Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Sarah's Inbox - The Sunlight Foundation puts all 24K pages of Gov. Sarah Palin's emails online in a "email inbox" like format (OCR'ed, full text searchable)

Windows 7: Through the Looking Glass - Sarah’s Inbox Makes Palin’s Emails Available Online

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Apparently, the 24,000 pages of email failed to produce any smoking guns about Troopergate, or any other Palin scandals. But, most of the public wouldn’t know that. Why? Well, the emails had to be redacted to conceal sensitive information, and Alaska couldn’t do that electronically, so the only way to get the emails is printed out–on 24,000 sheets of paper…48 reams…who knows how many trees. And each printout of Palin’s emails costs $700. Ouch.

Thankfully, the Sunlight Foundation has come to our (and the environment’s) rescue, by taking the 24,000 pages, and re-digitizing them to offer them online at SarahsInbox.com. That’s right, The Sunlight Foundation put in the effort to scan all 24,000 pages and post them online in digital, searchable, format accessible to all.

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Sunlight FoundationSarah's Inbox

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The way this information is presented (the parsed,OCR'd, full text searchable, in an email like layout) really makes this data easily accessible, browseable and discoverable. I'll not comment on the fact that the original/source ESI was produced printed (cough... lame... cough) but applaud the Sunlight Foundation for taking this pretty invocative delivery approach (ESI vendors, take note).

Also take this to heart. What would people say if your entire work email history were viewable by others? i.e. Think before you send...

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