Move over, Google Labs: MSNBC has the pixels cooking with NewsWare about which they say: "We’re always searching for useful and fun ways to enhance and extend the msnbc.com experience."

Whether you like, despise or don’t really care one way or the other about MSNBC, you have to admit they’re doing some pretty interesting stuff. While the Newsbreaker game ran jumpy (and I’m accessing it on FiOS) and the headlines scream by when you get into multiball mode, Newsblaster is a fun spin on Marbles. Both games incorporate news headlines into the game play itself, which makes them appropriate versions of these classics. When you’re done playing, you can customize your own news ticker widget and set up MSNBC on your mobile phone.

The coolest piece of NewsWare, though, is the Spectra Visual Newsreader (screen shot above), which is one of the slickest pieces of Flash you’ll find anywhere these days. You can explore the headlines in a variety of categories as the stories swirl and flip before your eyes. It needs to be tweaked, though, so you can save your settings and go into the Newsreader with one click without having to rebuild your channels each time.

NewsWare is new, but MSNBC is doing a good job of extending their brand and equity into these widgets and activities. Assuming the Web marketers at MSNBC really are "always searching for useful and fun ways to enhance and extend the msnbc.com experience," NewsWare could turn into a real destination site before too long.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 7:46 am and is filed under Internet Stuff.