Grab the iPhone app and see what all the cool kids are talking about.

The big trends discussed over and over again at the Summit were mobile, social, and open standards. The highlight of the event was hearing Tim Berners-Lee talk about his creation, the world wide web, and that he sees a huge opportunity for someone to do for data what he did for documents.

1. The nook runs on Google’s new Android operating system. This doesn’t sound like a big deal at first but when you realize this is the first non-cellular consumer device to officially run the android operating system it IS a big deal. Just another example of Google taking over the world. Android is open and the idea that at some point, this device could be extended by open source developers is very cool.

2. Sharing! When I asked the wife if she wanted a kindle the first thing she said was “I can’t share books with my friends, forget it.” Sharing is the killer feature of the nook. I remember when I first got a ReplayTV and sites were spinning up around sharing shows via the features built into that device, it was huge. We will see the same with the nook and the LendME feature.

Bottom line competition is good for any business and this new war between Amazon and B&N will only help drive both products to a better price point and push features faster and further.

The real news is that “Real-Time” is now the focus of the industry. Some would argue this has been the focus for years but only a few of us would actually go to twitter to figure out what is happening in real-time. With the also announced news, at the Web 2.0 Summit, that Microsoft’s Bing is integrating Facebook and Twitter feeds the social search arena has been opened to everyone. Think about all your friends and family that depend solely on search. They will now begin seeing results on what is happening right now instead of waiting for something to get popular enough over hours or days for it to begin showing in any of the search engines. This also has the potential to dramatically decrease the focus on major news outlets on the web.

More to come on real-time as we see it unfold…

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

One of the most interesting things is the newly centered CNN logo. This indicates a renewed focus on their brand and design wise looks great. This site still looks extremely clean even with the addition of the red header instead of all white like the previous version. The content is in a three column layout, framed in light gray boxes that give it some structure but doesn’t detract from the core of the site, content. The new site doesn’t appear to give a huge focus on specific vertical screen real-estate either which naturally forces the user to scroll without thinking twice. This is a simple but great achievement giving more flexibility for the content programming of the page.

Technically they have made some improvements as well. The page is fast coming down in around three seconds. It’s also leveraging assets from a CDN but that is nothing new. They can still make some improvements here with long live TTLs on images to improve browser cache-ability as well as minifying css and js assets.

All-in-all great work by the Turner team, congrats.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Page One Scoreboard Features:

Auto Updating: Previously only when the page would refresh would the scoreboard data reload. With the new version the score and clock stream in as the data is available.
One click access to most relevant game links: In the three major game states, pre, in, and post the most relevant game links are available with a simple hover action.

Personalized: If you have a favorite team selected via personalization corner that team’s game will move to the front of the list of game modules and highlight yellow.
Show the most number of games possible: It was critical to provide a view that allowed the most number of games visible at any time.

Special Event Treatment: As you saw this weekend we have greater flexibility to provide a way to message our fans on sport holidays.

Back-end feed aggregator: Remember those auto updating scores? A new feed aggregation mechanism allows us to combine multiple sport feeds into one allowing up-to-date score data within any sport tab you select.


Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Interior Scoreboard Features:

Update faster: With a change in architecture all new redesigned scoreboards received, on average, a 20% improvement in the time to deliver data to the fan from when we receive it.

Scoreboard Calendar: A new calendar showing clearly what day you are on, how many games occur on that day, and simple navigation to move to past or future weeks.
Key dates: One of the most requested features was a clear view of special events within the season, now reflected in the key dates area and denoted by a highlighted red style within the week calendar.

More Scoreboards: Another staple form scoreboards past that was brought back based on fan feedback, the ability to switch to other scoreboards easily.

Consolidated tools: The scoreboard tools allows us to feature all the other utilities throughout the site related to the current scoreboard in view.

Team Logos: On non-college scoreboards team logos were added to allow the fan to quickly spot the team they are looking for. Logos coming to college sports soon.

Personalized: If you have a favorite team selected via personalization corner that team’s game will move to the top of the list of game modules and highlight yellow.

Continuous improvement: The flexible design and change in front end architecture allows for more flexibility as fans needs change and additional features are developed.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Check it out via http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/scoreboard and look for the Gamecast links!

Features:
Scores, player stats, game clock, out of town scoreboard are all live updating, no need for page refreshes

Show locations on the rink of all:
Goals | Shots | Penalties | Hits | Blocks

Filter all events shown by type and period
Mouse over an event to get more information & player statistics
Power play highlights of rink + play by play
Period + Game summary gives a quick summary of stats during the game/period
Available at all points during a game by clicking on the clock

Live play by play text of all events
Viewable by period, or all at once
Roster data shows live game + season stats
Quick links to show
Last goal(s)
Last play(s)
All goals