As I talked about a few days ago, the new USATODAY.com launched this weekend and I got a chance to use it today for a bit; here are some initial thoughts (both good and bad):

• I think the main page design is a bit too sparse and bland. Nearly everything seems to be either black or blue and there is way too much empty white-space. On one hand this emphasizes the pictures, but on the other it emphasizes the advertisements.

• The blue color used for the color-coded sections of Home, News, and Travel are all too similar.

• I love the scrolling through reader’s comments in the banner right next to the main USA TODAY logo. That is pretty nice of them to give the readers’ voices such a prominent position on their site.

• I like the ease at which you can vote (by clicking on the up-arrow) but is it just me or was this and the comments link right next to it completely lifted from Newsvine?

• I like the simple layout of individual story pages. It’s basic and the ads seem to be mostly text-based. It would be really great if the ads were entirely text-based a-la Gmail.

• Occasionally there are really annoying interstitial ads…this is really disappointing. I don’t think there is anything on the Internet that I dislike more than interstitial ads.

• I’m glad they decided to use avatars for profiles but on a selfish note there is no section in profile to put in your own website address. Boo.

So there you go, I see things both good and bad…it’s far from perfect, but it’s a start and far ahead of what other traditional media sites are offering.

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USATODAY.com also doesn’t look as hot next to the great redesign of Ars Technica. Wow that site looks great now, espeically the Ars Journals right-hand side section!