Who knows whether this weekend's "Snakes on a Plane" movie will turn out to be so good it's bad, or so bad it's good, but it's certainly earning a hefty share of blog buzz. Star Samuel L. Jackson (who hawked the flick in true Samuel L. Jackson style Tuesday on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show") is today's fourth most-discussed person in the blogosphere as a result, and the film's pre-buzz graphical line is certainly on the rise, no doubt fueled by the online ability to send a phone message to friends from SamJack himself:



Candidate says what?
Virginia Sen. (and GOP Presidential hopeful?) George Allen might not be so hopeful anymore, now that he's opened his mouth a little too widely (today's top news story). Discuss.

So long, "Fish Face"
It probably wasn't his best acting performance, but Actor Bruno Kirby's "baby fish face!" utterance during a game of charades in "When Harry Met Sally" certainly is memorable. Kirby (today's burstiest person) died this week of leukemia, and fans are mourning his status as an all-time supporting actor.

Tables turned?
One of today's most-cited blog posts, in the wake of momentus political/historical events, again comes from Glenn Greenwald, who looks at the impact of questioning the Commander-in-Chief, depending on which way one leans, politically speaking.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:58 AM

You gotta hand it to Will Farrell, a comedian/actor who's made a career out of making a fool of himself. He's today's second most-blogged personality because of the weekend release of "Talladega Nights," a NASCAR movie in which Farrell plays the two-named Ricky Bobby. Bloggers seem to like it because it's funny...or not-so-funny, depending.

Trail-blazing Butcher
Today's burstiest blog person is Alaskan Susan Butcher, the first woman to win the Iditarod sled-dog race (and who won it four times during her life). She died at age 51 of cancer. "She was an icon, and the state (mourns) her passing," writes one fellow Alaskan. Another blogger praises Butcher's inspiration: "When I'm struggling along in a long run or ride, my heart pounding, and my mind considers quitting, I think of other things to clear my head and limbs of the discomfort. One of the things I think of is Susan Butcher and her dogs racing in the winter darkness with miles yet to go before they rest. I think I can keep going a bit further...Thank you Susan for your inspiration." The blogger at Dances with Leaves offer another touching tribute.

Ok, white guys CAN dance
Today's third most-cited link from YouTube.com is living proof that yes, men of Caucasian ancestry...even on treadmills...CAN dance.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:09 AM

Those smart-talkin' turtles named after classic Renaissance painters (Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo and Leonardo) are back for another generation of kids who long to live in the sewers, eat pizza and fight crime; the movie trailer for the March 2007 "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie was the most-cited blog entry over the weekend. "Puts the Ninja in Ninja Turtles," proclaims one LiveJournal blogger. "Turtle Power," chimes in another. Other weekend movie hits, based on blog citations or commonly used phrases: Monster House, Clerks II, "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water."

Microsoft takes on iPod
Microsoft's long-rumored "Zune" also captured plenty of entertainment buzz, now that the portable media/gaming device is officially in the works. Engadget's wrap-up was a top blog post over the weekend, as were immediate reviews of a product that's not even yet on the market, and some bloggers hope the iPod competitor will finally force industry standards for such devices. A BlogPulse trend graph shows how much catching up Microsoft has to do:

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:40 AM

Strange and curious sightings in the blogosphere today...

From the sports desk
It's obvious that blogging is a worldwide phenomenon when there's far more buzz for the upcoming World Cup soccer championships in Germany than the ongoing NBA championships in the states and the French Open tennis matches in France. A BlogPulse trend graph shows the way:



Suddenly, the eBay grilled cheese sandwich makes sense
Popping up at No. 12 today among top links is an ad, obviously, for the Jesus Pan, which allows culinary believers to cook the image of Jesus Christ right into whatever they're fryin' up. WWJF indeed?

Paint With Numbers, literally
Another popular link today is OneThousandPaintings.com, which allows you to buy from Sala, a Swiss painter, an original painting (blue on white) of all the numbers, apparently, from 1-1,000. Discussion ranges from "cool idea" to "a sucker born every minute." He paints. You decide.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 03:24 PM

The film version of “The Da Vinci Code,” based on author Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, is creating an impressive level of online “buzz” among bloggers in anticipation of its release today.

“The Da Vinci Code” has enjoyed a six-fold increase in blog citations in the last three weeks, fueled by calls for boycotts by religious officials concerned about the film’s core message, fan anticipation for the Ron Howard production, and recent lukewarm reviews emanating from the Cannes Film Festival and movie critics.

