Since its launch in 2006, "Live in Shanghai" (live.shanghaidaily.com) has always been an important component of Shanghai Daily's Website.

From a simple site providing basic knowledge of life in the city to an ambitious effort incorporating venue listings, classifieds and user involvement through the Web 2.0 concept, Shanghai Daily's Web team has always been after the best way to provide readers with an ultimate guide of the city.

Now, after three years' experience with the site's evolution, the Web team is proud to announce that the latest edition of "Live in Shanghai" - totally redesigned and considerably expanded - has been launched.

The designers first gave the Website a fresh new look, simple but graphically appealing, an important way to dispel the dry and boring feeling of the previous edition's interface.

The core content of the Website, those "classics" that have served our readers since the first launch, are still available and now form the "City Guide" section.

The acclaimed features on Metro, taxi service and many other topics have been fully updated.

The Metro page offers one of the most complete and up-to-date Metro line maps in English. Plotted on the interactive map are not only the operational lines and all the stations in use, with information on train times and a meticulously prepared surrounding map for each station, but also those lines under construction or just planned.

The major expansion in this revamp is the addition of a "Columns" section.

A lot of useful articles covering dining, shopping, health, entertainment and travel regularly appear in Shanghai Daily's Features section. But since ShanghaiDaily.com is fee-based, they become inaccessible by free users after a week and are thus "lost" in the massive news database.

The "Columns" section has been introduced to "rescue" these indispensable articles and make them available to all users. In the section, articles are grouped under several columns and are presented as closely to their layout on the printed newspaper as possible.

Of special interest is the "Block by Block" that introduces a street with surrounding attractions, shops, restaurants, and so on, each week.

The designers attach a formulated map to each street and incorporate all single streets in a bigger Flash map of a district, and then of the city - a complete activity guide for Shanghai is on its way.

The directory listings are now easier to browse and when you search for a particular venue, the accuracy of the results has been considerably improved.

Another addition is the embedded Google Map for each venue. Through the map, the exact position of a venue is now readily available and the map can be enlarged to explore surrounding areas.

The property ads in the classified section now provide more information, such as pricing and number of bedrooms and bathrooms, highlighted to facilitate comparison between different properties.

Last but not least, let's return to the home page, and see how the designers have managed to invigorate the facade of the Website. Apart from the latest issue of the "Block by Block" column and the namesake column of the site, which you are reading now, updates are applied to the home page where possible at all times, making it look fresh every day.

What's more important is the introduction of a "What's Up" panel that logs all additions or updates on the site. This shows the scale of user involvement and the efforts of editors.

Want to find out more new features? Go to live.shanghaidaily.com and experience them now.

The issue has 9 sections: Cover Story, Macro Economy, Finance, Auto, Air, Retail, Energy, Real Estate and Technology, which have been re-typeset in the magazine.

Our e-magazine is specifically designed for business readers and is mainly based on issues discussed in the Business Insight pages of Shanghai Daily.

Officially launched in January 2007, the magazine is published every month and is free to download during its trial.

You can download the magazine via PDF files from our Website (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/emagazine/). or you can subscribe to our Insight Newsletter by typing in your e-mail address in the box at the bottom of the front page. The readers on this list will be e-mailed when a new version of the magazine is published.

May's "Best Story" and "Best Page" awards were announced today.

The Best Story award was shared by Business reporters Leo Zhang, Zhang Fengming, and Winny Wang and Metro reporters Cai Wenjun, Liang Yiwen and Lu Feiran.

Reporters from the Business department produced in-depth coverage on the Lujiazui Forum for four consecutive days with abundant and authoritative information, says Zhu Huanian, Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-chief.

A series of Metro stories about a young boy from a poor family coming to Shanghai for treatment of a life-threatening disease with his sister offering a bone marrow transplant was well organized: "Donor girl lost as boy awaits cure" (A2, May 22), "Boy sent home as search continues" (A5, May 23), "Donor girl ran in fear of her mom" (A2, May 26) and "Singapore benefactor meets stem cell transplant siblings" (A4, May 27). The reporters made big efforts to keep the stories vivid and readable, said Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-chief Wu Zheng.

The Best Page went to an Expo Insight page (A4-5, May 1), which detailed, with a lively layout, a one day route around the Expo site on the occasion of the one-year countdown to the event – it was written by Yang Jian and designed by Li Xiaoying.

The Best Translated Story was Li Xinran's "Local men pass test on panty washings" (A2, May 19). It was not an easy job for Li to display the good writing skills in this story with limited resources and time, said J.J Jiang, our managing deputy editor-in-chief.

Feature writer Yao Minji and photographer Wang Rongjiang won a special assignment award for their brilliant performances for the anniversary coverage of the Sichuan Earthquake.

