Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin shocked the political community today when she held a press conference to announce that she was resigning as the governor, effective at the end of July.  The move comes at a time when two of Palin’s public health officials have resigned within days of each other.  The announcement was made from her home in Wasilla where Palin was surrounded by her family.

Via Manolith - Sarah Palin Turns In Resignation

For those interested, here is a copy of Michael Jackson’s Will.

Michael Jackson’s Will

In the above video Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur shares a new direction for his startup.

I agree, video conversations will definitely be part of the web, just not today. So instead Loic is focusing on his social application Seesmic Desktop and the upcoming web and iPhone versions. Smart move.

It’s not easy to adapt to the modern Internet; after all, it moves so fast. However it’s vital to know when to let some aspects of your business go, shifting to focus on what’s actually working.

And since the foundation of the social web has already been laid, it’s a better move to improve that experience, not add to it.

What Others are Saying:

• Mixergy
• CenterNetworks
• VentureBeat

via 1timstreet.com

The Los Angeles Times is the first major news outlet to confirm Michael Jackson has indeed died.

Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times.

More:

Did Michael Jackson go into cardiac arrest? TMZ is reporting the famed (and de-famed) pop star Michael Jackson went into cardiac arrest today.

We’ve just learned Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Los Angeles … and we’re told it was cardiac arrest and that paramedics administered CPR in the ambulance.

He was picked up at his home around 20 minutes ago — we’re told his mother is on the way to visit him.

So far his condition is unknown.

Most sources are now confirming that Michael Jackson has indeed died.

More:

Michael Jackson Photo Gallery

Michael Jackson Heart Attack?

Breaking: Michael Jackson Heart Attack

I wanted to share the stats from the Twitter infographic I ran on Manolith today. Minus the few hour delay from Google Analytics, the above stats represent today’s traffic from this piece.

As you can see, Digg is still the largest traffic-driver for viral content. I was really curious how much traffic Twitter would generate, because let’s face it, that piece was total “twitter bait.” At the end of the day the article saw around 700 retweets, some from users with very large followings. Yet the total traffic from Twitter was only around 3000 pageviews. I actually need to look deeper at that direct traffic number though, as some of that might include traffic from Twitter.

The bounce rate is high, typical with any Digg spike. However that average time spent on page number is AWESOME, I think folks really took the time to process that infographic. While it can be difficult (read:expensive) to do pieces like this all the time, it’s great to incorporate them into your content on a regular basis. In addition to the traffic, and great in links, you’ll make a huge statement to your readers. You might even introduce tons of new folks to your brand.

Huge thanks to Infoshot who took my little idea and turned it into something amazing.

When it comes to digesting a lot of info, sometimes an illustration is a great way to visualize a topic (or series of events). We’ve published a few great infographics over on my Men’s site Manolith, the latest one covering the history of the microblogging service Twitter.

I worked with graphics house extraordinaire Infoshot to make this one happen. I gave them some of the key milestones and they went above and beyond to produce the below graphic. If your company is looking to produce great visual info docs, please look these guys up.

Thanks to TechCrunch for publishing this today and everyone who retweeted!

It seems celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton was assaulted by Will.I.Am around Midnight PST Sunday night. According to his Twitter account, right now he is bleeding outside the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto.

After the alleged attack Perez sent out a call for help on Twitter, which apparently is better than calling the police. I’m sure the mounted police are rushing to the scene right now.

See the video

(via Laughing Squid)

View more from JPEG Magazine

I like this new service Hunch by Flickr Co-Founder Caterina Fink. It takes every day questions and helps you find the answer. It learns about you by asking you a few questions in return. I’ve tested a few queries and found the answers pretty spot on, in fact it even told me that Hunch was indeed the best collective knowledge site for me:

Yes I like this site and here’s why:

• Low Entry Point: Right away I can start interfacing with Hunch. I don’t have to create an account, or worse, go and build yet another social network. I can immediately start asking a question or giving the site input about me.
• Man vs Machine: After a few clicks you can already see there is a very powerful algorithm behind Hunch. However where you find unique computing knowledge, you also find a fair amount of human curation as well. From the questions themselves, to the answer you get back. The experience feels very personal, something that is difficult to find from a search experience today.
• Rich Index: It’s always nice to find a site with a healthy content index right at launch. On Hunch you can explore their topics section and quickly find a question of interest. Where most new search experiences leave the user saying “Uhhhh, What should I search for?”, Hunch makes it easy to discover your next step.

Give it a try yourself and let me know in the comments how it went.

