With Iowa deciding on their choice for GOP candidate tomorrow, Google’s timing is much better this election season to roll out their political news and trends trackers at Google Elections. In 2008, they had a similar offering but didn’t release it until just before the conventions. The Dashboard above is, according to Frederic Lardinois of Silicon Filter, “the most interesting aspect of the site.” It displays side-by-side comparisons of searches for each individual candidate over the last 7 days and allows users to expand the graphic to drill down to individual dates. The “On the Ground” view…

In the past, the best way to review the year was to look back through newspaper headlines and pick out the stories that were thought to be the biggest. It wasn’t an exact science and required intuition and subjective reasoning to decide what was most important to the people that year. Today, social media gives us a relatively-accurate indicator about what the general population finds interesting enough to discuss. 2011 was loaded with major events from falling regimes to natural catastrophes. Celebrities made foolish mistakes. Politicians tanked their careers. Tech companies rose. Tech…