We updated Loudcrowd yesterday with a whole bunch of bugfixes and a major update to how we’d like to get feedback from our users.

Our new system is through Uservoice and will help us get a better feel on what you guys want and how badly you want it.  All you need is a Loudcrowd account (no seperate username required) and an idea to get started. If you see a feature that someone already requested, you can add your own votes and comments to make sure we know you want it. We love the simplicity and hope you will too.  Anyways, enough reading about it – go check it out by logging in at http://loudcrowd.com and clicking the Feedback link at the bottom of the page!

We’re extremely proud to congratulate one of our newest employees, Seth Sivak, for his work on Winds of Orbis, which was recently awarded as a winner of the Independent Games Festival 2009 Student Showcase. Winds of Orbis features ground-breaking use of the Nintendo Wii-mote and floor pads to promote more physically active play. See more (including a video of the game in action) here.

We here at Conduit love seeing games that explore new frontiers, so we’re thrilled to have Seth become part of the team as our newest Gameplay Engineer. (Stay tuned to see his newest creations on loudcrowd.com!)

The updates are coming fast and furious now. First, great to see so many of you turn up for the A/V Club playlist, we’ll have new playlists at least every week now, so drop back by. There are a bunch of new updates, including the often requested Closets for your clothes. Below are the biggest, let us know what you think.

Introducing the Closet

We know that in the past you’ve had a painful moment where you have make a difficult clothing decision, like whether to say keep your Pumpkin Head or scrap it for a sweet new A.V. Club headband, and we want to put an end to the dilemma. Why not keep them both?  Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you – the Closet!  Now you can store up to 20 items to mix and match as you please.  Only downside is now you have no excuse for uncoordinated outfits. Also, this means you can finally remove that zombie head you’ve been wearing the last few weeks.

Profile Support

Met someone on the dance floor that you want to meet up with again? Click the Fan icon from their mini-profile (available from private chat in the Dance game) or cruise over to their full profile for some extra info like a link to their homepage or even when they are most likely to be playing.  Click the start to become a Fan of someone, so you can check-up on people whenever you want, even if they are offline.

Performance Tweaks and Misc

The Dance game has recieved a few more performance tweaks and some UI retooling.  It should run better on lower end machines now and will hopefully be a lot easier for new people to get the hang of.

We’ve spruced things up a bit as well all over the site.  Shinier buttons, more flair, a ton of new pre-generated whispers.

I’ll be doing a quick drop by Casual Connect in Seattle this week on the way to LA. If you are around and curious to see a demo, chat about what we are up to (we’re hiring!) then drop me a line at nabeel@thisdomain for coffee or I’ll see you at our super-secret party. So secret, no one told me it’s happening.

Also.. I’ll have a stack of these, which came in today.

Conduit’s very own Jeff Johnson starts his summer tour with Thief Thief this week! He’ll be continuing to do some work for us on the road, between visits to sleazy motels and snacks of beef jerky.

We’re all terribly excited for Jeff as this has been a goal of his for some time. If you like instrumental, progressive rock—or if you just love going to a show and having tons of fun—I definitely recommend checking them out.

And as you watch Jeff play guitar, consider that this is only his second most impressive talent after engineering, and you’ll believe that Conduit has a bright future ahead of it.

Best of luck, Jeff! And for those of you in the Boston area, I’ll see you at O’Brien’s in Allston on Tuesday night! Check thiefthief.com for other dates across the country.