food_pill
On 10/1/84, William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in Neuromancer to describe a virtual space built out of information. Sound familiar? At food_pill, sci-fi fans bring to light other ways in which science fiction has anticipated technology.

cartooning
This week in 1950, the very first Peanuts strip made its debut. In celebration, check out our premier cartoonist community. Discussion ranges from trading illustration tips to sharing industry advice.

bentolunch
What's more fun than bringing a little bouquet of snacks with you to work, school, or a park? At this community, members post pictures of their own supercute bento lunch boxes, ranging from the simple to the ornate.

U.S. Presidential Election Community

With a historic U.S. election coming down to the wire, causing a lot of buzz in the U.S. and abroad, we thought it would be cool to create a community with a global view on the 2008 election. To that end, we've partnered with various news providers, including The Independent in the UK, Gazeta in Russia, and Mint in India, to allow their journalists to engage with the LiveJournal user community, asking questions and posting news stories for comments and discussion. Our goal is to encourage a lively and spirited debate between users and news providers worldwide on LiveJournal itself, and also to allow republication of user comments from within this community in print and online media outside of LiveJournal. In this way we hope to facilitate cross-border public discussion of the issues and personalities involved to provide a better understanding of the internal political debates here in the U.S. as well as the international perspective of the U.S. election. Whether your views swing red, blue, purple, or neutral, come check out us_election2008 and let your opinions be heard.

Persistent style=mine for Paid Users

Many of you know that you can add the parameter ?style=mine to a journal URL in order to view that journal in your own journal's style. In the spirit of giving users more of what they've been asking for, we're giving our users with Paid Accounts a persistent style=mine option. If you want to override other journals' styles with your own all of the time, just turn on the "View all journals and communities in your own style" setting at the Viewing Options page. This will make it so every journal you view will always be shown in your own style. In addition, you can use the navigation strip at the top of most journals to quickly toggle between the journal's original style and your own style. Head over to paidmembers for more information on this new feature. Speaking of paid accounts . . . .

Paid Account Sale Ending Soon

One minute before the stroke of midnight on September 30th (11:59 p.m. PDT on 9/30/2008, to be exact), our paid account sale comes to an end. Act now to get 20% off the purchase of a 12-month block of paid account time. Check out our paid account sale page for details.  In addition, we wanted to remind everyone about the permanent account sale, coming in November: stay tuned for more information on pricing and other details.

New Profile Page in Beta

We have long wanted to make the profile page easier to navigate, so we have committed our best thoughts to paper (or .pdf) and put the redesigned profile page into Beta. If you want to participate in beta testing for the profile page, go here. The design team has been hard at work incorporating a lot of feedback from the folks over at lj_design into the process, reorganizing information to make it easier to scan and process. This is just the start of the conversation with our users about how to improve the profile page, and we encourage your feedback over on the lj_design post. Our goal is to continue the evolution of the profile page to best suit user needs.



Snap Implementation Changes

We're changing the "Enable graphic previews" setting on the Viewing Options page from a journal setting (whether or not other people see it on your journal) to a user setting (whether or not you see it site-wide). You do not need to make any changes to your settings—whatever you had selected as a journal setting will be used as your new viewing option. For logged-out viewers of your journal, your viewing option will determine whether or not Snap is shown.

Idea Bollywood Club Community

Some people dream of being famous in Hollywood, the so-called Motion Picture Capital of the World, but across the globe in Mumbai there is another dream factory—Bollywood. LiveJournal has partnered with Zoom TV to present a behind-the-scenes look at Idea Bollywood Club, an American Idol-esque show with an Indian twist. If you're keen to find out more about the show's contestants, or want to show your support for your favorites, head on over to bollywoodclub and make yourself heard. All next week the show will be live-blogged, providing an extra bit of insight into the running of the show.

theoffice_icons
A community for posting and sharing user icons related to both the American and British versions of the Emmy Award-winning TV series, The Office. What better way to ease the office life and kick-off the new Office season?

lordoftherings
It's J.R.R. Tolkien Week! In conjunction, here featured is our largest Tolkien community, dedicated to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. At this community you can discuss everything from the LOTR books and films to the other Tolkien stories. Welcome to Middle Earth.

literaryquotes
Sharing a quote--that is, a fragment of a whole work--can be a great way to spread distilled ideas, regardless of genre or form. At this community, a fragment's stand-alone presence is what counts. Pieces of poetry, prose, philosophy--you name it. Featured in celebration of a week that includes the birthdays of William Faulkner and T.S. Eliots, as well as R.E.A.D. in America Day.