Today Google announced a new Gmail People Widget to provide contextual information about the people in your address book from within Gmail.

Everyone's got something to say about it - CNET, TechCrunch, Mashable, TechCrunch, LifeHacker, Techmeme, thenextweb, ...

I'm trying to keep abreast of the developements that provide visualization of social networks, ie. widgets that present generalizations of these structures: Facebook's Social Graph and LinkedIn's Maps.

Interactive infographics will add dimension to our understanding of the nuance and ambiguity of data, information and social connections.  The challenge is to maintain integrity of such a systems to deliver transparency and accountability.