Beginning in early April, in fact, “The Da Vinci Code” shared about equal amounts of online buzz with the Catholic Church, or about .12% of all blog discussions, according to BlogPulse.com, a search engine and analysis portal that tracks issues, themes, trends and news from an index of 28 million blogs. By today, nearly .6% of all blog posts mention “The Da Vinci Code.”




Buzz began to build in early April when the Vatican and other Christian organizations protested the movie’s central, fictional premise: that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married and produced an heir whose identity has been protected for generations by a secret religious society. The controversial nature of the film has been discussed by bloggers in the U.S., Canada, China, India, Italy, France, Germany and other countries.

Since the movie’s debut this week at the Cannes Film Festival, blog buzz for “Da Vinci Code” also has been influenced by early negative or so-so reviews of the film, including feedback from Truth Dig (“most critics hate it”), the China Herald and the film review site Rotten Tomatoes, which describes it as “stagnant”’ and “more like a walk through a museum than a thriller.”

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:05 AM

"Crash" crashed the Oscars Sunday night, and buzz about who won (and who didn't) captured 8 of today's top 10 key phrases, while movie celebs dominated the most-discussed people list as well. Celeb-discussion included nods to host Jon Stewart (at No. 2, mixed reviews), best supporting actor George Clooney (No. 3), best actress Reese Witherspoon (No. 5), supporting actress Rachel Weisz (No. 7), best actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (No. 8), and actress nominee Felicity Huffman (No. 9). Not to be outdone, Tom Cruise, Jenny McCarty, Rob Schneider and Paris Hilton took home Razzy Awards in today's 33rd-most-cited news story.

Creativity in Legos, on film
As someone who has wrestled with more than her share of Lego creations in the endeavor known as motherhood, let me congratulate the winners featured in Tech Blog's Top 10 Strangest Lego Creations, today's ninth-most-cited link (and I thought the helicopter thing was hard). Equally creative is today's No. 2, 4 and 7 most-cited links, the opening credits to "The Simpson's" acted by real people with real nuclear plant smokestacks and scaneed grocery-store babies. D'oh! says MorgansMinstrel at LiveJournal. Too much time on someone's hands? asks an otherwise impressed Laist blogger.

Leakbusters?
When the news leaks out, and it's rarely good, who's the White House gonna call? The FBI and CIA, apparently, according to today's most-cited news story from The Washington Post, which is threatening news reporters with espionage laws for "leaks." Conversation is already fairly hefty.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:34 AM

Today's one of those days when you skim the topics, issues, people and sources that bloggers are opining about and you realize what an increasingly huge, diverse place the blogosphere is...

Live, from Iraq
As Americans continue to lose confidence in President George Bush's ability to deal with the war in Iraq, the continuing Katrina aftermath and other issues, bloggers in Iraq, especially today's No. 3 top blog post from Iraq the Model, give a disturbingly real sense of what it's like to live in that country. "Prepare for going back to your hole Saddam," writes Omar, on a day when bombings prevented him from going to work so he watched Hussein's televised trial instead, "but this time, nobody is going to pull you out.

Technology...both ends of the spectrum
Now that Apple's Steve Jobs has announced his company's newest products, a multi-media Mac mini (today's most-shared link) and a Hi-Fi iPod stereo box (today's No. 2 and No. 4 top blog posts), let's just say some Apple fanatics will be happy for more months to come (while some are underwhelmed). But all is not well in the land of technology, as today's top blog post from Think Progress reveals. Seems the GOP in Minnesota is using a CD to track and log its members' opinions...without their knowledge. Mike the Mad Biologist notes that NIH researchers, if they engaged in the same violations of privacy, would face fines and jail time.

Women take control
Now that South Dakota is in line to take the hardest line on abortion, women are taking control, as evidenced by today's No. 5 top blog post from "Molly," who notes that women historically take health issues into their owns when the medical, legal and legislative professions abandon them. Her abortion manual is one such attempt. "Click. Print. Save," advises one LiveJournaler, while not endorsing do-it-your-self procedures. Important information, says Gramina, for those who consider South Dakota "the canary in our national coal mine." But a commenter on Bubba's blog finds the information irresponsible.

The new itnernational threat: Islamism?
Today's most-shared news story comes from a fairly new source: the Danish Internavisen Jyllands-Posten, where a group of authors/scholars have signed the Manifesto: Together Facing the New Totalitarianism. BlogPulse's Conversation Tracker finds an intension discussion around the manifesto in just a few day's time.

Oscar hunk buzz...
How is "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart faring in discussion about other leading men for this year's Oscars? Quite well, thanks, according to today's BlogPulse Spotlight.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:38 AM

Just goes to show you that a little media exposure goes a long way, which explains why singer Kelly Clarkson, the "American Idol" winner who snapped up a few Grammy Awards this week, is today's second most-blogged personality and why a real-estate evaluation web site called Zillow.com is among today's most-shared links after being featured this week on NPR.