Hunch around the web:

• Search Engine Land
• TechCrunch
• Official Blog

More:

• Marshall Kirkpatrick
• Scobleizer
• CNET
• Memeorandum

Via the official blog, Wordpress 2.8 “Baker” is now available for download. I’m not going to upgrade just yet, but as you can see in the above video, there are some nice new features available.

Congratulations California, you have a new Miss and her name is Tami Farrell. No word yet on her views of equality etc, but she certainly is A LOT hotter than Carrie Prejean.

From Manolith:

Formerly Miss Mailbu, Tami Farrell will now be taking over as the newly crowned Miss California. Former Miss CA Carrie Prejean lost her title today, after month’s of controversy and “breach of contract” issues. We all know the real reason was of because of her politically incorrect answer to Perez Hilton and those risque pictures that leaked out last month.

2.7 million visitors at the height of its “viral-ness”. Not too bad.

Visit http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com to see why.

The new Apple iPhone was just announced, its name the iPhone 3Gs.

Here are some of the details:

• The S Stands for Speed
• Video, 30 Frames Per Second
• Better Camera 3 MegaPixel, Auto Focus, Auto white balance
• Compass? (lame)
• Voice control? (lame)

Photos via Gizmodo

Silicon Valley mega investor Ron Conway wants to invest in the real time web, big time.

TechCrunch reports he wants to invest in some 40-50 new companies focused on real time data. 

I’ve been thinking about real time web experiences A LOT lately. I look at things like FriendFeed and Twitter and I see the beginning of something very unique. I think Conway does too. If you could create a similar experience for the masses, I think you’d have yourself something great.  

So what are you waiting for?

From last nights episode of The Tonight Show, Conan pokes a little fun at Twitter.

It has been confirmed that missing Air France Flight 447 has indeed crashed. Here is the official press release from the CEO of Air France regarding the disappearance.

Air France regrets to confirm the disappearance of flight AF 447 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris-Charles de Gaulle, scheduled to arrive at 11:10am local time today, as announced to the press by Air France CEO, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon.

The Airbus A330-200, registration F-GZCP, left Rio on 31 May at 7:03pm local time (12:03am in Paris).

The aircraft hit a zone of stormy weather with strong turbulence at 2am this morning (universal time), i.e. 4am in Paris. An automatic message was received from the aircraft at 2:14am (4 :14am in Paris) indicating a failure in the electric circuit a long way from the coast.

The Brazilian, African, Spanish and French air traffic control centres all tried to make contact with flight AF 447 but to no avail. The French military air traffic control centre tried to detect the aircraft but did not succeed.

216 passengers were on board: 126 men, 82 women, 7 children and one infant.

There were 12 flight crew members: 3 pilots and 9 flight attendants.

The flight captain had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340s.

Of the two first officers, one had flown 3,000 flight hours (800 of which on the Airbus A330/A340) and the other 6,600 (2,600 on the Airbus A330/A340).

The aircraft was powered by General Electric CF6-80E engines.

The aircraft had totalled 18,870 flight hours and went into service on 18 April 2005.

Its last maintenance check in the hangar took place on 16 April 2009.

Air France fully shares the anxiety and distress of the families concerned. The families are being taken care of in a specially reserved area of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2.

Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft is now open to the public. So head on over and give it the true test by searching for your own name. How did it do?

Other Interesting Things To See:

• On the homepage hover over the image to reveal pop-up messages. Each contain a snip it of info, and links to related search content.
• Try a video search and hover over the video thumbnails. Once you do you see a clip and even hear audio from the video. This is a nice feature that has long been a part of various porn video sites (not that I would know).
• Do an image search and scroll down, notice the page less scrolling.
• Search Bing for Google and you get a nice integrated search box. This feature will be great for your non-techy relatives. 

Coverage from Around the Web:

• Search Engine Land
• Loic

If you spend a lot of time “in the chair”, you know working too much online, your body might feel like mine. Pretty much useless.

After a few years in the web space my personal health has been in major decline. So much so that lately I’ve been pulling my back out and generally feeling like crap. I’ve been looking for ways to fit in any type of exercise. Everything from running, to Wii Fit and Yoga.

Since free time seems to be my biggest hurtle, I wanted to share this video I found from Ilchi Lee. In just 5 minutes you can get a quick workout, and for those with some sense of balance, do some pretty cool head stand tricks.

Heres the video:

In what looks like a completely staged MTV stunt, Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Bruno (in fairy wings and a thong) drops from the air during the 2009 MTV Movie Awards and bascially tea bags Eminem.

Related:

• Eminem And Bruno At The MTV Movie Awards