I’ve add a new location in the navigation in the header and a banner to make sure you can easily get to the page.

Build kicks off next Tuesday and I can’t wait.

You can expect me to post lots of Metro news on the site, stuff that doesn’t really belong on here, and with Microsoft expected to announce a lot of Metro designed “stuff” at BUILD I think I might be quite busy with the site. Let me know what you think about the relaunched site (and keep an eye out for any pesky bugs).

The best way for me to make money would be to whack ads all over the place but as you probably know I am quite a fan of the Metro UI and the ads just wont work with the site design. Equally if I was to put ads on the site I wouldn’t want them to be for companies and businesses I nor my readers had never heard of and in fact I would want to help the community with which I blog about.

Therefore I was wondering about allowing websites with a keen focus or app developers for various Microsoft platforms to place an icon on the site. I am wondering about small icons beside posts and larger icons at the bottom of the page. For the time being I am calling this idea “affiliates”, it might not be the right term but I’m not sure what else to call it.

The small icons would be like the icons in the app list on Windows Phone so could be any colour with the name of the app or website sitting beside the icon.

For the larger icons at the bottom of the site I am thinking that they should be like the Live Tiles found on the start screen of Windows Phone. Therefore the name of the website or app will appear in the bottom left with its icon above. The background of the tile will come from the category of the post, so in the above image the article would have been related to Xbox.

I am very keen to find out what the readers of my site think about this idea, do you think I could do this in a better way? I am also interested to know if there is even a market for this kind of advertising, would you be interested in advertising on my site? Please let me know in the comments below, through Twitter or email me (using the “Send me a tip” button at the bottom or top of the page).

Thanks everyone for reading and I look forward to your feedback about this.

What is even more interesting (I think) is that I said that Windows Phone needed a different logo about this time last year. My idea for a logo was square but with a phone symbol and not the windows symbol, my idea is actually very like the new design.

This new icon looks great and makes more sense than the round logo for the Metro designed OS. Whilst on the subject of Metro I thought I would share with you some new wallpapers I have made.

There are 4 different wallpapers which you can download from DeviantArt. I hope you like them. I have an idea for another metro wallpaper too…

I imagine the next 4 weeks will be quite interesting with probably more leaks and news about Windows 8 and probably Windows Phone Mango. I also wouldn’t surprised if there are more minor updates to Windows Live and Bing; perhaps we will even see Bing in all its HTML5 glory.

I plan to update a blog about the the Eurotrip and for those of you on Twitter, I might occasionally tweet about it. See you all in a month’s time.

Others have had some good ideas too; Liveside speculate whether at some point in the future Microsoft could sell Windows Phone direct to customers without the need for carriers with Skype used to make phone calls over a future version of Wi-Fi. Its an interesting thought and as I understand it true 4G networks should allow devices to use IP addresses rather than SIM cards so customers wouldn’t need to go through carriers at all. Windows Phone should certainly benefit from this deal.

An idea dawned on me when writing this post, both Facebook and Microsoft would not have wanted to see Google purchase Skype however Facebook was in no position to challenge any acquisition offer Google might have offered. I wonder, and this is quite unlikely, that Facebook might have encouraged Microsoft to make the offer to Skype. Facebook will likely benefit from Microsoft’s ownership of Skype as Microsoft is an investor of Facebook which makes me wonder if Facebook have offered something to Microsoft in return.

What are your thoughts on the acquisition? Can you think of any other Microsoft products that Skype could be integrated into? Let me know.

The below is an official infographic courtesy of Microsoft; it certainly shows that Microsoft does have quite an impact and influence in the consumer markets.

I am now on the hunt for some more official Microsoft infographics, I do have a soft spot for them.

Its quite obviously Metro but I’ve tried to make it the best blog theme, some Metro blog themes I have seen don’t really suit websites. Metro is not all about the font used or right angles but also about colour. After all Metro was inspired by the world’s metro networks and they use colour coordination for various routes available and so the new design will use colour to identify the different categories (generally they will be Microsoft products).

The homepage will have 2 new sections, news and features, where articles will appear as icons. I have tried to emulate the Zune PC Software’s quickplay section for this. The homepage will also only see excerpts from articles rather than the whole article, I think they take up too much room and slows down people trying to find a specific article, I know it has done for me.

There will be a new footer with three lists, popular posts, new posts and new comments. I think that with the current minimalism of MML is that a lot of the content I write is missed because there aren’t many ways to explore other content. Below this will be sites I recommend, generally they will be similar Microsoft bloggers to myself. Then there is an area for some social media options and finally will be buttons to go to the respective category pages to see the latest news.

Please let me know what you think. Do you like the design or not? What things do you think could be changed with the design?

First up is an interesting design for the Steam client. It takes some of the best bits of the Dorardo client (Zune PC Software) with a quickplay like interface showing favourited games, recently played, etc. This was created by prototype03 but sadly isn’t available as a skin for Steam. However, as someone points out in the comments, this would make an excellent UI for the Games For Windows LIVE client.

Next up is an idea for tweaking the “music and video” hub on Windows Phone 7 to make better use of the space on the screen. This was designed by Bonkietje (I encourage you to check out his profile, he has some other great concepts) and he asked “do we need a music and videos title? The menu tells you straight away where you are.” A valid question really. He also says that in this design the “now playing” icon will move as the user scrolls through “history” and “latest” songs.

And now for perhaps my favourite Metro inspired concept I have yet seen; a Zune version of Media Center. This is a stunning design which seems to combine the latest interface of the Xbox with Zune and Media Center. This was again created by Bonkietje and I think it best that you just look at the image rather than me explain it.

Should we hope that “Windows Live Player” will look something like this?

And finally something very exciting I have discovered…Metro clothing! Halfingr is the person behind these and there’s a selection of male and female t-shirts or hoodies in black and white. When I next have some money I am going to be very tempted to get myself one of these. There are also bumper stickers, a mug and a tie. You can see the Metro items here.

So what do you think of these Metro inspired designs? Do you know of other Metro concepts that I should be aware of?