Category Archives: World

Google, Twitter and Facebook mark the highlights of 2013

Entertainment, News, Video, World, , , , , , ,

Google’s year-end Zeitgeist, or “spirit of the times,” continues to impress with its far-reaching grasp on what we searched for and talked about over the course of the year that was 2013. The search giant calls it their “most global Zeitgeist to date” as it includes over 1,000 top 10 lists spanning 72 countries. Their “Here’s to 2013” retrospective video highlights the people, places, and moments that captured the world’s attention throughout the year. Of all the lists the one you’re most likely to want to see first is the top 10 global searches of 2013. Falling in line with years past, the list includes celebrity/world leader deaths, hot technology, and a viral video to boot.:

  1. Nelson Mandela
  2. Paul Walker
  3. iPhone 5s
  4. Cory Monteith
  5. Harlem Shake
  6. Boston Marathon
  7. Royal Baby
  8. Samsung Galaxy s4
  9. PlayStation 4
  10. North Korea

Head over to the Zeitgeist homepage to explore the myriad trending lists. There, for the first time, you’ll also find an interactive Trends Globe that allows you to play around with a 3D global map showcasing the top search trends of the year by day in cities around the world. Like I said, impressive stuff here.

Jump after the break to see how Twitter and Facebook are celebrating the big two-oh-one-three. Continue reading Google, Twitter and Facebook mark the highlights of 2013 →

Google, Twitter and Facebook mark the highlights of 2012

Entertainment, News, Video, World, , , , , , ,

Google’s annual Zeitgeist takes “an in-depth look at the “spirit of the times” as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year.” At least that’s usually the case. This year, Google studied an aggregation of over 1.2 trillion searches that people typed into Google Search. Using sources like Google Trends and internal data tools the company was able compile lists that distinguish the most popular searched terms organized into topics like Images, Athletes, and TV Shows. The top 10 trending Searches worldwide this year were Whitney Houston, Gangnam Style, Hurricane Sandy, iPad 3, Diablo 3, Kate Middleton, Olympics 2012, Amanda Todd, Michael Clarke Duncan, and BBB12. The top 10 trending Events worldwide were Hurricane Sandy, Kate Middleton Pictures Released, Olympics 2012, SOPA Debate, Costa Concordia crash, Presidential Debate, Stratosphere Jump, Penn State Scandal, Trayvon Martin shooting, and Pussy Riots. The top 10 trending Consumer Electronics were iPad 3, Samsung Galaxy S3, iPad Mini, Nexus 7, Galaxy Note 2, Play Station, iPad 4, Microsoft Surface, Kindle Fire, and Nokia Lumia 920. Head over to Google’s Zeitgesit 2012 page to discover and explore trending topics from 55 countries all around the world. In addition to the 838 lists, Google’s created an interactive map that shows where and when some of the most popular terms spiked around the world. Watch Google’s inspirational look back at 2012 in the Zeitgeist video pasted above.

Jump after the break to find out how Twitter and Facebook are celebrating everything that went down in twenty-twelve. Continue reading Google, Twitter and Facebook mark the highlights of 2012 →

Earth Hour 2012 is tonight, and you’re invited!

News, World, , ,

Date: Saturday, March 31, 2012

Time: 8:30PM, local time

Place: Wherever you live

What to do:  Turn off your lights for one hour

“Hundreds of millions of people, businesses and governments around the world unite each year to support the largest environmental event in history – Earth Hour. More than 5,200 cities and towns in 135 countries worldwide switched off their lights for Earth Hour 2011 alone, sending a powerful message for action on climate change. It also ushered in a new era with members going Beyond the Hour to commit to lasting action for the planet. Without a doubt, it’s shown how great things can be achieved when people come together for a common cause.”

DO YOUR PART and contribute to Earth Hour 2012 by turning off your lights for one hour starting at 8:30PM (local time) on Saturday, March 31.  And while you’re at it, disconnect all electronics from their wall sockets and conserve energy during this time.  Even the small things count.  Since 2007 Earth Hour has become a worldwide shared experience with an important mission: to make a positive impact on our planet.

[Via EarthHour]

The year in news as told by an “accidental” NYT timelapse

Technology, Video, World, , , ,

This is neat. A developer by the name of Phillip Mendonça-Vieira “accidentally” collected about 12,000 screenshots of the front page of The New York Times‘ website. Instead of trashing these images, he put them to good use by creating a time-lapse video that binds together important (front-page worthy) news events that happened over the past year. Specifically his computer captured the site’s images twice an hour from September 2010 to July 2011. Watch it all unfold in the video embedded above and read some poignent words from Mendonça-Vieira below.

Having worked with and developed on a number of content management systems I can tell you that as a rule of thumb no one is storing their frontpage layout data. It’s all gone, and once newspapers shutter their physical distribution operations I get this feeling that we’re no longer going to have a comprehensive archive of how our news-sources of note looked on a daily basis. Archive.org comes close, but there are too many gaps to my liking.

This, in my humble opinion, is a tragedy because in many ways our frontpages are summaries of our perspectives and our preconceptions. They store what we thought was important, in a way that is easy and quick to parse and extremely valuable for any future generations wishing to study our time period.

