Here are three cool new E3 site features I'm excited to see live in the days before E3:

• Showfloor Map - We've done Flash maps before, but this year we tried to strike an even balance between function (as site navigation and place information) and playfulness.
  
• Custom Twitter stream (right-column of E3 page or as a popup) - This custom Twitter app mixes discussions between editors' Twitter accounts and users who reply to them. Even before the show, it's already been an entertaining stream of discussion, and it's only going to get better during the show. To use it as a Twitter app, click the link to pop it out into its own window.
• E3 Photo Feature - We only have one batch up now, but as the show progresses, many sets of images taken from the show floor and related E3 events will get added to the photostream. We've been pretty limited in how we put up images on GameSpot (only as screenshots or standalone news images), and this is a test for doing more to tell a story with images.

E3 is reborn for 2009, and the new show deserved some extra GameSpot site development effort.

I'm pretty jazzed about the new E3 site experience we've put together for this year's show. It's less a matrix of modules and more of an information stream, with options for a curated stream of highlights or to apply various custom dynamic filters. So this year, you can slice and dice the huge volume of content GameSpot produces at E3 as you'd like it. Or just periodically check the main E3 page for the highlights, also to be delivered via Twitter.

A couple key features are yet to come...

GameSpot Wide's public beta will be ending late next week and we'll be moving the new design over to the main www.gamespot.com site. There's a major batch of changes that will hit the beta site on Tuesday as a part of our regular beta release schedule (past release notes are here).

In addition to many small fixes, two of the significant updates will be:

- major tweaks to the profile index page layout based on user feedback

- addition of the new mini-feed panel into the user box in the top-right of every page. This expanding panel will showcase recent blog and tracked games updates and will also bring back the My Games jump-links pulldown.

Panel preview: