Blogs and News (BLEWS) promises a more intelligent information stream for news consumers

BLEWS is a Microsoft Research tool in the prototype stage which uses a variety of sophisticated tools to add several layers of intelligence to what we're used to getting at Memeorandum or other news aggregators. It was recently showcased to the press at TechFest 08 and garnered some excellent reviews (hat tip to Matt Hurst for the update).

Rather than just being another news aggregator, BLEWS will be able to tell the gender, age group, nationality of the readers of select news items and blog postings, as well as their political leanings (Liberal or Conservative) by using Stylometrics (including sentiment analysis) and link analysis. It's an excellent example of how data can be made more useful and "intelligent".