We’re very excited to bring our users a new sports section.
 
Msnbc.com and NBC Sports have partnered to create the new NBCSports.com. It can still be found by clicking on "Sports" in the left-hand navigation of msnbc.com, but once you do, you'll find a redesigned section that builds on the quality you're accustomed to.

About a week and a half ago we published an investigative report on bridge inspections. I was part of the team that worked on the related Bridge Tracker, an interactive map tied to a database that provides specific information on bridges that you would cross along any given route within the continental U.S. For you geeks out there, we had a proxy specially built to pass info from Virtual Earth to MapPoint, which contained a bridge database that we got from the government through a FOIA request. And yes, it’s all harder than it sounds.

There are plenty of ways you might find out about breaking news: you might happen to visit a website just as something is happening, you might be watching TV or listening to the radio, maybe you get a call or instant message or email from a friend, or find out through our breaking news RSS feed or Windows Live Alerts, or hear about it from us or another person on Twitter (have I mentioned we have several accounts on various topics on Twitter?). I found out about 9/11 from eavesdropping on a phone conversation while waiting in line for coffee. Like I said, plenty of ways.

I'm hyped about the election process. Seriously hyped. If you asked my family, my girlfriend, my friends, my imaginary friends, and my pet goldfish, they'd tell you that I talk about it pretty much every day and they're ready for me to shut up about it already. Much to the dismay of all the aforementioned people, I have found myself thrust into a project here that has only fueled my polit-intoxication: politics widgets that you can embed on your blog, your Facebook account, or any other website for that matter.

I’ll admit I’m not the biggest sports fan. I know that the Super Bowl is coming up (football, right?), at hockey games you watch the puck, and that Safeco Field has the best views of the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound (only because I wasn’t watching the Mariners game I attended). But when msnbc.com’s Whine of the Week article plays the world’s smallest violin for well-paid sports-babies, I can’t get enough! So how did I become a Whine junkie in a section I rarely tread? Well, admittedly, I do work here in site UI design, so I sort of need to know where everything lives. But as I said, I’m not a sports fan, so where would a non-sporting, design-geek type find the very entertaining weekly Whine?

This is where you, our esteemed readers, come into play. We want to know when, why and how to best showcase our exclusive content only found right here at msnbc.com.

For Iowa’s big night, I was the designer in charge of helping our two cover editors make the best cover-grids they could make and troubleshoot technical issues they’d run into. Turns out that I barely earned my free pizza that night because no matter what surprise political win or early candidate speech was thrown at the editors’ wire-feeds and TV screens, they were ready for it!

One editor focusing on the current cover and one anticipating the next move worked like a charm! Aside from a couple minor tweaks, I was just there to admire what I thought was impossible to achieve less than a year ago: cover editors making light-speed changes, big and small, to a visually complicated cover without the intervention of a designer. The media editor was also able to constantly switch to better photos as they were available. It was truly amazing to witness everyone in the newsroom pulling together to beat the competition and deliver up-to-the-minute coverage, and I think we did just that.

It’s a concept that we all learned as tykes in the sandbox with our first red wagon or dump truck: it’s good to share. Now, in this fanciful web 2.0 future (though I’m not yet convinced that web 2.0 has grown up all that much since kindergarten), sharing takes on a whole new meaning. A host of social bookmarking and networking services allows anyone to save, post and describe links publicly and amongst their friends, on sites like del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, Digg, Facebook and Newsvine.

As we prepare to rethink the story pages that make up the bulk of msnbc.com, we want to know how our readers use (or don’t) these types of social sites. Most sharing sites have special interactive bookmarks or browser plug-ins that help users save web pages as they surf. Some sites, including many of our competitors, even sprinkle their pages with icons encouraging users to “Digg this!” or “Facebook that!” My favorite collection of share this badges comes courtesy of Add This.com, who have abstracted the concept into a widget - that’s right, there’s a cottage industry for adding social network icons to your site.

New homepage – check

New video player – check

New Nightly News site – check

Vacations – check

So what’s next? Everything else. Only this time, we’d like to make changes with you, not just for you. Think of this blog as where we all meet up, in that:

• We’ll post our early thoughts on everything from page design problems to new site features and even entirely new sites.
• You tell us what you do and don’t like in the comments.
• Later, we’ll follow up with another post, often including mockups and prototypes—real behind the scenes stuff.
• Your comments will again help refine our work.
• When we publish changes or launch new features, we’ll post how they’re working out.
• And we’ll turn again to the comments for help with any problems post-launch.

Working together just sounds more fun. So if you’re in, bookmark us. Or get our feed. Or memorize alphachannel.msnbc.msn.com. Or just look at the bottom of the msnbc.com homepage soon for the latest post. But do come back often. We’ll make it worth your while. Totally.

Starting later today, you'll be able to embed her report (or any other msnbc.com video clip) on your blog or site, like this:

We've done quite a few updates to the site to make things load faster, look better, and be more helpful. We've added a home button, and improved the response of the fly-out navigation, among other things. View the full entry for the details.