The Sunlight Foundation, an open government advocacy group, is creating a database those emails that have been scanned by investigative journalism non-progit ProPublica. Dubbed Sarah's Inbox, the database is similar to the interface of Gmail and can be searched by keyword, data or common phrase. You can even "star" ones that are important.

The searchable site set up by the Sunlight Foundation is similar to a previous initiative from the group called Elena's Inbox that made Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's emails available during her confirmation hearings last year.

"We're asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a simple form to describe the nature of the e-mail, and provide a name and e-mail address so we'll know who should get the credit. Join us here on Friday afternoon and into the weekend to participate."

The release, which begins at 9:00 a.m. Alaska time (one hour earlier than Pacific Time) tomorrow, will consist of "e-mails Ms. Palin sent as governor, mostly using private accounts" and "are to be released in response to public records requests first made in 2008," according to the Times. The release is only being made in hard copy, which will fill "six standard paper boxes, a total of about 250 pounds at a printing cost of $725 per set."

Palin is currently on a bus trip across the country which reads as a thinly-disguised public relations event and temperature-taking for a possible run at the presidency. Even if she decides against running, her influence with the right-wing Tea Party movement makes her newsworthy. So what she my have thought and how she may have acted while in office as Alaska's governor will be of interest to many.

Other news organizations are also preparing processes to leverage the participation of their audience, including MSNBC, Mother Jones and ProPublica, who are working with Crivella West to create a publicly searchable database.

Palin photo by asecondhandconjecture

Her version was that Paul Revere rode through Boston, ringing a bell, to announce to the British that the colonials were preparing to fight. This is not remotely true. He rode silently, to let the revolutionaries know the British were en route.

Update after the jump.

"I didn't mess up about Paul Revere. Part of his ride was to warn the British that we're already there - that, 'Hey, you're not going to succeed. You're not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual, private militia that we have. He did warn the British."

It's true that Revere did tell the British the Americans were ready to fight. Later. After the ride. After he had been captured. Without bells. And had firearms pointed at him. In an attempt to rattle and mislead his captors.

So, you know. Palin was right.

As Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs noted, this rearrangement of history has been playing out on Wikipedia's Paul Revere page.

Pro-Palin contributors have been changing, and others reversing, language justifying her comments, as can be seen in the Revisions page for the entry. Here is a discussion centering on the controversy.

Anyone who has written an article or a paper or just done a search in the last few years can tell you how important Wikipedia is as an initial (alas, all too often also an only source) for information. The give-and-take built into the Wiki process seems to be keeping the boat upright, but only just.

Imagine pulling up the entry on deadline for a school paper. Depending on when you tune in, you might be making Paul into a Ninja messenger or a bell-ringing Muppet. Naturally, anyone who accepts a single source as Gospel is not doing the job of a thinking person, but it happens.

The really awful thing, though, is that we live in an age where, on every level, it is considered a sin to be wrong. From advertisers to kids on the playground to the world of corporate PR to politicians, the all-too-common wisdom is to defend the indefensible. That's what Palin is doing and that is what her renfields on Wikipedia are doing, and that's sad, because as anyone remotely successful in Silicon Valley can tell you, without owning our mistakes we cannot learn from them and without learning, we cannot win.

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Jay Walsh, Head of Communications for Wikimedia Foundation clarified the situation from his organization's point of view.

"The article is right now in semi-protection, which means that only registered editors (those who have a registered accounts on Wikipedia, specifically those who have had an account for more than a few days) can make changes to the page. Only a fraction of pages on English Wikipedia are actually in any sort of protection mode, but this isn't uncommon when the article in question is about an emerging news topic and/or a living person...I think it's something in the order of 1500 or so of the 3.5 million-plus articles on English Wikipedia.

"Right now a group of smart, experienced Wikipedians are having a civil discussion about the article, and as is pretty much always the case with devoted Wikipedians, they want to ensure the article is of the highest possible quality. I expect some new Wikipedians came to this article in an effort to share their views on the topic, either by making edits or participating in the discussion. On the article's talk page you can see where contributors are sharing views and discussing the whole affair. This is 100% normal for Wikipedia and
it's a sign that passionate people are working towards an inclusive but factual article."

Sarah Palin photo by Roger Goun, Paul Revere house photo by Boston Public Library | other sources: Boston Globe

The indictment alleges that Kernell gained access to Palin's Yahoo! Mail account, changed the password, took screenshots of the contents, and posted both the password and images to the Web. In a video interview (after the jump), famed former-hacker Kevin Mitnick says Kernell could face a harsh penalty.

Upon hearing the news, G4's Attack of the Show asked famed former-hacker, Kevin Mitnick, to provide some insight on what a guilty verdict might mean for Kernell:

In a campaign that has been largely waged online, this email hack and its resulting fall out remain one of the few negative uses of technology that has been reported.

In fact, we've seen any number of positive stories about the compelling uses of technology and social media during this presidential race. Those uses - from Barack Obama's use of social media to the usability of John McCain's site - are highlighted on a nightly basis in living rooms across the United States.

As election day draws near, it will be interesting to see if the campaigns continue to pursue the appropriate use of technology - and continue to eschew nefarious efforts - as part of the political machine.

Eurekster provides a service called a Swicki, a search function that lets site owners identify what other sites in their community they would like to have included in their Swicki search results. We've used Swicki here at ReadWriteWeb for some time, as have many other blogs and online communities. The company offered revenue sharing from search ads. Eurekster says that more than 100,000 sites have created Swickis and traffic to Eurekster used to be strong.

Both Eurekster and Swicki.com are down and users report to us that's been the case for the past two days. Traffic to the site has plummeted since the start of the year and key executives have departed. According to their LinkedIn profiles, VP of Engineering Blair Cassidy and VP of Product Development Tac Leung left the company in March and April respectively - but both are still listed on the company's management page. As we publish this, neither emails nor phone messages have been returned by the company. Channel Marketing Manager at Eurekster Alex Holmes sent out one Twitter message two days ago reading "temporary service outage on http://www.eurekster.com . Swickis will be back shortly."

Eurekster was founded in October of 2003 and raised more than $6 million in venture capital, most recently a $5.5 million round in March of 2007.

What Might Have Happened?

It's always interesting to ask why a startup may not have succeeded, though to be fair Eurekster could come back at a moment's notice. The company's method of determining relevance in search was always a little unclear. Google Site Search is easy to install and its results are fairly predictable. Many users wanted search results in chronological order, but that's not the first place Swicki searches took you. Finally, the Swicki usually lived in a blog sidebar. That's a hard place to build a business.

Those are our theories about why Swicki has struggled. What are yours? We hope to hear from the company soon, it's never a pretty sight to see a startup sputter out.