We’ve just launched BackStory, our latest new feature on CNN.com, to give you a quick way to catch up on how a story has developed over time.

Now, when we want to give history, context and background to a developing story, we go back through our archives to find “milestone” events and then link those together in an interactive window.

Our BackStory on the investigation into the anthrax attacks takes us back to that first death from anthrax exposure and the spread of the scare to the U.S. Senate offices in those uneasy weeks after the 9/11 attacks. We highlight how the FBI issued a profile of their suspect and then honed in on a scientist — the wrong one — before finally saying this month that they believe they’ve solved the case.

In this and all other BackStories, readers can click through events to get a quick recap of how the story has evolved and how it has been covered on CNN. And we link to full stories of the time to give more details of what we knew then as well as to pages on key players.

So watch out for more BackStories and let us know if they’re giving you the understanding of a story you want.

No we’re not reliving our favorite Tom Cruise movie moments. But in this age of consumer empowerment, we want to do our part to help you navigate the tips and advice our correspondents are offering up in their daily reporting.

People contact us all the time asking us to share the major “takeaways” from our consumer reporting — especially when it comes to money and health matters. So we’re excited to announce the launch of our new consumer tips blog. (http://www.cnn.com/tips)

On the health front, Dr Sanjay Gupta, Elizabeth Cohen and Judy Fortin will be offering advice on how to stay healthy and take a more proactive role in your personal health care.

Personal Finance editor Gerri Willis will share her “top tips” on all things related to your money, from the 5 best ways to sell a home in a down market, to saving for college.

Senior Business Correspondent Ali Velshi will blog here as well, and prove that he is not the “hairless prophet of doom and gloom” as Jon Stewart calls him. Ali can’t help that he’s compelled to tell it like it is. His focus here will be to decode the latest economic news, with the top “takeways” you need to remain an informed consumer.

We know your time is valuable, so Ali, Gerri, Sanjay, Elizabeth and Judy promise to keep their tips short and sweet, with plenty of links to deeper content. In the future, we hope to expand this blog to include ‘top tips’ in other areas– possibly travel and technology.

Check it out starting today. Tell us what you think. Or as Jerry Maguire would say, “Help us help you.”

At CNN we argue a lot about what’s news. The results of those daily discussions, of course, are displayed in bold headlines on the CNN.com home page or in stories on our cable network shows.

But over on our new site, iReport.com, we’re trying something different.

iReport.com is a place where anyone with a story to share is invited to upload it, and anyone else is welcome to rate it, share it or comment on it. The big, bold headlines on that site are the stories that provoke the most heated conversations or score the highest ratings.

On iReport.com, you determine what’s news. And stories float to the top of the iReport.com homepage – on what we’re calling the “newsiest” list — based on community activity. The idea is that there’s news value in what people read, talk about and send to their friends.

iReport.com has only been live for a few short weeks, but already the “newsiest” list has turned up some fascinating stories, and not exactly what you might find on your favorite traditional news site:

• An injured dolphin helps amputees adjust to new realities

• The Chicago River turns green in a time-lapse video from St. Patrick’s Day in downtown Chicago

• A mother of a 19-year-old U.S. Marine who’s about to go to Iraq says she’s scared, and commenters jump in to offer support

• Hundreds of plastic eggs roll off a flying helicopter to start a massive Easter hunt in Oklahoma City

• A man recalls the day he heard Martin Luther King was shot, and how his neighbors reacted

So what do you think? Are they newsworthy? Head over to iReport.com today to cast your own vote for what counts as news. Upload a story, rate someone else’s, join the conversation. Hope to see you there.

On Super Tuesday CNN.com collected user feedback through comment cards on our web site. We’ve used this feedback to improve our Elections coverage on the site and make it more useful and user friendly for our viewers. We hope you appreciate the changes and continue to come to CNN for the latest Election news and results. Below we’ve answered a few of the top questions puzzling some of our users along with answers. Got more questions? Send them to us through our blog and we’ll do our best to respond!

Your Questions:

Why are the names I saw on the ballot at my voting precinct different from the names on your results tables?
There may be fewer names displayed on our results tables than what you see on your ballot because CNN.com only displays those candidates considered editorially relevant by The Associated Press (AP) and Edison Media Research (EMR), which provide the results feed to CNN. Thus, there may be some candidates you see on your ballot that do not display on CNN because they are officially out of the race or are not considered editorially relevant. How CNN projects winners.