Apple/iPod speculation abounds
Two other popular blog posts today discuss Apple and its iPod/iTunes domination, which will either expand if the company acquires Palm (today's No. 3 top blog post) or diminish if open-source Songbird takes off (the No. 2 top post) as an iTunes competitor, depending on whom you believe. Jake's Blog isn't all that impressed with Songbird; neither is the blogger at Insignificant Thoughts, pointing out that as an open-source application, "there will be 30,000,000,000,000,000,000 point releases fixing one bug at a time 30 times a week."

The cartoons...debuted in Egypt?
Today's top blog post, from Rantings of a Sandmonkey, notes that the editorial cartoons of the prophet Muhammed, the ones causing riots in the Middle East, also appeared without comment last fall in Egyptian newspapers. The Freedom for Egyptians blog (No. 10 blog post) seconds the motion. Operating on the notion that humor might perhaps work some magic, Iowahawk blogger offers satire on a similar cartoon brou-ha-ha brewing in the Midwest, as in Wisconsin.

Valentine's Day is for...eating?
If you wanna know what your sweetie has in mind for Valentine's Day this year, get ready to chow down:

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:49 AM

When is an editorial or political cartoon offensive, and who defines offensive? The issue is boiling in the blogosphere today, over European cartoons (today's No. 7 top news story) that have angered Muslims around the world (today's No. 8 top phrase) and a Washington Post cartoon that has angered the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Blogger Michelle Malkin, in fact, has taken up the issue in several to-ranked blog posts today.

DeLay's successor
No sooner had Ohio Rep. John Boehner (today's 14th burstiest person) been elected as the new majority-party leader of the House of Representatives than the scrutiny started from various camps.

When you're No. 1, everybody takes a shot
During the week that Oscar nominations were announced, parodies of the much-nominated film "Brokeback Mountain" also made appearances on BlogPulse, including Mighty McPilgrim's "Broke Mac Mountain" (a computer funny and today's 30th most-shared link) and "Brokeback to the Future," (today's most-shared link) which features clips of old "Back to the Future" episodes.

That was some FAST backpedalling
President Bush swore Tuesday night that the U.S. is addicted to oil. Two of the country's high-level bureaucrats/departements swore just a day later that, well, it's not quite true. Especially if you don't want to upset those Middle East countries that like selling the U.S. their oil.

Oscar buzz
Today, BlogPulse trend graphs look at buzz for this year's Oscar-nominated directors:

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:40 PM

The charges have already been dropped, but the damage has been done over anti-war activist and Gold Star Mom Cindy Sheehan's arrest (today's top news story) for "unlawful conduct." Her crime? As a ticketed audience member, she wore an T-shirt to President Bush's State of the Union speech Tuesday night that read: "2,245 Dead. How Many More?" Cindy's version of the events appears several times among today's top blog entries and most-shared links, at Daily Kos and on Michael Moore's web site.

You gotta wonder: would charges have been dropped if another woman, a certain Beverly Young, a Congressman's WIFE, hadn't been removed (but not arrested) as well for wearing a "Support Our Troops" T-shirt? Young is today's burstiest person; Sheehan is nipping at the President's heels again, literally and figuratively. Blogger Glenn Greenwald calls it like he sees it: "completely disgraceful." Says another blogger: "tactical mistake."

Let's just hope they don't start dancing in iPod commercials
Sen. Ted Stevens, 82, bragging about his iPod? Weirder things have happened on Capitol Hill, I'm sure, but some bloggers think it's time all Senators who are called to vote on issues such as copyright laws and new technologies at least understand what the heck they're talking about. Hence, iPac Action (today's No. 30 most-shared link) is asking bloggers to donate cash to buy iPods for Congress.

Oscar Buzz
Over the next few weeks, BlogPulse will deploy its trend graphs to track buzz about the 2005 Oscar nominations. Today, a look at the men nominated for best supporting actor...



...and the women nominated for best supporting actress.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:02 AM

How good are bloggers at predicting movie success? Does blog discussion serve as a leading indicator or reflective mirror to box-office success? BlogPulse piggybacks on yesterday's announcement of Oscar nominations (today's No. 2 most-cited link) for the 78th annual Academy Awards program to examine the issue of blog buzz and flick successes or failures.

First, a research paper titled "Predicting Movies Sales from Blogger Sentiment," coauthored by Intelliseek's own Natalie Glance (a senior researcher and key member of the BlogPulse Team) and Gilad Mishne of the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam, has been accepted for presentation at a symposium titled "Computational Approaches to Analysing Weblogs" March 27-29 at Stanford University.

