Looks like the people over at the CNN’s Web Design teams have been busy. I think I need a bit of time to digest and get used to the new design before I can say if it’s a real improvement, but first impressions are also important:

• a bit jarring visually compared to the previous design/template — felt very RED and a bit heavier.
• I kinda wish they could have taken the new design across the entire site (minor criticism)
• looks like there’s more emphasis on media visuals. Video especially feels like it has more prominence.
• homepage gets a little bare below the fold.
• news pulse feature is great. It’s basically CNN’s flavor of Digg, but with ‘popularity'(???) driving the rankings.
• better integration of social features. comments are nice (why no facebook connect?), more prominent linking to facebook, twitter, & others, nicer iReport, and again NewsPulse is great.

Overall, I think CNN.com has a cool new design. CNN is setting the bar in the online space for news and media companies by proving their users with a very clean, slick look and feel, adding lots of great new features, and emphasizing their strengths in multimedia and social media. Sure there’s the whole issue of creating more serious revenue from these ‘sites’, but I think CNN’s strategy is to simply grow an audience first by concentrating on user experience… and the money will eventually follow (right, facebook?).

Just installed a WordPress plugin called Lifestream. After some headaches around upgrading to PHP5.0 and tweaking some CSS, I was finally able to get it running properly. Lifestream publishes all the activity from my social web “life”. So it’s basically a dumb facebook feed that is just part facebook activity… you’ll also see music I listen to on Pandora, apps I’ve rated on the iTunes App Store, new blog posts, stuff I Digg, my tweets, etc.

Check out my lifestream here.

Contrary to what Gizmodo posted today, I actually think this Verizon ad is somewhat clever. It may seem like the marketing execs over at VZW are getting a bit desperate with this obvious attack at the iPhone, but I think — despite it’s corniness —  it’s pretty smart and targeted.

Of all the US carriers, it’s safe to say that VZW has the collection of the least exciting mobile devices. AT&T, Sprint, & T-Mobile all have flagship smarphones, and perhaps Verizon is now ready to put some money behind their own, The Motorolla Driod. The specs are impressive and so is the Android 2.0 OS. Personally, I think the iPhone is still the device to beat, but not everyone buys into what Apple’s selling. And with this new Moto supposedly being “the Android device to beat,” I think this is a clever attempt at wooing all the smartphone users with contracts expiring and also those people that haven’t yet found something exciting enough to buy that isn’t an iPhone.