At CNN.com, we’re always working to enhance and improve the video experience for YOU, our consumers. We are very happy to announce our latest move in that effort with the introduction of the CNN.com embeddable video player, a stand-alone video player that can be virally distributed by using a code snippet to embed on almost any site or blog that you choose. For the time being, the player is limited to a single clip and available in the player size, 384×216. We’ve also added a share feature to allow you to share videos on your favorite social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

See something you like and want to share it with others? Just click on the button on the video player that says “embed this video”. Then, you will see a message allowing you to copy the embed code to place on your site. And, just like that, you’ve embedded CNN.com video! Or click on the share button and select a site from the list on which you’d like to share a video link .We hope you enjoy these latest features – let us know what you think!

Earlier this week, a spam message purporting to be from CNN began circulating the Internet. We decided to blog about this to alert those of you who hadn’t yet received it to be on the lookout for it; and also to assure those of you who did receive it that the message was NOT, in fact, from CNN.

As you may know, spammers often disguise or forge the source of their e-mail to give recipients the impression that the message derived from another system, especially one tied to a recognizable brand. In this instance, the spammer chose to use the CNN brand.

The message, claiming to contain CNN’s Top 10 news stories and videos of the day, is fraudulent and did not originate from CNN. If you have received it, we suggest that you delete it from your mailbox. Further, we recommend you delete any e-mail message from your mailbox that you believe may be illegitimate.

Thanks to all of you out there who alerted us to the existence of this spam purporting to be from CNN.

…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!

As many of you have noted through our feedback forms, we also overhauled our weather system. One thing you told us loud and clear in our research for this project was that weather was important to everyone (in one way or another). We wanted to make sure that we were able to provide you with the most useful and meaningful weather experience possible.

Now, in addition to getting 10-day forecasts and a wide array of weather maps, you have the ability to save multiple locations soyou can see what the weather is like either where you’re going or where you’ve been. Once you save your weather location, you’ll see the current condition displayed on the homepage and at the top of every page. Now you can get your weather anywhere you go on the site.

We’ve also gotten a lot of feedback from you about things you’d like to see. We heard you. Here’s what you’ve asked for:

And we’re not done… we’ve still got a lot of new features and advancements coming to help improve our weather system.

If I were to describe all the intricate technical details behind the new CNN.com, you’d probably fall asleep before you could hit the back button. Of course, those of us working at CNN.com would be jealous, because most of us have gotten very little sleep in recent months.

From a technology standpoint, the biggest shift in the new CNN.com is the inclusion of more dynamic services. You’ll notice the ability to personalize your weather in the global navigation at the top of this page and across the entire site. On the homepage, there’s an an additional area for your local forecast as well as headlines from your area. On story pages, there’s a “We Recommend” box in the lower right that offers related content from CNN.com and our partners tailored to the most recent stories you’ve read.

In the coming months, you’ll notice more features that further personalize your experience on CNN.com. So what’s interesting about all that? From the time CNN.com launched in 1995, it’s been mostly a “flat” site, meaning every user essentially got the same content. As you might expect, a site like CNN.com serves millions of users each day, and traffic can double or triple at a moment’s notice during breaking news. Everything we do from a technology standpoint must have the ability to scale effectively during those times. The ability to reliably serve traffic and manage bandwidth is a science in itself, and we’ve all read and heard about various web sites crashing under the weight of traffic. We’d rather report those stories rather than be the subject of them.

This is also the first time we’ve conducted an extensive beta, which is a little like trying to change your tire while driving a hundred miles an hour. Though challenging, we’ve learned a lot, especially via feedback from users. We’ve made several hundred fixes during the beta period and we have many more planned… so keep the comments coming!

Anyway, we’ve spent a good portion of the last year designing and building new systems to deliver a richer and more targeted experience for users whether you’re scanning headlines, watching video, checking the weather or reading the latest news. There’s been a large technology team devoted to this project, and it’s fair to say there are well over a hundred technologists involved and hundreds of thousands of lines of code that have been written over the course of many months. Once the new CNN.com rolls out, we’ll all be getting some much-needed sleep.

As the other posts have mentioned, CNN.com is taking the next step in storytelling by taking advantage of the best elements available to tell a story. From the video perspective, this means better incorporation of video into our overall story telling and it also means an improved overall video experience. The principle means for doing that is the move to an in-page flash video player and in-page video across our various storytelling pages:

• http://beta.cnn.com/video/ (in-page video player)
• http://beta.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/12/gaza.violence/index.html#cnnSTCVideo (in-page video in a storytelling page)

Your feedback has been overwhelmingly supportive of the move in that direction. I know… finally some good news for our Mac friends! However, as with any big change there are going to be a few growing pains along the way and we admittedly are feeling a few. We understand from some of our Mac users and some folks using Firefox that you are experiencing some issues. I just want you to know that we are on it and that your feedback is very helpful in working through the issues. So, please keep that feedback coming and please be specific about what type of computer and operating system you are on when experiencing any issues.

The other big news on the video side is the move of our broadband, multiple live feed service from a subscription to a free service. We think it is great content that the larger CNN.com audience will find very useful. It let’s you experience live events and breaking news as it is happening in real-time on your computer. As David Payne mentioned, CNN.com’s online service is the launching point for other platforms like mobile, podcasting and cable VOD. We feel like the changes being made at CNN.com put us in an even better position to serve your needs for timely news and information across all platforms, on all devices, around the World. So please let us know what you think.

I just got back from 2 weeks in Japan so I missed a lot of the excitement (and work!) of the beta launch. When I got back of course one of the first calls was to my mom to let her know I was safely back knowing she would be worried like all moms would be.

After getting past the trip download, she told me she was mad that I hadn’t let her know about the beta test for the enhanced site. Then, she went on and on about how great she thought it was: easy to find things, appreciated the local coverage to complement the CNN bread and butter and thought the new video experience was great.

As I’d expect many technology businesses do, we have to think about people outside of our colleagues and those not as comfortable with technology as we are when creating new products or enhancing existing ones. Often I’ve heard people ask “would your mom be able to figure it out.” In the case of what we are currently testing I can proudly say that unprompted the CNN.com beta passed “the mom test.” That’s great news and makes me very excited about how we’ll be received when the new pages are debuted on July 1.

We’ve got what I think will be a great marketing campaign that will be rolling out in the coming weeks and months that I’ll be communicating more about soon.