The issue has 8 sections: Cover Story, Macro Economy, Metal, Property, Consumer, Nanhui-Pudong Merger, Energy and Auto, which have been re-typeset in the magazine.

Our e-magazine is specifically designed for business readers and is mainly based on issues discussed in the Business Insight pages of Shanghai Daily.

Officially launched in January 2007, the magazine is published every month and is free to download during its trial.

You can download the magazine via PDF files from our Website (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/emagazine/). or you can subscribe to our Insight Newsletter by typing in your e-mail address in the box at the bottom of the front page. The readers on this list will be e-mailed when a new version of the magazine is published.

April's "Best Story" and "Best Page" awards were announced yesterday.

The Best Story award was shared by feature writer Yao Minji, biz chief Leo Zhang and metro writer Liang Yiwen.

Yao's series of Hangzhou stories about Kui Yuan Guan (C5, April 3), Su Xiaoxiao (C7, April 9), and the Xiling Seal Engraving Society (C7, April 7) gave her a definite edge. "Min-G's writing combined her personal experiences and made the story vivid and impressive," said Zhang Hong, our deputy editor-in-chief.

Zhang and Liang's story "City plans new equity exchange to help boost high-tech startups" (A2, April 28) was a scoop for the "over the counter stock" market. "Metro reporter Liang has made big efforts to get exclusive business news from a government document and conducted solid interviews," said Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-chief Zhu Huanian.

The Best Page went to a feature page (C1-3, April 1), which showed how people worked in a funeral parlor, written by Lu Feiran, designed by Li Xiaoying; and a biz page (B2, April 17), with a graphic showing a clear explanation of statistics, designed by Chen Jie.

"Thanks to Chen Jie's ideas for the funeral parlor story and a set of touching photos by photographer Wang Rongjiang, the page had a fresh and impressive look", said J.J Jiang, our managing deputy editor-in-chief.

The Best Translated Story was Chen Xingjie's "Parents' march calls attention to lost children" (A2, April 17).

The issue has 9 sections: Cover Story, Finance, Property, Health Care, Air, Technology, Energy, Conference and Auto, which have been re-typeset in the magazine.

Our e-magazine is specifically designed for business readers and is mainly based on issues discussed in the Business Insight pages of Shanghai Daily.

Officially launched in January 2007, the magazine is published every month and is free to download during its trial.

You can download the magazine via PDF files from our Website (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/emagazine/). or you can subscribe to our Insight Newsletter by typing in your e-mail address in the box at the bottom of the front page. The readers on this list will be e-mailed when a new version of the magazine is published.

Shanghai Daily has become an active media source on twitter!

Twitter is one of the most popular social networking services and has a huge number of online participants who send and read each others’ updates which are called "tweets.” Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them.

Shanghai Daily posts several tweets a day from Monday to Saturday on http://twitter.com/shanghaidaily, covering the major stories in our newspaper with a shortened URL to the full news stories on shanghaidaily.com.

The number of our followers (tweet subscribers) is growing steadily. Many actively follow our news reports and communicate with us via twitter. We welcome any questions and feedback, especially during this swine flu outbreak. Just type your thoughts and “re-tweet” us. 

We have also created a citylisting account on twitter (http://twitter.com/citylisting), which is connected to our lifestyle sub-site live.shanghaidaily.com via an external twitterfeed application. Anyone who wants to advertise can send their classified ads directly within twitter.com and after approval they will be published.

On Shanghaidaily.com, we have canceled the auto-refresh function of the “latest news” box on the front page, for it may interrupt some users surfing. The “latest news” page will refresh every five minutes.

March's "Best Story" and "Best Page" awards were announced today.

The Best Story award was shared by feature writer Yao Minji and opinion writer Wan Lixin.

Yao's story "'I push myself to do even better than men in a male-dominated field'" (March 7, C2) was about women with "cool" jobs under the International Women's Day theme which fell on March 8. "It was a timely story with very interesting examples. Yao Minji did lots of work and research to find the sources. And nice writing!" said Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-chief Zhu Huanian.

Wan contributed an interview with the Nobel Economic Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. Wan's depth of knowledge and background in economics and his insightful questions led to a high-quality opinion story "Growing economic inequality lies at root of global crisis." (March 17, A6)

The Best Page went to A1, March 13, which used headlines, a graphic and a table to show the 2009 Forbes ranking, and Sunday's double-page "2009's A to Z for femme fashion," story by Michelle Zhang, designed by Fu Rong and Wang Jia.

The Best Translated Story was Li Xinran's "Water-pumped meat widely sold for two decades." (March 13) Li consolidated materials from various sources into a solid news story.