Promising (and from the above screen shot delivering) a clearner UI, faster page loads, News Feed filters, and even more point-release features, Facebook 1.7 for Blackberry is looking pretty slick, and this Bold user is looking forward to the rumored September release!

Of course, it's still not the Facebook for iPhone UX...

[via Boy Genius Report]

Direct from IBM developerWorks, two webcasts featuring social Jazz and the opportunity to attend a Q&A with IBM Chief Scientist and co-author of UML Grady Booch to discuss social media and the future of software delivery.

Please join us for these upcoming IBM Working Smarter Web events.

Enriching the Jazz environment with social software
Date: Tuesday, August 25
Time: 1:00 p.m. (New York)

This interactive teleconference will answer your questions about combining social software (instant messaging, team wikis, blogs, and professional networks) with software delivery tools. Explore practical benefits of using Lotus Advanced Collaboration and IBM Jazz products to find a developer with unique skills fundamentally improving the effectiveness of an organization.

A conversation with Grady Booch
Date: Thursday, August 27
Time: 1:00 p.m. (New York)

Join Grady Booch in a freewheeling, interactive conversation on the future of software delivery in the current internet culture and new social media vehicles. Hear how software teams are responding to wikinomics and the democratization of ideas, how open source initiatives are changing software economics and how the software delivery team of the future will be more global, collaborative and transparent than ever before.

Both web conferences are a part of the IBM Working Smarter community initiatives, and are recommended (especially the Q&A with Booch) for anyone interested in extending their grasp of social media in the marketplace.

The IBM Lotus Information Development Center has been hard at work with not only highlighting community member education through social networks and services like Twitter, Facebook, and even YouTube, but they've also created a LotusTechInfo Landing Page on the IBM Lotus Developer Domain.

While the community itself is resides on IBM Greenhouse, this Landing Page will remain as public.

Incidentally, if you do not yet have an IBM Greenhouse account, feel free to sign-up and enter Joyce Davis as your IBM Contact.

From there, you will easily be able to access/join the IBM Lotus Technical Information and Education Community.

Want to know what the IBM LTIEC is all about without having to sign-up for a Greenhouse account? Check out the Landing Page and find out who we are working within and beyond the community to build both Lotus portfolio knowledge as well as business contacts.

And if you have a blog or site where you already contribute to this community, check out the developerWorks Author Achievement Recognition program and learn how you can re-purpose your tips and tricks, have them gain a more global audience, and better establish your subject matter expertise.

Tomorrow - July 28th @ 11:00AM EASTERN - we're having our monthly LTIE Community Meeting.

This month we'll cover news from the information development team, welcome two Lotus Online Community members to share their stories with the audience, and - our special topic of the month - discuss how we can leverage social networks and social media to proactively answer the questions of IT professionals and Lotus customers.

For more information - including dial-in and online web conference info - please see the post for the July Lotus Technical Information and Education Community Meeting.

And for those of you actively using some of the social networks that will be discussed during tomorrow's meeting, feel free to check out the Lotus Technical Information and Education Community on Facebook as well as the LTIEC's official Twitter feed @LotusTechInfo.

And if you already do plan on attending, do your part and bring a friend; the more people that get the message the better!

Taglined "The Geekiest Social Network", My developerWorks just keeps getting better. As I mentioned, the IBM developerWorks crew have really taken the social network via Lotus Connections to the community, resulting in an influx of new IBM Online Community (not everyone sticks to Lotus - sad to report ;-) ) Bloggers making the scene and really contributing some great content.

Aside from content generation, there's also the added bonus of grabbing your own Subject Matter Expert Connections Profile - which can work 24-7 for your business networking and collaborative efforts... provided your honest in your tagging and bio information of course!

If you haven't signed up yet, check out the following demo video showing off My developerWorks. And for those of you not particularly interested in social networking -- y'know... those of you with resession-proof jobs that know everything you'll ever need to know right now and are too busy telling the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn -- consider this yet another public example of a solid Lotus Connections playground!

And for those of you already in the Lotus Online Community who have an established blog, I'm actually working with the crew at developerWorks on that. More details on that as they materialize - which will hopefully be soon!