Those of you who are news junkies and enjoy something a little different and interactive; our latest Site of Note is for you.

Designed by Remon Tijessen (Fluid) and Marco Christis (SS+K), Spectra is the MSNBC’s innovative way for you to receive up to the minute news.

Spectra is a 3D visual newsreader that offers up to date current news, from world stories to the latest videos and blogs making news headlines from around the world. All the main news sections consist of small sub news sections that you can then add into your channel’s tab. These then get loaded into a “whirlwind/coverflow” type interface where you can select or scroll through each news story with the option to read the full article.

It doesn’t stop there though. You are able to save the stories that you enjoyed, change your view, search for stories, order your channels by date or topic and even switch your images on and off, which is great if you have a low speed connection.

The two elements that I found interesting are the human interaction features. In the change view tab you are able to choose news stories through an audio sensor, which selects stories when you talk to your computer based on the volume of your voice. The other feature is a colour sensor. It lets you choose news articles by waving an object in front of your webcam, after which the colour sensor matches the colour of the object to a news article.

What impressed me about this site is the usability factor, despite it being flash. It loads quickly; it’s almost totally customisable which cuts out the clutter, it’s simple to use, easy on the eye and has a fun factor to it.

There are two things that I did pick up that could be addressed. The one is more of a personal thing than anything else - and that is the button sound effects. It’s really irritating having all the different “click” sounds when you hover over objects especially when you’re trying to listen to music. If you are going to have music or sound effects on a site you should always give the user the option of disabling it.

The other element that I picked up that could be improved upon is the support functionality. When you click on support, an email opens in your email client. In my opinion the best practice would be to have a short online form which the user can fill in right then and there and won’t take them away from the site. Many people today use webmail for email so this functionality will not work for them.

Barring those two small issues, it’s overall a great site and definitely worth visiting.