Sure, there’s a fancy Ajax-y kind of wrapper around it, and there’s a way to sort out stories that are popular amongst different time periods, amongst other things.

My two second take on it is that — you know, maybe for people with 30 inch displays, it works.  But for someone with an average 19 inch display, you just can’t absorb enough information at a glance.  The reason why Techmeme works for me (and Megite, and Blogrunner) is that they are all “no frills” in their appearance.  I get to see headlines — lots of headlines, organized and indented in such a way that I recognize at a *glance* the hierarchy of news {its also why I likes popurls}.

Could Techmeme learn a thing or three from Newspond?  Sure.  (Where’s that search function, Gabe?)

But is it revolutionary?  … to borrow a word from Newspond’s own lexicon — “meh”.  They’ll have to tighten up the design and usability up a few ratchets before I change that into a “yea”.