back, with a more simple and direct buttons below the post. For this, you'll get a free Neatorama T-shirt as promised!

Re: indented comments by NiteWhite. This is also hard, plus I actually don't like that commenting format. After a while, it's hard to who's responding to what (like in a long reddit thread).

Actually, I have a full time job - so when I'm busy IRL, Neatorama doesn't get updated as often! I think Neatorama's authors are what's neat about the blog.

Oh, and Neatorama doesn't have employees. It has one slave: me.

Re: quotes in italics. Really? This is surprising to me, since that seems to be the standard of quoting stuff (putting it in blockquotes with italics).

Re: tags. Great idea, MrBinky - Wordpress has tags capability built in, but I just never got in the habit of writing what the tags are! Oh, I promised that I would start and I did ... but a few posts later, I forgot about 'em.

Re: Neatorama Channels. Excellent idea - maybe sometime in the future, as that would require a lot of work :) Specialization into niches is obviously a way to make the blog grow (for instance the Popsugar and its sister blogs) - but that would entail an organization beyond this one guy (me).

Re: Bait cars. I don't know about bait cars, Mike Ross, but bait donuts I really don't like. I always fall for them.

Re: Design by Xultar. Yup - here it is! A little cosmetic upgrade for Neato (while keeping the overall "simple and white" theme).

Re: One long article a day by Adam Freitag. I'm trying to bring more long, exclusive articles (like Neatorama Only, Bathroom Reader, and mental_floss articles). If you guys know any authors who'd like to collaborate, please let me know!

Re: Center justifying the page by Glen. Isn't Neatorama centered? I don't know about justifying the blog. It's beyond any justification!

Re: Target = Blank by SenorMysterioso. This was a big debate I had a while ago, ultimately it lost because that's not the way most websites work. Plus, I don't know if people with older IE browsers (yes, there are still a lot of them) like it when a link spawn a new window.

Also, this would either require a custom hack or force authors to write their post in a new way (putting in the target = blank in the code for their links).

Re: Reader Profile by SW - this is an excellent idea that I have no clue where to begin. We were talking with another company about hooking up a social networking / community to Neatorama, but we couldn't resolve some technical issue regarding the way comments are handled. Maybe in the future ...

Re: Polls by Ali S. I really, really liked polls, but had to stop for a while because the poll plugins we use really taxed the servers to its maximum capacity!

Re: Long post and post size by OddNumber, Video Game Dork and VonSkippy. Hm, well, we can do the "read more inside" kind of deal (it's a built in function in wordpress). It's just I've never remembered to do that! I've never had any problem scrolling down (or hitting page down on the keyboard).

Re: duplication with mentalfloss by Bwest. Really? We don't coordinate or anything like that ... They're an excellent blog with many writers, so they cover a lot of ground.

Hm, yeah, that should read "use his arms and feet", I guess ...

The font used on the header is the same - just a little bit bigger. The font on the sidebar is new (there anyways, it's always been on the bottom).

@Selvo: it's a gentle hint for commenters to be nice. Maybe it'll work subconsciously ....

Just did another round of optimization, this time trying to increase page load. I think we've managed to serve the content up much faster now, with much less "lag" from the ad server.

Funny thing: I can't get my gravatar to work. Must find that bug later ...

Hah! Better than I thought I was going to see! :)

I don't know why you have trouble seeing it, Tim - your browser may need Flash 9 or something like that.

It's a minor upgrade :) Just a lot of subtle color since I like Neatorama to remain with mostly white background.

Description please?

@MoonCake: all that honey can't be good for their wooden studs. I think VonSkippy is right: houses aren't built to be apiaries.

@DaMamaJama: I'd say that all that buzzing activities will keep the house warm!

Should've used a catapult instead.

I thought the photo taken from a creative commons-tagged flickr account? Anyways, I see that it was taken down.

@shecky: Oh, I agree with you. Metafilter is a gem, and the comments there are sometimes better than the front page link.

@stacyj: Good idea! We'll add that to the list for the next time Neatorama gets a redesign :) I've never said that BB copied Neatorama - I think this blog's layout is pretty generic to begin with. I sort of miss the old BB layout though.

Thank you for the pat on the back, guys - truth is, I've always admired Boing Boing for what they did for blogging. It's still one of my daily reads and I continue to be amazed at the stuff they find.

Glad that you guys are okay. I don't usually associate tornados with cities, but according to this page on Wikipedia, there have been many more severe tornados touching down in downtown areas (Like the F5 that hit a few cities in Texas and Nebraska.

I personally like Boing Boing and read them very often. They have a lot of neat stuff and update their blog at a maniacal pace. :)

I think Kenny and Terry are right - beautiful resumes probably work best when applying for jobs that involve creativity like graphic design.

Oh, you guys are awesome! I <3 Neatorama readers! Congrats to Steve #21 who got it right (coal scoop), though I have to say I had wished that it was a medieval pooper scooper.

Say hello to my little friend! I've always wanted to say that. Thanks for the opportunity, jstruan!