It's a big day here at TTLB: Welcome to the new release!

Let's cut right to the chase. Here are just some of the goodies you'll now see around the site:

• Topics, topics, topics: TTLB's topic-tracking functionality has been completely overhauled, and is now focused laserbeam-like on all the most interesting subjects being discussed in the blogosphere. Check the top of the front page for the at-a-glance view, or view the full hot topics page for history graphs on all the latest topics.
• Search: Don't like the topics TTLB is tracking? Use the search function and make your own topic page. If you've signed up for a free account, you can even save your search to your very own 'My Topics' page for future reference.
• Blog Details: The blog details page has been expanded with completely new functionality, including a Metrics tab showing how a blog is doing in terms of traffic and links compared to its historical average (is this a "hot" day or a "cold" day?) and new spiral graphs which show which blogs are linking to the tracked blog --- and which ones it is linking to.
• New Design: With the help of the talented Karl Egenberger, we also have a new look to go with all the new features. Karl enhanced the existing bear logo, added a spiffy (and far more accurate) new portrait of the lovely Lady M, and helped clean up the graphics and styles throughout the site.

While the new release has been in testing for quite some time, there are sure to be glitches, so please bear with me in these first days as we shake them out. In particular, be aware that Ecosystem rankings and link-counts are in flux due to some of the work around the release, but will stabilize back to normal over the next few weeks. (So no "why did my ranking drop???" queries for at least a little while, please.)

Much effort has gone into this launch, and so I'd definitely welcome feedback, comments, and suggestions. Take a look around, get to know the new look, and please --- let me know what you think!

Best...

N.Z. Bear

Update 8:28pm PDT: Ah, nothing like an Instalanche to provide some nice performance/load testing! One feature --- the spiral Inbound/Outbound links graphs on the blog details pages --- appears to be causing performance problems. I've disabled it for now whilie I work on a fix...