Sift reminds me of that Space Ball theme movie with the sand on comb. Maybe a logo of a comb sifting through a pile of video film strips?

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I could see that Ant ... Might be a lot of detail to condense into a small logo though.

ooh, the page layout is definitely something I would call "fancy-pants".

While I have almost no talent in terms of creating logos, I heartily volunteer for any PHP/Apache or AJAX help you may need.

how about that pan that was used to sift for gold nuggets from a stream? The word escapes me....

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Isn't it just called a gold pan SG? or is it a seive or something?

HamFist - thanks for the offer of help. One thing that we would really like to include with the new design is ajax commenting so we can leave comments without interrupting the videos. If you know of any good libraries for this, that would be appreciated. We tried adapting the WordPress one, but didn't go too well.

Mmm.... gold pan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_prospecting
There you go swampgirl.

And that new VS look? It can best be described as "the sex."

Awesome.

I'm actually writing an AJAX-based commenting system for the website of the company I work for. Personally, I think that unless you wanted to drastically change the interface for submitting or editing comments in the new interface, you could just roll your own without incurring too much hassle.

In terms of frameworks and other related AJAX goodness, I would draw your attention to the:

openrico framework (http://www.openrico.org)
aptana IDE (http://www.aptana.org and http://www.aptana.tv)
AJAX patterns wiki (http://www.ajaxpatterns.org)
totally awesome FCKeditor (http://www.fckeditor.net)

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Thanks for the links HamFist, looks like good stuff.

" Mmm.... gold pan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_prospecting "

oh,(duh swampgirl) lol, on that note...I think I'll hit the sack

The new design simplifies everything. From what I see, it makes getting around look easier. On the left there is an “add tags.” That is for everyone to add additional tags? And you’re reducing the “top 15” to “top 10”?

As for the logo discussion, I prefer simplified graphic icons. The image of “panning for gold” is not simple nor is the “flour sifter”. Finding something to communicate what VideoSift does is going to be tough. Logos need to work when made tiny on business envelopes, etc.

dotdude, that design was just a template. We will still be keeping the top 15, and i don't think there are plans for an add tags feature. Although that is perhaps something that we should look at for our gold star members.

New logo huh......wait what is our logo now?

I had a quick hack in illustrator and played with some ideas.
It's quite tricky to find a nice clean simple logo for this concept that shows what the site does but I kinda liked this one. Quick question, I assumed you would like to keep the font Arial like the current sample, is that correct?

http://mwhite.slowchop.com/images/vs1.jpg

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That's really good ren. I like the colours and design - it's nice and subtle. I don't think we are too fussed about the font, though probably in the arial family would be good, to match the rest of the site, verdana, helvetica - one of those ... ;-)

Cool, glad you liked it.

I made a second version with a different and slightly edited font aswell here:
http://mwhite.slowchop.com/images/vs2.jpg I think I prefer it.... not sure yet as it may throw the other fonts out on the site.

I can also do a short 5-10 second flash animation if needed that can further describe the site, like making all the honeycombs play different video segments and fade to their final position or something.

email me if you wanna have a chat, i'm between websites at the moment and am always keen for a challenge.

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I like them both - the second one is more radical, but cool I think. But lets get some more feedback - I've learned to bow to group thought.

Because left to me - I do things like design a blog with the main colour being brown. [ahem]

hehe can't beat a nice shade of poo brown
i'll wait and see what others think.

I like this logo Ren. It's very cool especially the second one with styled text. But I think it should be more symbolic and tell something about our page. Maybe something like this: http://www.videosift.pl/images/vs3.jpg In the cells are logos of our hosts. I know it's too complicated for logo but it's only idea.

yeah man i like it, the other logos are a good idea imo, i'll have a play with it tomorrow.

Or to leave grey scale something like this:
http://www.videosift.pl/images/vs4.jpg

I think the proposed site design looks awesome, and I think the current logo is perfect as it is.

Minimalism rules.

How about make grey cells more metallic like top of the page and from logos of hosts create weakling visible reflections?

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Hmm, I can think of a couple of reasons for not going with the little host logos in the hexagons.

1. We may run out of hexagons.
2. We may get cease and desist letters for misusing their logos.

Let's NOT do "Microsoft Packaging" on the logo. PLEASE!

You're right, lets leave the simple version.

This is not an actual submission for a logo, but a conceptual idea that I think looks neat and does a good job of illustrating the jist of the site:
http://www.rommelsantor.com/videosift/vslogo.jpg
Here's a sample of how it'd look on the current site:
http://www.rommelsantor.com/videosift/vssample.jpg
One more version with redrawn film reel, larger text, and colors more befitting of the new site:
http://www.rommelsantor.com/videosift/vslogo2.jpg

What do you think?

"One thing that we would really like to include with the new design is ajax commenting"
I just wrote an Ajax-based commenting system around your current commenting code. Take a look at it here: http://www.rommelsantor.com/videosift/comment.php

Obviously, comments are not updated in any type of database, but it is pretty much plug-and-play ready. You will just need about one or two minor code changes to story.php and to modify my source files to work with your existing system. If you're at all interested in this, just let me know.

Very nice commenting system lucky760. Dag definitely should use it.