New York Times: Lines and Bub­bles and Bars, Oh My! New Ways to Sift Data. The Times look at Many Eyes, site was cre­ated by sci­en­tists at the Wat­son Research Cen­ter of I.B.M. in Cam­bridge, Mass.

Above is a visu­al­iza­tion of Barack Obama’s speech at the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion last week, and below is a visu­al­iza­tion of Obama’s remarks there about Sen. John McCain.

I inter­viewed ManyEyes’ co-creator, Fer­nanda B. Vié­gas, in July: here’s our video inter­view.

Inter­est­ing. Here’s a video explain­ing Viewzi, the visual search engine that orga­nizes rel­e­vant images on the Web from sources like Ama­zon and Flickr. A hand­ful of searches I con­ducted weren’t par­tic­u­larly impres­sive, but it’s still early and YMMV.

Air Amer­ica Radio host (and soon to be MSNBC host) Rachel Mad­dow — my favorite cable jour­nal­ist —  inter­views Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion about how the Inter­net is chang­ing pol­i­tics. There’s also a Flickr photo set here. Thanks to Steve Rhodes for the pointer.

Some inter­est­ing posts about the future of where the social media rev­o­lu­tion is heading:

One of the kings of the field, Shel Israel, at Global Con­ver­sa­tions: The Future of Social Media.

I think the mas­ter trend is that social media tech­nol­ogy will be con­tin­u­ously refined so that peo­ple will be able to behave and inter­act online as they do in every­day life.

Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer: The Future of Social Media: Hope or Hype?

Aaron Uhrma­cher at Mash­able: How to Find Sta­tis­tics on Social Media. Or, more pre­cisely, how to sell your com­pany on a social media campaign.

Ayelet Noff at Blonde 2.0: Cre­ate Your Per­son­al­ized Music Video Chan­nel With MeeVideo.

MeeMix,
the per­son­al­ized inter­net radio com­mu­nity that allows users to cre­ate
per­son­al­ized music sta­tions and music video chan­nels, has just
announced the launch of Mee­V­ideo, its new per­son­al­ized music video chan­nel appli­ca­tion on Face­book.

Guest writer Megan O’Neill at Blonde 2.0: Top 10 Tips for Social Net­work­ing Success.

MoveOn.org has been research­ing John McCain’s run­ning mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, over the past 24 hours. Here’s what they’ve found:

• She was elected Alaska’s gov­er­nor a lit­tle over a year
  and a
  half ago. Her pre­vi­ous office was mayor of
  Wasilla, a small town out­side Anchor­age. She has no for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence.¹
• Palin is strongly anti-choice, oppos­ing
  abor­tion even in the case of rape or incest.²
• She sup­ported right-wing extrem­ist Pat Buchanan for pres­i­dent  in 2000. ³
• Palin thinks cre­ation­ism should be taught in pub­lic schools.⁴
• She’s
  doesn’t think humans are the cause of cli­mate change.⁵
• She’s solidly in line with John McCain’s
  “Big Oil first” energy pol­icy. She’s pushed hard for more oil
  drilling and says renew­ables won’t be ready for years. She also sued the Bush
  admin­is­tra­tion for list­ing polar bears as an endan­gered species—she was
  wor­ried it would inter­fere with more oil drilling in Alaska.⁶
• How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meet­ing. They spoke a sec­ond time, last Sun­day,
  when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the posi­tion.⁷

I’m lis­ten­ing to Palin give a speech now (Sat­ur­day) on CNN. She just claimed she’s been opposed to the infa­mous Alaska “bridge to nowhere.” MoveOn for­got to men­tion that Palin sup­ported the bridge as lit­tle as two years ago, when the polit­i­cal winds began to shift.

The New Repub­lic: Did Palin Really Fight The “Bridge To Nowhere”?

Media Mat­ters for Amer­ica: Wall Street Jour­nal reported that Palin “high­lighted her oppo­si­tion” to “that bridge to nowhere” — but not her pre­vi­ous reported sup­port for it

Wash­ing­ton Monthly: Palin and the Bridge to Nowhere

Sorry, Gov. Palin, you don’t get a free pass just because you’ve raised five kids.

