Please pardon me if this blog is a little less coherent than what you may (or may not) be used to reading from me.  As I wrote this, we were heading into our 14th hour of work last night in a week that's felt basically non-stop.

But the good news is that if you're reading this now, then you're looking at a brand new version of OnMilwaukee.com, Milwaukee's daily magazine since 1998.  You're seeing the collective efforts of 15 dedicated employees, many of whom have spent the last six months tweaking and refining, programming and debugging, designing and redesigning.  Again and again.

We know that you might see some funkiness right now, and that not everything might be working as of 9:28 a.m. Friday morning.  Re-launching a completely dynamic Web site with 10,000 articles and thousands of other pieces of content isn't as easy as flipping a switch.  Bear with us, please, as we work out these kinks.

You might find yourself saying right now, "Hey Andy, didn't you guys just redesign OMC?"  That was actually almost a year and a half ago, and in Web years, that's like 10.5 years.  Wait, that's dog years.  I told you I was tired.

Anyway, so much has gone down in the world of online publishing that we're constantly in a state of redesign, but this one is somewhat more major.  Since October, 2005, we've entered the world of podcasting, featured and readers blogs. We're attempting a broader scope of coverage, and in many ways, an even more hyper-local approach to presenting Milwaukee's news and entertainment scene.

There's also this little thing called "Web 2.0," which you might have heard me talk a bit about.  Basically for us, it's the notion that media is a conversation, not a sermon.  And this new layout and design helps bring us closer to making OnMilwaukee.com a real community experience for everyone who chooses to be involved.

A few things you might notice immediately:  First, more white space.  As we pored over our analytics, we became comfortable with rebuilding OnMilwaukee.com to accommodate the 95 percent of our readers who set their monitors to a resolution of at least 1024x768.  In non-geek talk, that means we can go wider, with bigger, more readable text, better use of photography and room to breathe -- all at the same time.

We've also completely re-examined, then rebuilt, our navigation, better organizing the oodles of content we provide daily, eliminating redundancy and improving usability.  Some of the stuff on our site dated back to 1998, and this time around, we gave it a good, hard look from top to bottom.  We've made a lot of changes, some big, some small.  But when you add them up, this is a new Web site.  And we're extremely excited about it.

You'll also notice that we've given blogs a more prominent position in the magazine, because they're popular, fun to write and to read, and are a growing part of what we do.

We did this all without making our readers click all over the place to artificially inflate our ad impressions (which, at the foundation, is how we make our money).  We've all but killed those pesky pop-under ads that we know you hate, and we've used sophisticated technologies like AJAX to keep our readers on the same page while navigating content -- speeding up the site and smoothing out the user experience.

Finally, we've even given our trusty "Hoan Bridge inspired" logo a facelift.  After nearly seven years with the old logo, we thought now would be a good time to spruce it up a bit (note to self: order new business cards).

Many of these ideas sprung from readers' and staff feedback about the usability of OnMilwaukee.com, and we agonized over each and every decision (so we hope you like the results).  We also each read an astounding book I'd recommend to any developer or entrepreneur, called "Getting Real" by 37Signals, the groundbreaking Web company that built Basecamp, Writeboard and more.  Check it out if this kind of stuff intrigues you.

Finally, we wouldn't be here, launching the next version of OMC, without the grueling work of my co-workers, namely my programmers, designers and writers.  All of us have put in extremely long hours this last month, especially, and I thank Zach, Jason and Joey in particular.  You all stepped up to the plate, and I appreciate it.

One thing "the good book" (a.k.a. "Getting Real") taught us is that Web development is a perpetual beta model.  Thanks to companies like Google, we are continually changing and evolving.  It's what separates new media from old media.  We innovate, and they react -- pretty slowly, mind you.  And that's why I'm smiling right now, even though I'd rather be starting my Memorial Day weekend right now instead of fixing broken images and re-ranking articles.

What this means to you, the reader, is that what you're looking at on OnMilwaukee.com isn’t finished.  This version didn't go through months of focus groups or beta testing.  Let the other guys do that.  We'll fix as we go, for as "Getting Real" says, "It's better to put out half an application than a half-assed application."

We hope this labor of love is a whole application, one that will get even better in the coming weeks. We certainly appreciate your feedback and your loyal readership and welcome comments on how to improve.  Please feel free to contact me directly at andy@staff.onmilwaukee.com with ideas.  Thanks again, Milwaukee, for supporting us.

On Milwaukee!