Google has released what it is calling the Transparency Report, which shows the number of government inquiries for information about users and requests for Google to take down or censor content, as well as interactive traffic graphs that show information about traffic to Google around the world. 

YouTube has introduced the new US Government Portal today, though the channel says it’s been a member since 2007. The portal connects you to 25 federal agencies.

There’s a short but interesting blog post up on Google’s official Public Policy Blog, which states six principles the company holds with regards to competition and openness.

Since President Obama was sworn in and Whitehouse.gov has switched to a new interface, there has been an endless amount of chatter about the state of the White House’s technology. Some discuss the shortcomings, while others defend it as just fine.

Tradition and Transition

Before we get into this (and this is a guiltily delicious journey you may or may not decide to take), please consider what level of perfection you expect your Web icons—even the ones who refer to themselves as "spiritual leader"—to be on. While you’re doing that, pretend he’s not a Web icon, and decide what is forgivable in a regular (mortal) man.

Call it the latest in castoffs of a litigious society, or maybe a lesson in the new transparency the Internet allows. Simpler, if you want to keep a legal threat quiet, make sure your threat is a) valid and b) not made to a blogger with a history of telling everybody about legal threats.

Siva Vaidhyanathan sees reasons to worry about Google and its goal of organizing the world’s information.

Trust – reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.

How confident are you that a particular Wikipedia page has reliable information? How sure are you in the ability of all the people who may have edited that page? Thanks to Luca de Alfaro and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Cruz you may soon be able to know which parts of a given Wikipedia page you can and can’t trust.

Business Edge has a great article on how company blogs–especially CEO blogs–can be used to communicate with stakeholders.

The article is packed with valuable insight and pretty much summarizes the benefits–and potential pitfalls–of a corporate blog.

I was supposed to be a guest speaker at a meeting on the East Coast last Friday. I was invited by PodCamp founder John Havens, who set up a BlogTalk Radio connection.

Transparency is a word that’s been kicked around a lot lately. But too much transparency is what got Edelman PR pro and blogebrity Steve Rubel kicked around this week, instead. An early Friday 13th comment about PC Magazine is fueling a potential boycott, as well as fulfilling what the PR world had feared about blogging.

When most companies decide to embrace social media, they usually use it as a vehicle to market new products and services, while at the same time seeking transparency. When Dell launched its IdeaStorm website, it departed from the normal “this is what we’re doing” message that most company blogs transmit.

Some believe that social media is one of the greatest viral marketing opportunities that has ever been presented. Others felt that it is a passing fad with no long-term future, and that businesses shouldn’t waste valuable time and manpower chasing the social media audience, to which they ascribe the perception of fickleness.

The relationship between a reporter and a company he (or she) is trying to write about is… well, complicated.

In some cases, it’s like two hostile nations trying to meet at Camp David, with each side compiling as much information — secret and otherwise — about their adversary, and each side trying to read between the lines to find out what the other party really meant. And sometimes those files get leaked, as they did in the case of Wired writer Fred Vogelstein.

The Long Tail: The Microsoft Memo: Some choose radical transparency, some have it thrust upon them Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief over at Wired, has a post out today that contains a massive email briefing by Microsoft’s PR firm Waggener Edstrom to a Microsoft executive about an interview with Wired Magazine.

Excuse my giddiness, but it’s definitely addictive to look at your keyword quality scores. You could have guessed them before by the assigned minimum bids, but these are fun to look at anyway:

Chris Anderson is on a roll about transparency  and six tactics for transparent media:

Shift Communications, home to social media advocate Todd Defren, was named agency of record for Novell, largely on the strength of Shift’s well-documented social media chops.

Last week, I wrote about Plaxo. You know, the impersonal emails you get from people asking you to update your contact info.

Shel and I had quite a robust discussion about the Wal-Mart and Edelman blogger relations campaign yesterday in show #119 of FIR: The Hobson & Holtz Report.

Our little PR corner of the blogosphere is awash with opinion about the Wal-Mart/Edelman blogger outreach campaign stemming from a story in the New York Times on Tuesday.