Their conclusion? References to movies in blog posts correlate with their financial success (before and after release), and factoring in sentiment measurements works better (especially in pre-release phases) than raw counts when making correlations. Genre and time of year also factor into a flick's success.

So what's this year's Oscar buzz?
Over the next few days, BlogPulse will begin tracking ongoing blog buzz about this year's nominees. Today: the actors and actresses nominated for this year's awards. First....the guys nominated for Best Actor, wherein Heath Ledger of "Brokeback Mountain" and Philip Seymour Hoffman of "Capote" seem to heading the pack:

And the women nominated for Best Actress, where Reese Witherspoon of "Walk the Line" seems to have an edge going into the event.




Tomorrow, a look at the films nominated for best picture.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:31 AM

Just when you think you can guesstimate what bloggers will be talking about from day to day, they throw you a loop. Such that today's two burstiest people are boxers Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales, in which the former beat the latter at a match in Las Vegas. Filipino bloggers are crazy for their newfound hero.

Vote's in: "West Wing's out
TV fans are mourning the pending loss of NBC's "West Wing," which is why actors Jimmy Smits amd Alan Alda, and NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly are among today's most-discussed personalities as well. So is the late actor John Spencer, whose untimely real-life death several weeks ago apparently sealed the show's fate. (Smits and Alda are running against each other for president in the show, a well-timed theme given the contents of today's third most-cited news story about election fraud...and how easy it would be (was?) to execute. The govtv blog calls it "vapor voting." The story's starting to generate conversation.

What are TV fans watching?




So long, whale
The BBC continues to rank among the most-cited new sources by bloggers, this week no doubt because of the whale tale (the day's second most-cited news story). The GlasgowGal blogger happened to hear the news while reading The Whale Rider. Coincidence? You decide.

PostSecret...more revealing
PostSecret continues to be one of the most popular blogs (No. 5 today) for the anonymous postcards that carry people's innermost secrets. Site owner Frank Warren has started adding email commentary from viewers (and senders), to give it an even more personal touch.

BlogPulse update: LiveJournal
If you encounter "Page Not Found" errors while clicking on LiveJournal entries today, manually remove the "www" from the URL to get the link to work. Over the weekend, LiveJournal changed its standard URL format and removed the www from links, which now start directly with "username.livejournal.com" instead of www.livejournal.com/username. BlogPulse is working on a fix that will soon make the LiveJournal links work properly.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 01:29 PM

It hasn't even popped up in the blogosphere yet, but dontcha wanna bet that JibJab's Year-End Round-Up 205 mini-movie (and its companion (pardon our language, but the title really IS Farting Elves)), will soon be among the most popular pass-around videos on the Internet? Buzz is already starting...

All things cute...
Sure, there's plenty of discussion about what Iraq's parliamentary elections will mean to the future of everything (Iraq the Model is today's No. 3 top blog). And course, there's continued consternation about the U.S. government spying on its own citizens. But today's most-shared web link is about cuteness, from Cute Overload.com, where folks scour the 'net for "only the finest in cute imagery." Like little squirrels and puppies and kitties and baby deer. If you like stuff with fur and feathers, you'll love this. Your typical reaction can be an understated "cute!" or a more dramatic "someone pass me the sick bowl."

Seismic shifts
President Bush finally admitted that pre-war intelligence was less-than-solid (today's No. 4 top news story). Reactions? "It's about damn time," says Brian Mathes. Or as The All Spine Zone sees it, "accepting responsiblity means never having to say you're sorry."

Holiday buzz
If you're wondering who's winning when it comes to holiday buzz buildup...only BlogPulse knows....and the findings are pretty surprising.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:17 AM

Sure, there's all sorts of Internet announcements today, including Yahoo! Answers (today's No. 10 top blog post and the Yahoo! version of Ask Jeeves), and Google's new Transit Planner (which is today's No. 3 top link), a Google Maps service applied to public transit (and currently limited to Portland, OR).

Major changes ahead
But major changes are in store for the Hundred Acre Wood, where Christopher Robin (today's burstiest person) will be replaced by a yet-to-be named female character in 2007 to make the whole Winnie the Pooh franchise more, you know, marketable to a broader audience. USA Today coverage of the gender shift is today's No. 2 most-cited link and the subject of today's top blog post. And lots of commentary, including a "dream on, Disney" lecture from DebbieSchlussel.com. she's joined by this invective from a LiveJournaler: "Clearly TPTB at Disney need to be smacked repeatedly with the smitey book. These people are clearly of very, very little brain." What's next...Hey God, It's Me, Michael? Arnold Bedilia Strikes Out? "The Ghost and Mrs. Chicken?"

