Was there a specific reason why the column was removed - specifically, is the team planning to utilise that space for something else?
If not, like many others, I preferred the older version.
Currently the page seems barren with the centre of the page very under utilised. It also impacts the feel of the page - what felt dynamic and interesting now feels somewhat boring and lacklustre. The category colour also served a very good useful purpose - a user can quickly scan down the page and see which topics they might be interested in because category colours are (if used correctly) part of the taxonomy system. They could easily be used as an indicator (particularly in the box style) while looking down the page.
As I mentioned in my post that was moved to a separate thread - this change in conjunction with something to utilise that space would be awesome, but without it, it is unfortunately not so great.