Grid Style Display of multisites recent Post, excerpts and thumbnail on a page

today, i am gonna talk about displaying recent post across a multisite in a single static page using the grid view. but i’ll be asking some questions too. so please respond.

i am new to wordpress and web programming in general, so call me a newbie…lol… i visited the ieee website and i loved the arangment of their recent post. it displayed recent post across its multisite in grids showing the excerpts and thumbnails. pretty cool… something like the youtube Homepage, showing latest videos thumbs from various categories in rows.

i have widget that makes me execute php in my static pages, so i am guess calling a post categories, excerpt and thumbnails to my fancy designed static home page shouldnt be a problem. but how can i archieve this? and how can i make it appear in Grids?

i stumbled upon a blog that talked about stacking post in grid style but i didnt really understand a thing, plus i didnt fancy the grid style output. this brings me to the my 2 part question.

1. is there a simple way to display post and thumbnail from different sites in a network, in the style shown by the ieee website .

and

2. is there a plugin that can display a slide show carry the excerpts in the slide as seen in the ieee website?

please do not ignor this post, please respond. i really want to maximise wordpress and its flexibility.