Mother Nature's wrath
You'd think that "December = snow" would start to sink into the public consciousness after all these years, but the snowstorm that swept the U.S. midsection Thursday created this scenario: it took me longer to drive from the airport to my house (25 minutes TOPS on a normal bad-traffic day) than it took me to fly from Rochester NY to Cincinnati, all because of a rush-hour snowstorm. Still, hurricanes have it all over Mother's Nature's snow and floods in the blogosphere...

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:02 AM

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, a three-day holiday that no doubt will draw plenty of folks into movie theaters and onto the Internet for movie info, trailers and online video clips.

Among today's blog discoveries is commentary on Cinematical, hinting at yet another Star Wars prequel from George Lucas? Star Wars buzz continues with United States of Noooooo (featuring Darth Vader's voice), and the Organic Trade Associations' Grocery Star Wars.

And for bloggers who now turn into the WEb to watch TV commercials, two created attention this week: One is the racy (and that's perhaps an understatement) Paris Hilton commercial for Carl's Jr.'s BBQ burgers (so popular it crashed servers earlier this week), and the well-choreographed Stunt City commercial for a deodorant tailored to folks (like stunt specialists) who work under pressure.

If it's a museum you'll be visiting over the holidays, the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum is starting to spread the word of its 2007 opening (not far from here, in fact) in Northern Kentucky. Talking dinosaurs and exhibits that conflict (that's an understatement as well) with scientific findings will take center stage. Says one LiveJournal blogger, "I think my head just exploded."

BLOGPULSE WEEKEND ACTIVITY: BlogPulse will continue to update its Top Links, Key People and Key Phrases over Memorial Day, but the Intelliseek and the blog itself are taking advantage of a perk that gives us a four-day weekend. See you next Tuesday, June 1....have a safe holiday!

--The BlogPulse Team

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:50 AM

This week's release of the final movie in the Star Wars series is certainly generating "buzz" among movie fans. Characters Padme Amidala and General Grievous appear among today's top blog personalities because of a QuizFarm "Which Sith Character are you?" game that's being shared among bloggers.

Episode III "Revenge of the Sith" has consitently maintained higher levels of buzz than most of 2005's other planned action/fantasy movies, not to mention "Robots" and "Hitch," the year's top-grossing films to date:



The Organic Trade Association's "Grocery Store Wars" continues to ride the rebellion popularity wave, clocking in at today's No. 3 top link.

How hard can blogging be?
Rutgers Professor David Greenberg's fill-in stint as a blogger, chronicled in Sunday's New York Times, is receiving the kind of commentary he realized he didn't appreciate when he was blogging. The Weblogg-ed blogger has little compassion while blogger Daniel Drezner, for whom Greenberg did the favor, offers his thanks and personal observations.

Also grabbing attention is Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker's apology for publishing information that may have fueled riots and deaths last week in Afghanistan. While not retracting the report that U.S. interrogators may have flushed a copy of the Qur'an down a toilet, Whitaker now says once-reliable sources who confirmed the information have now backed off. Reactions range from the commentary at Liberals Against Terrorism to Powerline Blog.

And in case you were wondering, comedian Dave Chappelle is just fine, thanks.

BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Darth Vader continues to out-buzz Yoda in the Star Wars character popularity contest -- but only by a helmet's length?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:45 AM

Just when you thought most legislators were ego-centric, data-spinning, fast-talking opportunists, along comes the Idaho state legislature to restore your faith in their status as down-to-earth folks with senses of humor.

Among BlogPulse's top links today, No. 7 is a resolution passed 69-1 by the Idaho House of Representatives commending the makers of the "Napoleon Dynamite" movie for promoting good things about the great state of Idaho...everything from Tater Tots to Idaho beef, skateboards to llamas, tetherball to the city of Preston's public schools, and St. Anthony Sand Dunes to multi-ethnic friendships. Sweet.

On a political theme, the No. 2 link, Who Should You Vote For?, helps undecided UK voters figure out which party to support in that country's upcoming May 5 elections.

On the business side of Intelliseek, we frequently talk about the impact of "consumer-generated media" (CGM) on everything from a company's reputation to specific product success. Today, CGM plays a part in the rankings of the four names that top BlogPulse's Bursty People list. Seems Dennis Kyne is one of hundreds of people arrested during the Republican National Covnention last summer who's walked out of court a free man because testimony of the arresting Big Apple police officers conflicts greatly with on-the-scene videos shot by protest organizers. Speaking of videos, Joseph Jaffe's shares his self-created Tiger Woods commercial for Nike (you're forewarned: it takes forEVER to download).

