People Search Digest

Do away with political apathy and “blues.” Staying abreast of political topics can be so overwhelming that many people become disinterested. With the 2008 election rapidly approaching, topical political issues and events have been brought to the forefront of the news. Thankfully, Microsoft will soon introduce a new political news aggregator called Blews, which aims to break down political news stories for even the most apathetic citizens.

Blews uses information from political blogs all over the Internet, and categorizes them into news stories according to their reception in the conservative and liberal blogspheres. It creates an easy to comprehend visualization of which stories are more conservative, and which ones are more liberal with pleasing red and blue tags. It also has an indicator alongside each story which specifies the level of emotional charge in the discussion of the news story or topic in both political bunkers.

Another interesting feature Blews offers is a “see the view from the other side,” which allows a user to compare different views on the same story from both sides of the political spectrum. It’s able to create this political search engine of sorts by digesting and analyzing a real-time feed of political blog posts provided by the Live Labs Media platform, adding both link and text analysis of the blog postings.

This is a crucial and exciting year to become politically active, if not charged. When it becomes publicly available, try using Blews to search for the stories that will help you make informed decisions.