Sources:

1. “Sarah Palin,” Wikipedia, Accessed August 29, 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin

2. “McCain Selects Anti-Choice Sarah Palin as Run­ning Mate,” NARAL Pro-Choice Amer­ica, August 29, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17515&id=13661–7671297-.BoUhtx&t=1

3. “Sarah Palin, Buchananite,” The Nation, August 29, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17736&id=13661–7671297-.BoUhtx&t=2

4. “‘Cre­ation sci­ence’ enters the race,” Anchor­age Daily News, Octo­ber 27, 2006

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17737&id=13661–7671297-.BoUhtx&t=3

5. “Palin buys cli­mate denial PR spin—ignores sci­ence,” Huff­in­g­ton Post, August 29, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17517&id=13661–7671297-.BoUhtx&t=4

6. “McCain VP Pick Com­pletes Shift to Bush Energy Pol­icy,” Sierra Club, August 29, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17518&id=13661–7671297-.BoUhtx&t=5

“Choice of Palin Promises Failed Energy Poli­cies of the Past,” League of Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers, August 29, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17519&id=13661–7671297-.BoUhtx&t=6

“Pro­tect­ing polar bears gets in way of drilling for oil, says gov­er­nor,” The Times of Lon­don, May 23, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17520&id=13661–7671297-.BoUhtx&t=7

7. “McCain met Palin once before yes­ter­day,” MSNBC, August 29, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=21119&id=13661–7671297-.BoUhtx&t=8

Ear­lier today I made note of the San Jose Mer­cury News piece on the fast-changing entry on Sarah Palin in Wikipedia yesterday.

Well, now it appears that one of the cit­i­zen edi­tors on the entry was … a mem­ber of Sarah Palin’s family.

From the Dai­lyKos: Sarah Palin scrubs her own Wikipedia entry?

This is a break­ing story from
NPR:  Sarah Palin may have scrubbed her own Wikipedia entry shortly
before her nom­i­na­tion leaked this morning.

Here is the audio from NPR.

Here’s a tran­script of some of the high­lights from NPR for any­one who can’t get the audio.

Just 15 min­utes after rumor of her selec­tion broke, a Wikipedia
edi­tor dis­cov­ered some­thing inter­est­ing.  Yes­ter­day, thirty mostly
favor­able changes were made to Palin’s Wikipedia biography.

The user mak­ing the changes was “Young Trigg.” Trig hap­pens to be the name of Sarah Palin’s son.

The changes, all from a sin­gle source, included the addi­tion of a quo­ta­tion call­ing Palin “a politi­cian of eye-popping integrity.“
The edits dimin­ished a ref­er­ence to Palin’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a beauty
pageant and min­i­mized a sec­tion about a con­tro­versy over whether Palin
used her influ­ence to get her ex-brother-in-law fired.

If true… wow.  Do these peo­ple know ANYTHING about the inter­nets?
This woman would have to be incred­i­bly naive not to know that
tam­per­ing with your own wikipedia entry is a no-go and will always get
you found out.  Um… espe­cially with “Young Trigg” as your username.

Now… can some­one with some Wiki savvy do some detec­tive work to see
what other mis­chief “Young Trigg” has been up to with his/her account?

Update:  Thanks to Terre, here’s a cached ver­sion from August 21.

Update 2:  Thanks to dmsilev.  Here’s a list of all Young Trigg’s contributions

“Young Trigg appar­ently just reg­is­tered yes­ter­day and is a
“single-purpose user.”  In other words, its only con­tri­bu­tions are on
one topic:  Sarah Palin. …

Update 7: Some­one at Wikipedia has put up a pretty good “before and after” shot of the edits made over the ~5-hour period in which “Young Trigg” was mess­ing with the entry.

Fas­ci­nat­ing. The cit­i­zens’ posse is on the case.

Chris O’Brien at the San Jose Mer­cury News:  Tug of war over Wiki entry on Sarah Palin. In the end, the wiki news process worked.