Hey, Internet. Why so glum?

Ever wonder what mood the Internet is in? We may not be quite at the point of knowing how happy or sad all those ones and zeros may be, but one group has begun tracking the moods of the people posting to the Web.

The Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam has created what it calls the Moodgrapher, which tracks the moods LiveJournal users select when posting their blogs, with updates every 10 minutes.

According to their site, the institute created the tool as part of a larger study on mood prediction, and the tool is currently very limited in what it can do. While the site doesn't show any data relating to last week's Hurrican Katrina and its aftermath, it does show a significant jump in instances of "distressed," "enraged," "numb" and "sad" immediately following the terrorist bombings in London on July 7. It could definitely turn into a cool little tool if some functionality--namely archiving, date selection or location specifics as they relate to weather or local events--were added. As part of the larger research though, I'm skeptical but interested in how good their predictive technology can get.