Portal Userbility

Thanks for your previous feedback on the top page design. As you can see I've brought back the orange ^^

Much of the feedback that I saw were concerns for the new visitor too. With the amount of content on this site, making one design to fit all does not make any sense anymore.
Most portal sites try to design the top page for new and current users which is why it ends up looking messy (like the current one ^^;)

I've decided to take the flickr/amazon approach where new users and regular users see something different.
The current reader (you) know what you want, you know the difference between articles, news items, puchi blurbs etc

The first time visitor however has an idea of what they want. There is also a lot I want to show but think I have identified the strongest content on the site - daily life Japan photos and exclusive figure coverage.

Have a lookie at the top page mock and put yourself in the shoes of the first time visitor. Given your current interests, what would you think?
The "Living in Tokyo. Enjoying Figurines. In Startup Mode" tagline is to help the new user immediately identify what the site is mainly about. This would obviously be turned off for the regular visitor. If you have a better tagline then let me know ^^;
The photo of mikuru is a slide show and automatically goes through the latest photo articles. The left and right arrows allow new users to manually advance.

Many folks become readers after they learn of what I do through my profile - whcih is why I have surfaced the "About" in the middle column.

When "Current readers click here" (maybe the wording could be better - suggestions?) is clicked, a menu slides down using jquery and lets you know how you can customize your top page.

One of the options would just be to display the regular stuff such as member news, my news, puchi blurbs and articles. More advanced options allow you to turn things on and off.
Non members can save settings in their cookie - members preferences are saved in their account.

So need your feedback on a few things. Now that you don't need to give feedback on one page that I was originally designing for regular users *and* new users, how would you like *your* user experience to be for the top page?
Do you need a large 400px with image on the top page? Can it be columns of thumbnails and descriptions (because you know the difference between the different content).

As an example, below you can see what http://flickr.com looks like when the first time user comes along and when a user is logged in. Would something like the logged-in flickr be acceptable to you? It does look plain and boring but its practical nto to have heavy graphics on that page.