Facial recognition is not only pretty good, but is available in consumer applications. Google's Picasa does it quite well for your personal photos, and Face.com can go through your Facebook photos and quite accurately suggest tags.

I've seen very helpful Flash visualizations on news websites that helped understand the story better.

For example, this interactive map of drug war related deaths in Mexico is very well done. It doesn't just clarify the conflict, but encourages the reader to analyze and research the topic independently in addition to linearly reading the text of an article.

Just reading an article, listening to the radio or watching a news program often gives the illusion of learning and understanding new information, whereas in reality very little is retained.

Innovative and interactive ways of presenting information solve this problem.

I run an ad-supported website, but I don't see a problem with ad blocking software.

The reason? I get paid for ad clicks, and people who block ads are very unlikely to click them even if they they weren't blocked.

The site visitor is not obliged to click or view my ads.