Well, for me, I like the idea of a What's New feature, but honestly, the module never did work correctly for all modules. Not that the module wasn't good, but it's really a matter of DNN and 3rd party table design. In order to know what's new, you need to have a clear definition about what qualifies as 'new'. If you think that's easy, consider a case where an announcement is made, published, then a few hours later, a spelling error is corrected. Does the 2nd mod qualify as a new item, or do you base the qualification on the date the item was created? What if the mod corrected the location of an event?
Now, given that not all modules store DateLastModified, what do you use to select as 'What's New'. Is the date the module was created, or is it the date the item was created, or is it....
To get around these types of issues, I found it simple to create an RSS newsfeed, with the items I wanted to list as 'What's New', and syndicate it. You can do that fairly easily, and it's something that works. even marking modules with the syndicate flag doesn't always work. I just modify the newsfeed, and let the News (RSS Newsfeeds) or XML module do its' thing. Best of all, the newsfeed is accessible to others because that's the nature of newsfeeds - syndication. Obviously, this solution is not completely automated, and won't work for a large site, but generally, it does give smaller sites, and most sites the capability.
Cheers