I much prefer the color-scheme for ImpulseDriven over JoeUser. Quite honestly, though, the interfaces are almost identical (it's just the brown vs. grey thing). They seem to look and operate the exact same (in my limited usage).

I do wish at least that the "Life Journals" category were represented on ImpulseDriven. I can understand the Religious and Political categories being dropped, but the Life Journals, to me at least, are sort of the core of blogging in general.

Still, I like ImpulseDriven, and I like that it can be so easily and cleanly accessed from within Impulse (yeah, I get it).

A

I think I like the JU Ui better.  I don't mind the color.  Brown is nice.  The JU seems a bit lighter.  

Also, Life Blogging is my favorite category so I miss it in the impulsedriven.net.  This color scheme is nice too.  Love green.

Hey, why can't the categories of ID being customizable, like the categories of skins at WC?

I'd much rather do my blogging and reading from within Impulse (it's prettier and seems much more stable, even in beta, than IE8, Firefox, or Safari). Have the current categories be the defeault, but allow users to go into preferences and add Politics or Religion or Like Journals or whatever if they'd like. That would be much more in line with the "customization" theme, and allow users hwo would like to to utilize Impulse as a one-stop-shop for all things community-related...

Even though I spent many months working with Andrew on JoeUser, I absolutely think that ImpulseDriven is the far better design & layout.  I guess we could think of it as JoeUser being v1, with ImpulseDriven being v2.

Design wise, ID all the way. The new JU color scheme kinda bugs me, too drab.  (I say while giving high props to the overall design and technical achievement.)

Nothing wrong with two communities if they are focused on different communities and groups.  And with JU (and now ID) you have the opportunity to intelligently cross syndicate content where appropriate.

One thing that bugs me about both site designs is the absence of a left side gutter/margin of any sort.  Even a half inch would go a long way to providing some eye pleasing framing.

I just checked, and the gutter is missing when the sites are read inside RSS Bandit, but is there when viewed in the standalone IE6.