Animal sightings
Animals definitely have a presence in today's BlogPulse discoveries. The April 29 release of Apple's updated OS X software, Tiger, is today's most-shared link. At No. 9 on the top link list is the "Save Toby" web site where someone promises to eat a cute little bunny unless people send money by June 30 to save its life. Elsewhere, pictures of snoozing felines provide fodder for the Silly Sleeping Pose Olympics (No. 25 link), while Wisconsin considers a different way to address cats.

BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Who will win the battle for the buyout of MCI?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:39 AM

May 19 is the official release date for the sixth Star Wars movie, "Revenge of the Sith." But Star Wars fans are antsy NOW. Today's BlogPulse includes the following discoveries:

Fans are already lining up for the movie's debut at the Grauman Chinese Theater in Hollywood, although someone might want to tell them they're at the wrong theater. The updated Star Wars Triology DVD is also on people's purchase lists.

Today's No. 7 top link comes from Japan, where obvious fans have built a working "Mech", (the site is slow to load) one of the assault vehicles from earlier Star Wars movies. Meanwhile, a BlogPulse graph showing episode popularity produces this pattern:



Other passings
When famous people die, there's an old wives' tale that deaths always occur in groups of three. It seems the count is higher lately. Today, author and novelist Saul Bellow and Monaco's Prince Rainier III are being remembered (both died earlier this week), and Hunter S. Thompson's family announced that his ashes will be shot from a cannon later this summer. New on the media scene are an Internet tabloid called Sploid and for those intimidated by all that reading, the Anotated New York Times.

Political stirrings
House Maj. Leader Tom DeLay is in more hot water over recent allegations of oversees trips paid for by business lobbyists acting on behalf of the Russian government. And in Iraq, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani has finally been chosen as president of the country.

BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: I don't know about you, but I paid $2.21 for a gallon of regular gas this week. Others obviously are feeling the pain of rising gas/oil prices. Any bets on how high gasoline prices rise before they level off...$3 a gallon? Am I bid $4?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:52 AM

If you thought today's BlogPulse data would be juicy with State of The Union analysis and followup, you'd be only partly right. What's actually getting a lot of buzz is something just as near and dear the hearts of many Americans: "Star Trek: Enterprise" which leaves the airways for good in May, according to UPN.

Trekkies are mourning the loss, while writer Brannan Braga claims the No. 4 spot and executive producer Rick Berman is No. 8 among today's burstiest people.Call it the end of an era. Go ahead, Scotty....beam them up....

That's not to say the State of the Union didn't get any buzz. Four of today's key phrases are verbatim lines from the president's Wednesday night speech. And a LiveJournal blogger's assessment of the speech includes some manual text-mining and a good knock-knock joke.

At No. 2 among bursty people is the late Byron Norwood, whose mother, in attendance at the president's speech, hugged an Iraqi woman (also in attendance) who had voted during last Sunday's Iraqi elections. Sgt. Byron Norwood was killed during the U.S. Marines assault on Fallujah.

On a lighter note, does anyone feel like partying? References to this weekend's Super Bowl are appearing among bloggers, and so is anticipation of New Orleans' annual Mardis Gras celebration. How about a sushi pillow from Japan? And if you're patient and give today's No. 6 link ("The British get all the cool commercials nowadays") time to download, it's worth the wait. A new, improved, singing-in-the-rain, hip-hop, moon-walkin', techno-beat Gene Kelly dances for VW.

BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: What's your favorite food? Your favorite part of the Super Bowl? Who's your money on to win the game -- Eagles or Patriots?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 01:58 PM

This year's Academy Award nominations have been announced, and the lists of movies and personalities blanket BlogPulse today, with the actors and actresses dominating the Key People section.

Not to be overshadowed by Hollywood -- the annual "Razzie" awards for the worst achievements in film. Note that Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld have been nominated in best actress/actor supporting roles.

Also grabbing Blogosphere real estate today is Google, which this week announced the ability to search for videos and also drew blogger scrutiny for pulling a blog written by a Google employee.

NOT gaining any popularity among blogggers is Attorney General-nominee Alberto Gonzales, the subject of a blogger movement to oppose his confirmation as John Ashcroft's replacement. Daily Kos is the latest to join in.

And in a smokin'-gun human resource move (pardon the pun), Weyco Inc. has fired four employees who smoke because the owner didn't want to absorb the health-related costs of those employees. The company did offer quit-smoking help to employees, and 14 successfuly took up the challenge. The four who didn't? Gone.

BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPHS: Who's winning the morality wars -- SpongeBob SquarePants or Dr. James Dobson? And with the Oscars just around the corner, which current movies are getting the most buzz?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 02:49 PM

From the looks of it, everyone is interested in the upcoming Willy Wonka movie and planning for 2005.

