Ok, so in case you didn’t get the newsletter or you missed it in the discussions section of BC I thought I would fill you guys in on the BIG IDEA CHALLENGE we have going on right now. To sum up the whole thing as simply as possible, send us an idea for a new feature or service. We will pick our favorite and award that person $2,500 dollars.  What we are looking for are ways to make BlogCatalog even better from adding a new widget or service, to an idea on how to drive more traffic to users blogs.

I have already seen a whole lot of entires  pouring in; most are great, some are interesting, and a couple are just plain hilarious! Seriously folks, all it takes is an email and as far as I know there is no limit as to how many emails/ideas you can send in before the deadline. It only takes 1 good idea to win so if you think of something between now and sunday email us at webmaster@blogcatalog.com

Here is the breakdown straight from Tony on the discussions thread a few days ago: 

The First Prize has been increased to $2,500.

Winners will be announced before September 30th, 2007

Unfortunately we recenly suffered some data loss on our server. We had to roll back most of the data to our June 25th backup. We were able to rescue the blog data and user information as well as some discussions up to July 6th 4PM CST.

If you created your account or submitted a blog after July 6th, you may need to repeat the process.

We are really sorry for the inconvenience and hassles this has caused you. We are working on a new server and should have it running by week end. This should prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.

In the mean time, we hope this hasn’t cause you too many problems. Please post any issues you are having on here or email them to webmaster@blogcatalog.com.

If you’d like to know more please check out the discussion at: http://www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/blogcatalog-data-loss

Thanks for all your support and patience!

BlogCatalog is proud to present the new BlogCatalog.com. We have made hundreds of changes to the site to make it much more user friendly.
Some of the more dominant updates include:

* Complete Visual Redesign - We have finally shed our dated look for a much cleaner interface.

* Shout-to-Shout - get a better picture of your shoutbox conversations.

* BlogCatalog Broadcasts - Send Mass Messages to your followers with our new Broadcast tool
http://www.blogcatalog.com/broadcast

* Special features for our supporters - Get frequent thumbshot updates, access to beta features and much more when you help support BlogCatalog
http://www.blogcatalog.com/account.donate.php

* BlogCatalog Help - We’ve created a new Help page to assist new BlogCatalog members make sense of everything
http://www.blogcatalog.com/help

* UTF8 encoding - With blogs in dozens of languages we’ve updated our encoding to a much more friendly UTF8

and tons more….

So let us know what you think! love it? hate it? anything! We thrive for your feedback.

We chose organ donation because it is a gift of life. So on July 18, let’s all come together again and raise awareness about organ donation and the good it can do. Why organ donation? In Australia, more than 1,700 people are waiting for organ transplants. In Latin America, more than 50,000. In Europe and the United States, more than 170,000. In China, more than 2 million. In Africa, there isn’t enough organization to really know. Without an organ transplant, these people will die.
We’re doing everything we can to help you blog about organ donation. Here is a link to the bulletin board http://www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/blogcatalog-organ-donor-awareness-challenge with resources in the United States and around the world. You can also visit Transplant Success (http://www.transplantsuccess.org/) to find dozens of success stories.

To participate, on Wednesday, July 18, write a blog post asking all your readers to sign up as a donor. Your post should:

Have the title “BlogCatalog Community Organ Donation Awareness Campaign” (or some variation).
Explain the importance of organ donation and how it is a gift of life.
Link to one (or all three) of the sites we’ve listed or the most suitable site for your country.
And add a link to our BlogCatalog Community Organ Donation Awareness Campaign page so we can give you and your blog credit for being part of it.
If you have any questions, please e-mail tony@blogcatalog.com. We will also be posting some ideas that you can use to tell your story about how organ donation is a gift of life! And please, don’t forget to tell your friends to blog about this too. Together, I know we can raise awareness and prove bloggers can do good!

Happy Blogging,
Your BlogCatalog Team