You may have noticed some changes around here, most of which have nothing to do with my name change, so I thought it would be worth mentioning some of them.
First of all, SB Nation is getting access to AP/Getty photos of any sporting event where they take pictures, which will allow us to give a little visual interest to our stories. The deal we have is that we can only use one photo per story but you can browse thru the rest of their pictures by clicking on the picture on the post. They take good pictures. But there are more changes than that.
At the top of the page under the main banner is a bar of buttons that read, left to right, HOME, FANPOSTS, FANSHOTS, ARCHIVES, BLUE JAYS, SCHEDULE, ROSTER, STATS.
The first three obvious, they will take you to the front page, to the Fanposts or to Fanshots (and by the way, use these, it is great fun to share ideas with the other members). Archives will take you to a page where you can see titles to all past posts in Blue Bird Banter history.
The next button, marked Blue Jays, is the first of the new ones. Clicking on that will bring you to a page of all things Blue Jay. Yeah, you were thinking this page was all things Blue Jay. Well, on that page there will be a list of the last 10 stories about the Jays from anywhere in the SB Nation. So if they write about the Jays in Beyond the Boxscore or anywhere else there will be a link there or even if we write about the Jays here, it is linked to there, go figure. There is also a ton of other stuff there so take a look. I'll wait......
The next button 'Schedule' shows the Jays schedule (well duh) and beside each game there is a link marked coverage, which won't do you any good right now but after the game is played it will link you to all stories written about that game from both sides. So if the Jays play the Tigers it will lead you to a page that will link to our stories about the game as well as Bless You Boys stories.
The next button 'Roster' will take you to a page with, you guessed it, the Jay's current roster. From there if you click on a player's name, say Jesse Carlson, it will take you to a page with links to SB Nation stories about Jesse Carlson, his current season stats, a link to his career stats, a scouting report (not writen by us, so I can't say I always agree). As well as any transactions he's been involved with and trades he's been in. Basically anything you could want to know about Jesse or which ever Jay you are interested in, in one spot. Pretty cool really.
The Stats button, well it doesn't do much for us yet but will be good when the season gets going. Beyond that there will be new things in the Game Threads, when the season starts to help us follow the game if it isn't on TV, but we'll see those when we get there.
With all these changes (and more to come I'm sure) and SB's new associations with Yahoo! and USA Today this is becoming an even cooler sandbox to play in.