Actor Johnny Depp sits in the No. 2 spot among Sunday's burst people for his upcoming role as Willy Wonka in a sort-of remake of the Roald Dahl classic, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," which ranked No. 2 among Sunday's top links. The trailer's out, but the movie doesn't hit the big screen until July 2005.

Meanwhile, in meme land, bloggers are getting nostalgic with blog quizzes that ask users, for example, to identify their biggest achievement from 2004 or relate a valuable life lesson learned as 2005 nears.

Several names come from obscurity among key BlogPulse people as well, including that of Dr. John Caulfield of Marion, Ohio. He's a70-year-old Army doctor who's been called up to serve in Afghanistan as part of the military's increasing reliance on older soldiers to fill the ranks. Guess the military's definition of "old" is pretty liberal, eh? Among young soldiers, 19-year-old David Battle also received blog attention over the weekend because of a hand injury that forced him to choose between his finger and his wedding ring -- and he sacrified the finger, only to find out later that doctors lost the ring, too.

TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: What's the buzz on the stock market? Bull or Bear?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 04:04 PM

For a moment, I was in a 1987 time warp, standing in a toy aisle and picking out a new Transformer toy for my son.

But then I woke up, and realized the action was coming from one of Tuesday's top links, a new U.K. television ad for the Citroen, in which a real car turns into a Transformer and does a dancin'-fool groove thang in the streets. Very cool. If you were/are a Transformer kid (they were introduced in '84), don't miss it. It's a direct download, so click on No. 8 link of Tuesday's top links.

Speaking of fancy footwork, those mandated Republicans wasted no time changing the ethics rules that govern Congress. They pushed through a quick rule change that allows leaders to stay in power even while under indictment, which Sen. Majority Leader Tom DeLay may soon be for fund-raising irregularities in a Texas redistricting investigation. (Quick question: is this indicative of the "moral values" the GOP touted during this month's election?)

Speaking of Texas values, a Texas town is ditching a longheld tradition in which girls dress as boys and boys dress as girls...because a parent complained that it had homosexual overtones. (In Texas, it's called TWIRP, for "the woman is requested to pay"; we used to call such events Sadie Hawkins days, begs the question, is Sadie Hawkins gay?). The school's attorney and a rights attorney chime in. Because of the woman's complaint, the school districted opted for the less-offensive (?) "Camo Day," in which kids dress up in military fatigues and camouflage gear (withold red-state comments, please).

FOOD NEWS: Someone's trying to sell a grilled cheese sandwich on eBay, claiming it has an image of the Virgin Mary on it. In the "food can never be BIG enough" department comes word of Hardee's "Monster Thickburger," which no doubt will keep cardiologists in business for another generation. And let's hear it for the fish, in whose honor People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has launched the Fish Empathy Project." Nemo and Charlie the Tuna would be proud.

Here's something to give the Dewey Decimal System a major headache: Adobe Bookshop in San Francisco is rearranging its 20,000 books by color, not by topic. The experiment is expected to last for a week.

TREND OF THE DAY: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most blogged-about Star Wars character of all? The release of the movie trailer for the next Star Wars flick has caused a spike in discussion, led by (heavy breathing, heavy breathing, pounding music) Darth Vader.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:48 AM

When Bridget Jones, Harry Potter and Colin Firth lead the list of key people cited in blogs (and two of them are fictional), it's obvious that the high season of politics and presidential elections is officially over. In fact, Sunday's BlogPulse results seemed to sweep in an era focused on guys with weird names.

Getting a hefty amount of notice is first weird-name guy: Russell Jones, a founding member of the rap group Wu-Tang CLan and also known as ODB (for Ol' Dirty Bastard). He collapsed and died in a New York recording studio over the weekend after complaining of chest pains. Other ODB aliases over the years have included Joe Bannanas, Osirus, Dirt McGirt, Unique Ason and Big Baby Jesus.

Out on the left coast, the Gov-a-nator, Arnold Schwarzenegger has moved to No. 19 on Sunday's key people list, based partly on an a move afoot to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow non-U.S.-born citizens to run for President. (Wait, don't Republicans abhor the non-mainstream, Hollywood influence on politics....or was that a dream?)

Obviously, the new Bridget Jones Diary movie was a big hit, seeing that Bridget herself, and co-star Colin Firth, booted major political figures and world leaders out of the top 3 spots among key people.

