Archive for December 2007

ResearchBuzz Roundup 12312007

Happy 2008!

New version of Wordpress.

Yow. Well, uh, if you really want to listen to a radio station devoted to 24-hour coverage of the presidential elections, you can…

Kevin Kelly has released a free ebook on documentaries to see before you die. Two things: it’s ad-supported, and it’s very pretty. Not at all like many bland ebooks I have seen.

Google-mapping earthquakes.

Google stats its blogging activity.

Netscape goes splat. The only thing surprising about this is how long it took.

Reuben Schwarz covers a site devoted to airline food. Reuben does a lovely blog.

MySpace is having an online presidential primary.

Lifehacker: Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About.

America’s most literate cities 2007.

LDS missionary journals put online.

The possible future of huge-capacity hard drives.

Emory Sekaquaptewa.

Google Puts Up Year End Zeitgeist

Google has continued in its zeitgeist tradition with the release of a year-end trend summary at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2007/index.html.

The main page shows a listing for the fastest-growing search terms both in the US and across the world — the world list includes terms like second life and ebuddy while the US list includes heroes and transformers. (The iPhone is number one on both lists). There’s also a list of the fastest-dropping search terms, which includes such nonsurprises as sudoku.

Be sure to check out the tabs on the side of the main page so you can check out the most popular newsmakers. It leads with a chart of the presidential candidates with the most Googlesteam — Ron Paul wins the “greatest disparity between mainstream media coverage and Google search volume” award. (And no, that wasn’t an endorsement. Just an observation.) This tab also has listings for the most popular lawsuit-related searches and searches for deceased (or rumored deceased) people. And the other tabs? Oh, there’s a tab for showbiz queries, a tab that’s kind of a cultural/gadget smackdown, and a tab for the most popular in philosophical searching (All the way from what is love to what is gout.)

If you can’t stand that much geisty goodness in one big page, be sure to check out the archives, which go back to 2001 and offer trends in weekly or monthly doses. And if you’re wondering what people outside the US are searching for, check out the zeitgeist by country.

ResearchBuzz Roundup 122907

Wikia: coming January 7th

Amazon SimpleDB is on the way

Yup, I’m old: The Archie Clients page on DMOZ is empty..

Wal-Mart shuts down online video service.

Ooo! Boston Public Library undergoing all kinds of groovy digital archiving projects.

One Laptop Per Child in Peru.

TwitDir — Twitter Directory.

Nice interface to making a chart using the Google API. Looks like it includes ads.

Wow. Track E at Computers in Libraries looks SUPAH-cool. “Learning from Retail” would be another good one.