Some states don’t show 100% precincts reporting, even though the race happened a while ago. Why is that happening, and when will we see the rest of the results?
Some states spread their contests over several days, and the results feed from AP/EMR when they are reported by state or party officials. So partial results may remain on the results tables for some time. Once results are in we will display them on our tables.

CNN.com and the minds behind Court TV have come together to bring you the best crime and justice coverage available. Check it out at www.cnn.com/crime.

Court TV is now In Session, bringing its news gathering expertise to CNN.com with insights, analysis and behind-the-scenes scoops from its anchors and correspondents in a new blog, “Sidebar.” We’ll carry up-to-the-minute news of arrests and verdicts. Crime junkies can go behind the police tape and into the courtroom like never before, with a complete video collection of the day’s crime highlights.

We’ll take you live as police announce arrests and judges mete out justice. We’ll deliver the national headlines and the top crime stories in your backyard through our regional affiliates.

You’ll have easy access to hot court documents so you can see the inner workings of high-profile cases. We’ll also have links to Interpol and the FBI that can turn you into crime solvers.

Of course, we’ll want to hear from you through I-Reports and our 13th Juror quick vote.

To put it all in perspective, you can check out the Crime Library for everything from wise guys to serial killers.

Stop by the Celebrity Courthouse for the latest celebutante DUI. And don’t forget to round up our Usual Suspects for the latest about the top trials and investigations of the day. Please, let us know how we can make a good thing even better.

When we relaunched CNN.com a few months ago, we promised to keep evolving, adding new features and functionality based on what you told us you wanted.

So, we are pleased to let you know that last week we added a number of new elements, including:

• A direct link to our most popular stories right on the home page. And a new, enhanced Most Popular page.
• A quick way to browse all the stories that CNN.com has published in the past 24 hours.
• A Tools and Widgets page showing all the new gadgets, widgets and alerters that you can get to stay on top of the news.
• A simple way to save and share stories by adding them to your pages on Digg, Facebook, del.icio.us, reddit and StumbleUpon.
  

Please let us know how you like the new features and what else you would like us to add. Then, stay tuned for more!

We launched CNNPolitics.com on Friday to open a gateway to the depth of CNN’s political reporting.

We’re offering political junkies a bookmark to everything that happens in Washington and along the campaign trail. And for those whose interest in politics isn’t quite so passionate, you’ll find the latest headlines and video on the big stories and hot topics, some fun stuff and some surprises every time you check in.

CNNPolitics.com brings the newsgathering of the best political team to one online destination. Our “ticker” is a constant stream of news - as it happens - from hundreds of CNN journalists. As the presidential campaigns heat up, we’re adding complete coverage from the key early-voting states. We’re also streaming live video - a LOT of video - from events and interviews with those making news. Plus, you can get an all-access pass to our comprehensive politics video library.

Want to know what it all means? Find out with insight from our analysts across the political spectrum - not just what happened, but how and why it happened, and what’s going to happen next.

We’re matching up presidential candidates on where they stand on issues, how much money they’ve collected, how they’re spending it and what it means in the polls. You can find key dates on the road to the 2008 elections, check out some zingers delivered in debates past or match up presidential candidates in a game of Presidential Pong.

In coming weeks, we’ll give you more ways to make yourself heard. We want your thoughts - and your e-mail and video - on issues that you care about. We’ll give you ways to question the candidates yourself, and we’ll let you caucus on those issues in our online political community.

And the site will get deeper and richer as the election gets closer.

We’ll analyze where campaign contributions are coming from. We’ll update you on all the latest polls. We’ll track where the candidates are every day. We’ll keep a running count of who has the most delegates lined up. We’ll blog from our Election Express bus as it rolls across the country.

Need more than that? Then tell us - we want to hear how we’re doing and what we can do better.

This time last year, the small team that produces the I-Report section on CNN.com didn’t have a whole lot to do.

We’d raced to launch the brand new section page, filled it up with simple forms for collecting video and photos, and made big plans with our friends and colleagues who produce CNN TV to get the I-Reports on the air once they came in.

Then we waited. Would I-Report catch on? Would people send stories? Could we get them on CNN?

