“You'd think it would be one big sonic boom,” iReporter Adriana Maxwell said of witnessing the space shuttle Atlantis launch from three miles away. “Instead, it almost feels like it travels across the ocean, and you feel the boom right in the middle of your chest.”

How did she get to see a launch from that close? When NASA announced to their Twitter followers that they would be holding the first “Tweetup” at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Maxwell signed up right away to be one of only 100 people invited to attend. And she shared her front-row photos through iReport, and they made their way into CNN.com’s coverage of the launch.

Maxwell drove from her Marietta, Georgia, home to report Sunday morning to the Kennedy Space Center to meet with officials from NASA, who explained to the group everything that went into getting a shuttle into orbit.

Later that day, the group got a full tour, getting a sense of the history there, not to mention an up-close glimpse of Atlantis one day before launch. “That was amazing because the only people who get to see it that close up are the VIPs,” she said.

The next day, it was time for the big show. The 100 lucky NASA fans had their own “twent,” 3 miles away from the shuttle, where the press usually reports on launches. Maxwell had seen a shuttle blast off before, but this one was really special. “When you’re 3 miles away, it’s just the brightest light ever,” she said. “Just think of a million Roman candles lit up at once.”

That experience alone made the event unforgettable, Maxwell said. She felt really grateful to NASA’s staff for hosting the Tweetup. “These guys were phenomenal.”

As I was putting together the story on young phenoms, I realized most teen athletes have a driving force, someone that pushes them to be great.

Andre Agassi, Tiger Woods, Kaká, and Venus and Serena Williams have their fathers. Lebron James and Cristiano Ronaldo have their mothers. Mike Tyson had his trainer and adoptive dad, Constantine "Cus" D'Amato, and Dakota Simms has his parents, Terence and Yoshi.
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For the last four years, live video has been a big part of CNN.com. From launching the first live online video service in 2005 with CNN Pipeline, to breaking the all-time record for the largest live video event in Internet history earlier this year, suffice it to say, CNN.com changed the game for live video online.

Along the way, you taught us a lot. We learned that you mostly use live video to stay updated on breaking news events and experience the seminal moments of our time – things like the Pres. Obama's Inauguration, Michael Jackson’s memorial, even this week's Oprah's Book Club Event. But outside of these major events, viewing of anchor-driven, produced, live video programming on CNN.com has been very small, especially in comparison to the millions of on-demand video streams you consume on the site every day. And it's with that in mind that we've made a few changes on the video front.
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Cindy Comstock has been a familiar face to me for several years, but I didn’t know her name or her fascinating story for most of that time. I would see her once in a while at my health club, either teaching a cardio dance class or taking one and always having a great time.

One day, I heard her tell someone, “I am the mom of eight kids,” which pretty much floored all of us within earshot. Another time, she mentioned that her husband was in Iraq. It struck me that you never really know how unexpected or complicated the life of the stranger next to you may be.
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I first met Kuol Dut eight years ago - before joining CNN - during my 15 years as a newspaper reporter and editor.

It was my job then to write about immigrants and refugees, and I covered the U.S. government’s resettlement of 3,800 “lost boys” of Sudan in the United States. I did that mainly by following Kuol and three others for their first few months in metro Atlanta, Georgia. They had grown up without mothers or fathers in the midst of an awful war and came to the United States with very little knowledge of the modern world.
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The mother of Neda, the Iranian woman whose death touched millions, is a grieving woman. My colleague, Octavia Nasr, and I spoke with her a few days ago from her home in Tehran.

I was most struck by Hajar Rostami’s sincerity. I don't speak Farsi, but you could hear the pain in her voice, the pain of a broken-hearted mother trying to live a normal life without her daughter.
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I get asked a lot who's my favorite iReporter, and my response is always the same - “I don’t keep favorites.”

It’s a diplomatic answer, and it might seem disingenuous, but the truth is there are many iReporters - far too many to list - whom I hold near and dear to my heart.

Today, I’d like to introduce to you to one.
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The mere mention of Amanda Knox elicits strong opinions. People across the world have been fascinated by her case - it's taken the world and media by storm since her roommate, Meredith Kercher, was first found murdered in November 2007.

I remember the exact moment Meredith Kercher was found dead when I was working at CourtTVNews.com. Instantly, I was intrigued. As time passed and the case slowly worked its way through the Italian justice system, Knox’s case slipped to the back of my mind.
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I took a recent trip "into the cloud" of the Internet for CNN.com. The goal was to find some or all of the photos, blog posts, status updates and documents I save to the Internet instead of on my laptop or work computer.

Part of the way through my adventure, after visiting an IBM cloud computing center (shown above), I learned the IT industry has a name for people like me who want to find the real locations of their digital data.
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When we clicked a mouse on the morning of October 24 and the new CNN.com came to life, a new section of the site was also born.

Nestled between the Travel and iReport tabs on the home page, you’ll find Opinion - the home for a robust lineup of writers who will challenge, reshape or confirm your views on all kinds of topics.
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