Been playing around with the new CNN.com, gotta say I am a big fan of what I see. First off it is much cleaner design wise, they took off a lot of the "junk" and are really focusing on what drives people to CNN - the news. They didn’t go as far as USAToday.com did with it’s Social Networking integration (via Pluck) but they didn’t ignore it either. What I also like is how certain parts of the site look like widgets, which gives the site a clean modular look.
Came across Fotowoosh.com, which is an alpha testing right now, they want to make your normal 2D photos into 3D masterpieces. The technology is intriguing and the samples are very cool for an Alpha version. What they do is determine where the surfaces contact the ground in the photo, then they "recover the depth" of those surfaces which creates the 3D model. Fotowoosh is part of the Freewebs.com network and will no doubt be another widget you can utilize when you sign up for their service.
Steve Jobs announced today at the WWDC that 3rd parties can write Web 2.0 applications for the upcoming iPhone. This has been one of the largest questions surrounding the iPhone since it was announced earlier at Macword ‘07. Mr. Jobs had said earlier that the iPhone would be a closed platform device, but I think Apple saw the light and realized all other phone platforms allow for 3rd party app development and it hasn’t caused a nuclear melt down (yet).
We all have seen a million+ ads online…very rarely do ones actually stand out to me. Microsoft’s latest ad campaign, this one revolves around the Visual Studio platform, not only caught my eye but interested me enough to actually click on the ad. The ads, which you can see at their microsite defyallchallenges.com, use characters from various x-box games talking and acting like office workers, developers, management, etc. Go to the site, which by itself it worth talking about, and check out all of their "skits". Even if you don’t care about the company or their development tools you will enjoy what you see.
Here is a screenshot of the site, yes their actual site…if this doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.
