It truly is still a work in progress, but the new features they’ve rolled out over the last few weeks are pretty cool. They’ve now got all the RSS and probably a few other features you’d hoped to see them develop. I won’t go into detail here, but I wanted to remind everyone to go check back on their progress.

You might even find a good show to see tonight or a scope out a fun place to drink way too much beer next weekend.

If you are looking for me, I can be found here.

I checked out the vita.mn launch party last night at the Fine Line. I thought it was odd to throw the launch months after the site was officially up – then after talking with Matt Thompson, it was clear, the party was for the brand new vita.mn dead-tree edition. Available every Thursday.

I caught a few moments with Laurence Brickner, of the ever-expanding Popular Front, agreeing that vita.mn in both forms are great steps forward for the Star Tribune and McClatchy.

If you’re wondering why the Strib would do this, here’s a hint:

“In the U.S., just about the only papers that are growing are New York’s tabs, the Post and Daily News” – Jeff Jarvis

I just got word the embargo on talking about the Star Tribune’s new entertainment guide vita.mn has been lifted. (Though, our good friend Matt jumped the guy by just a few hours. Matt…he’s funny like that.)

I’ve been playing with it off and on for a couple months – and there is promise. Two features really stand out for me;

1. Lists – Make a list, others add to it, and the repeated items bubble to the top.
2. Tags – Like all good sites these days, the interesting bits lay here. I’m using tags to add info that otherwise probably won’t be added, like; which brand of coffee restaurants serve, what dish to order when you’re there, whether or not a place has wifi. Useful things often missing from reviews and descriptions.

Things like iCal and RSS are still forthcoming (same for the yet-to-be-useful Sotanlife.com) and overall there’s a lot going on within each pageview.

Entertainment recommendations are a tough problem to solve out of the gate, telling me what’s going on and getting me to attend are two different things. Vita.mn’s reader-driven tags, lists, etc are a start in channeling word-o-mouth recommendations. I’m interested to see how vita.mn ages.

Not cool Matt. Not cool. Why you gotta be hatin’?.

There are far better targets for your vitriol. Like this or this.

Ironically, I suspect the site in question will link to the Strib far less than MNSpeak.