…

A year later, before leaving work Wednesday night, I started to type up a celebratory blog post (What a year! Go team!), when I heard CNN.com producer Tyson Wheatley yell from across the newsroom, “Lila, turn up your TV! I-Report!”

A bridge had collapsed in downtown Minneapolis, plunging cars into the Mississippi River below. And there on CNN was Wolf Blitzer, getting the details by phone from I-Reporter Mark Lacroix, whose apartment overlooks the bridge. Lacroix’s first instinct when he saw the deadly scene was to call 911. His second was to pick up his camera, document the disaster and send the photos to I-Report.

Lacroix explained to Blitzer during the live broadcast that he often crosses that bridge on his way home, and had just happened to leave work earlier than usual that day. He’s not a professional journalist with a polished delivery — he’s someone who watched a tragic event from his apartment window, and his voice and first-person account immediately conveyed the shock and grief that any of us would feel if something so awful had happened in our own hometown.

In the last year, Lacroix and hundreds of others like him have changed the way news stories are gathered and told on CNN. I-Report contributors have shared vivid, first-person accounts of breaking stories and helped to give voice and perspective to the issues behind the headlines. (You can see some of the year’s best in our interactive timeline.)

In the next year, we hope I-Report contributors will have an even stronger voice in CNN’s coverage. And we’re working on some new ways to make that happen, including a new design for our page and plans to highlight I-Report debate around issues in election politics.

What else would you like to see? Post a comment below to let us know, or send your own story as an I-Report.

…oh, everything. Topic pages, one of my favorite features introduced in the relaunch, can be found at the top of every page of CNN.com and sprinkled contextually throughout the site. Compiling as many as 100 news stories on a particular topic, we now have more than 100,000 of them and counting. Topic pages allow the editors and staff at CNN.com to package and present more of the daily coverage that we produce, on more topics of interest to more of our users. RSS feeds are available for each, too, whether you’re following Michael Vick’s dogfighting charges, the shocking revelations at NASA or Lindsay Lohan.

Even if your news tastes are more, say, specific, we have a niche for you. Are you tracking news on Nuts and Edible Seeds? Need the latest on Texas Hold-em? (Even we were surprised how robust that coverage is.) You can also check out the popularity of particular topics in the Most Popular module on the mosaic pages, and we do! We expect our Hot Topics navigation to reflect the news of the day and the conversations of the day, as well.

So much more exciting content is ahead in future phases of the relaunch, as we focus now on our in-depth coverage and the topics that will keep our attention for weeks and months ahead. Up next, we look forward to presenting some of CNN’s best reporting from Christiane Amanpour in God’s Warriors, further developing our coverage of the 2008 presidential race in the Election Center and expanding our comprehensive presentation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Look for these - and others - on the Topics page, and let us know what you’d like more on!

Every few weeks a small group of us here at CNN.com get together for what we informally call an “Exchange Think” session. We’ll extract ourselves from the often frenetic pace of the newsroom, find a quiet corner, and share all the cool new things we’ve stumbled upon online, let each other know about new blogs, and just dream up fun ideas for the site.

Many of our discussions center around ways to enhance community on the CNN.com. For example, lately we find ourselves talking about pervasive newsgames, mash-up or green screen contests, meaningful CNN presence in online worlds, and other avenues for making user participation a compelling component of our storytelling. Building up a community on CNN.com is one of my personal passions. For our sessions, we also routinely bring in guests from across the newsroom so that we can hear about everyone’s own passionate projects.

For me, one of the best things about working at CNN.com is that we have the opportunity to take our blue sky ideas and make them reality. In addition to the many planned features that we’ll be rolling out continuously as part of the evolution of CNN.com, many of our “Exchange Think” ideas have also had an impact. For example, the CNN Exchange Flickr group, which feeds into I-Reports, is one of the great ideas that came out of an Exchange Think session. The I-Report blog is another.

Here are some of our favorite sites:

• Flickr
• Boing Boing
• BBC’s Backstage Blog
• Cool Hunting
• Information Aesthetics
• Smart Mobs

Do you have a great idea for us? We’d love to hear all about your ideas for newsgames, mash-up contests, or anything else that would get you excited about interacting with other CNN.com users and engaging with our stories. Let us know what content or resources we can provide to make your ideas viable, and we’ll be happy to explore it. Contact us with your ideas, share your clips or creations, or just let us know about links or initiatives that should be on our radar. We look forward to hearing from you!