Technical and Internet innovations move to front-and-center today, including a sneak peak at Yahoo!'s new maps from Jeremy Zawodny (today's No. 2 top blog post). SearchViews likes the new features, including multi-point driving directions; Tom Rafferty is less-than-impressed.

Microsoft's Live
This week, Microsoft also pulled the veil off its new portal page, Live. The beta version has already inspired so-so reviews from Joel on Software (today's No. 4 top blog post). Gear Live wonders, "is Microsoft scrambling?" to compete with Google and OpenOffice.org? Other techie issues being debated in the blogosophere include bloggers' discovery of anti-piracy embedded rootkits in Sony BMG compact discs and the launch of Google Print, a scannable libary of 10,000 books.

Heck of a job, Brownie...
One more reason to be careful what you say in your work emails: they might come back to haunt you. Especially if you're former FEMA director Mike Brown, who's back in the not-so-flattering limelight (today's 12th-most blogged-about personality) because of the online publication of some of the e-mails he sent during and after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast (today's most-shared link) and No. 3 top news story). The Louisiana Congressman who got access to the emails posted them online. In a Sept. 4 exchange, a FEMA rep advised: "In this crises (sic) or on TV you just need to look more hard-working...ROLLL UP YOUR SLEEVES." During exchanges about breached levees, missing Superdome roof tiles and ice shipments, Brown jokes about his clothing and asks for dog-sitter recommendations. Read 'em...and yeah, sigh. (Then weep). Maybe those kinds of emails explain these kinds of poll results (today's No. 5 news story)?

Riots in Paris
Today's 7th-most-shared news story, about riots in Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods of Paris, are worrisome to bloggers because of what they portend for the U.S., as La Shawn Barber points out. Other perspectives come from Gateway Pundit, an American in Paris and Blogs of War.

Quicker BlogPulse results
BlogPulse's speed and performance underwent some significant tweaks this week, and bloggers have noticed.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:18 AM

The same kind of "ohmygawd" tone that accompanied last fall's reports of a shortage of influenza vaccines for 2005 was echoed in Wednesday's news that a particularly nasty strain of the flu virus was sent to more than 4,000 labs worldwide for testing. The World Health Organziation's Klaus Stohr is today's No. 3 Bursty person, and two other doctors (Nos. 12 and 13) made it on the list as well.

But did anyone notice that 2005 -- a year when perhaps the fewest number of cooped-up, cold-weather Americans were vaccinated against influenza -- didn't produce widespread outbreaks of flu? Hmmmm...

Have you been bitten by spring fever yet? Today's pulse on spring-related discussion in blogs show these trends:



Welcome, Media Insider!
MediaInsider, the web site of PRNewswire, now features daily BlogPulse stats on its home page. The left column of the web site lists each day's top 10 links and a direct link to the key personalities, culled from daily analysis of blog posts.

Visually speaking
Google has launched yet another service, this one a video upload program, and the BBC has launched a Creative Licence Group to "release content that will fuel a truly creative nation."

Today's people in the news
Today's burstiest person is Jeffrey Ake, the Indiana contractor who's the latest hostage in Iraq, followed by Vermont's own Rep. Bernard Sanders, who joins House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on the list of politicians who keep family members well compensated. And then, there's Britney Spears, who has announced she's pregnant.

BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: The videotape of Mr. Ake, the hostage in Iraq, serves as a reminder that military and civilian casualties continue.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:45 AM

It certainly doesn't take long for folks to switch from one holiday mode to another, eh? Last week's frequent references to Thanksgiving have been quickly upstaged in BlogPulse by references to Christmas and all the shopping/decorating activities associated with it.

Among Sunday's key phrases, in fact, three of them are directly tied to the Thanksgiving weekend tradition of gearing up for Christmas, including putting up holiday trees, stringing holiday lights and hanging those decorations.

There were those who started their holiday shopping and those who advocated a boycott of the post-Thanksgiving economic excess, including the AdBusters Buy Nothing Day campaign and a similar campaign in the UK.

Perhaps one of the more bizarre entries in BlogPulse over the Thanksgiving weekend was the tale of Rachelle Waterman, an Alaska teen-ager who solicited the help of her friends to murder her mother. And who then wrote about it in her LiveJournal Diary. Of course, it might possibly be topped by the weekend tale of Kevin Winston, the Newark NJ father who called the cops when his daughter came home drunk and ended up being ratted out by the daughter, who told police about the semi-automatic weapons and cocaine he had stashed in the house.

For the graphically oriented, one of the weekend's top links was this unusual Zoom Quilt. Click and drag your mouse to maneuver through the....well, whatever it is. It's certainly unusual.

Have you ever wondered if there's justice in the small things that happen in life? There is, as this entry from Craig's List confirms. It's Sunday's 28th-ranked link.

TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: The news from Iraq fluctuates between military assaults and election plans, but the locales change frequently, as the graph that plots Iraq's top cities clearly shows.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:23 PM