That's not to say world news isn't on the minds of bloggers. Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer appears as the 6th-burstiest person in Sunday's results, and a Newsday article about the so-called "purge of the CIA" is also among the day's top links. Another of Sunday's top links, an interface called Faces of the Fallen, is a slide show hosted by The Washington Post and featuring photos of all soldiers killed in Iraq since March 2003. Click on each headshot, and the site provides a short biography and a sentence about how each soldier died.

But whatever you do, don't fall for the West Coast Pirate ruse that claims a German car commercial was never aired because of the creepy appearance of a misty ghost during the filming. Go watch it anyway, just for the fun of it. But don't say I didn't warn you.

TREND OF THE DAY: In the browser wars, Mozilla's Firefox is grabbing more and more attention.

BLOGPULSE NEWS: CONVERSATION TRACKER IS HERE! BlogPulse now features a home-page link to one of its showcase technologies, Conversation Tracker. Ever wonder how blog discussions emerge, evolve and get spread around? Let Conversation Tracker show you the thread patterns. It creates a threaded view of a conversation graph from a link to a post or to a new article (or any URL). And please be patient...it takes some time for BlogPulse to find all the information.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:30 AM

I didn't watch Saturday Night Live over the weekend, and I didn't need to. Bloggers took care of it by including plenty of links and references to Ashlee Simpson's embarrassing lip-synch performance all over the blogosphere by Monday.

(If you didn't see it, she began mouthing the words to the wrong song during her second tune of the night and ran off-stage while the band played on). For that bit of musical lore, she jumped to No. 2 on Monday's top people list, squeezing in nicely between the Prez and the Senator, and references to the evening took the top four spots among BlogPulse's key phrases. Even Milli Vanilli, that late '80s pop group shunned out of popdom for faking the lyrics, got a few mentions. Hint to Ashlee: it's called Saturday Night LIVE for a reason.

And wolves? Have you seen the latest Bush commercial that uses bristly-looking wolves to carry the message that Sen. John Kerry isn't prepared to fight the war on terror? No sooner did it hit the air than one animal-loving conservationist with a serious message launched Wolfpacksfortruth.org. On the not-so-serious front, The Poor Man blog re-styled the wolves advertisement to remove some of the fear and add in a bit of warm-'n'-fuzzy adorability.

What does it say about an incumbent conservative when even The American Conservative has nothing good to say? For equal time, Sun-Times columnist Mark Steyn has no soft spot for Kerry, either.

TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Electoral jitters continue to climb as Nov. 2 approaches.

The Freedom for All blog also used BlogPulse's trend-graphing abilities to plot some intriguing candidat-related concepts. Who is the liar? The good man? Evil?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:56 AM

Oh, sure, there are terrorists warnings galore and political discussions aplenty about the upcoming conventions and vice presidential worthiness (on both tickets).

But let's talk about what's REALLY important and why actors David Hyde Pierce (aka Niles Crane), Hank Azaria (several voices on "The Simpsons," including Moe, the bartender) and Tim Curry (Dr. Frank N. Furter of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fame) take three of today's top five bursty-people slots. The three are the lead actors for a Broadway version of Monty Python's "Spamalot." Make way for killer rabbits, coconut-clopping horses, armless/legless fighting knights and everything else that earned "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" a 2004 designation as the best British movie ever made, as voted by a British subsidiary of Amazon and the Internet Movie Database. "Spamalot" is based on the movie, with help from original star and Pythonite Eric Idle.

Back on the serious side of life, the concept of a "July surprise" during the days of the Democratic National Convention have taken over the top two places among "bursty phrases" as well as Thursday's top link. According to published reports, U.S. intelligence officials are pressuring the Pakistanis to (surprise!) kill or capture terrorism's bad guys -- Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or Mullah Mohammed Omar -- and preferably do so during the publicity-intense days of the July 26-28 Democratic convention (or at least before the November election). Hmmm. If it's the element of surprise they're after, is it possible to steal someone else's thunder when the thunder-stealing move has been publicized ahead of time?

On the political front, Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry and recently announced running mate Sen. John Edwards (along with filmmaker Michael Moore) have moved into the top three slots among Thursday's key people, pushing President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney several slots further down the list. Thursday's No. 2 BlogBite, a blog called To the Barricades, also hints at behind-the-scenes suggestions to replace Cheney on the Republican ticket with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Sen. John McCain for former NY mayor Rudi Guiliani. Bush is also getting traction for his decision not to speak at the NAACP annual convention. By doing so, he becomes the first Prez since Herbert Hoover not to attend the convention, which starts July 10.

Call it blogger respectability? Wonkette blogger Ann Marie Cox, 31, has been tapped to cover the Democratic National Convention for MTV.

TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: The Seven Deadly Sins. What'll it be? Lust? Pride? Sloth? Choose your vice....

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 03:37 PM