[Via Okayfail; Gizmodo]

Google’s Zeitgeist & Twitter’s Year in Review look back at 2011

News, Technology, Video, World, , , , , , ,

2011 has been one helluva year. One question that should be lingering on your mind: what did people search for and tweet most about in 2011? Answers come straight from the source. This week Google pushed out their Zeitgeist 2011, an interactive look at the most popular and the fastest rising terms in many categories across many countries around the world. The results are in and the #1 fastest-rising global query in 2011 is… Rebecca Black! That’s right, the YouTube star famous for the annoying but admittedly catchy song “Friday” is at the top of the chart. Rounding out the top five is Google’s very own social network Google+, the late Jackass star Ryan Dunn, defendant Casey Anthony, and the video game Battlefield 3. The second half of the top ten includes three Apple-related items (iPhone 5, Steve Jobs, and iPad 2), singer Adele, and Japan’s Fukushima plant. At the Zeitgeist website you can view top ten lists from a myriad of countries.

Twitter followed suit and released their own Year in Review portal. Things are broken down by the year’s top stories and hot topics. It should come as no surprise that Charlie Sheen was the most talked about actor (the #2 worldwide hashtag was #tigerblood) and four of the ten tech trends are Apple-related. In another section Twitter calculated how many tweets per second occurred during major events over the course of the year. The MTV Video Music Awards saw 8,868 tweets per second; Steve Jobs’ resignation 7,064; and the raid on Osama bin Laden 5,106.

All in all, it can easily be said that 2011 has been a year of change. Google does a good job highlighting our impact on the world on a global scale in the video embedded above.

Earth Hour 2011 is tonight, and you’re invited!

Video, World, , , ,

Date: Saturday, March 26, 2011

Time: 8:30PM, local time

Place: Wherever you live

What to do:  Turn off your lights for one hour

“From its inception as a single-city initiative — Sydney, Australia – in 2007, Earth Hour has grown into a global symbol of hope and movement for change. Earth Hour 2010 created history as the world’s largest ever voluntary action with people, businesses and governments in 128 countries across every continent coming together to celebrate an unambiguous commitment to the one thing that unites us all — the planet.”

DO YOUR PART and contribute to Earth Hour 2011 by turning off your lights for one hour starting at 8:30PM (local time) on Saturday, March 27.  And while you’re at it, disconnect all electronics from their wall sockets and conserve energy during this time.  Even the small things count.  Since 2007 Earth Hour has become a worldwide shared experience with an important mission: to make a positive impact on our planet.

[Via EarthHour; YouTube Channel] Continue reading Earth Hour 2011 is tonight, and you’re invited! →

WORLD ORDER creates music video to highlight Japan’s solidarity following the natural disaster

Music, Video, World, , , , , , , , ,

In this music video titled “Machine Civilization,” Japanese dancer and martial artist Genki Sudo leads a group of businessmen in a synchronized routine against a synth-pop background not unlike music you’re used to hearing from Canadian musician Owl City.

The unprecedented disasters unfolding in Japan; earthquakes, tsunami, and nuclear explosions, will somehow change things to come. And to send my message about this, I have expressed it here with WORLD ORDER.

In collaboration with Takashi Watanabe, Sudo wrote these words and produced this song and video to share with the world a message of solidarity following the natural disaster that occurred in Japan. The spectacular slo-mo syncronicity highlights the “WE ARE ALL ONE” message he is trying to send.

If you haven’t played a part in assisting relief efforts, please do so now. Text REDCROSS to 90999 and $10 will make its way into the right hands.

Another way to donate money is to purchase Songs for Japan, a digital-only album available on iTunes that includes 38 tracks from well-known recording artists. John Lennon, U2, Katy Perry, Eminem, Elton John, Kings of Leon, Bruno Mars–it’s an eclectic mix of songs you know and should have in your library. The album’s priced at $9.99 and 100% of profits are dedicated to relief efforts in Japan.

Earth Hour 2010 is tonight, and you’re invited!

News, World, , , ,

Date: Saturday, March 27, 2010

Time: 8:30PM, local time

Place: Wherever you live

What to do:  Turn off your lights for one hour

“On Earth Hour hundreds of millions of people, organizations, corporations and governments around the world will come together to make a bold statement about their concern for climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour. In the U.S. where we are already feeling the impacts of climate change, Earth Hour sends a clear message that Americans care about this issue and want to turn the lights out on dirty air, dangerous dependency on foreign oil and costly climate change impacts, and make the switch to cleaner air, a strong economic future and a more secure nation.”

“Since its inception three years ago, Earth Hour’s non-partisan approach has captured the world’s imagination and became a global phenomenon. Nearly one billion people turned out for Earth Hour 2009 – involving 4,100 cities in 87 countries on seven continents.”  Last year, the following iconic landmarks went dark for Earth Hour 2009: Empire State Building, Golden Gate Bridge, Las Vegas Strip, Sydney’s Opera House, Great Pyramids of Giza, and St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.  Check the source link for the full listing.

DO YOUR PART and contribute to Earth Hour 2010 by turning off your lights for one hour starting at 8:30PM (local time) on Saturday, March 27.  And while you’re at it, disconnect all electronics from their wall sockets and conserve energy during this time.  Even the small things count.  Since 2007 Earth Hour has become a worldwide shared experience with an important mission: to make a positive impact on our planet.

[Via MyEarthHour]

Doomsday Clock stands at 6 minutes to midnight

News, Technology, World, , , ,

The Doomsday Clock was manifested in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago.  It is a symbolic clock that represents our proximity to global disaster posed by the threats of global nuclear war, biotechnology, and climate change.  Scientists move the minute hand closer and farther away from midnight sporadically when global events deem it necessary.

The initial setting of the Doomsday Clock was set at 11:53PM in 1947.  Just two years later it was moved to 3 minutes to midnight during the onset of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union began tests on the first atomic bomb.  The closet it ever inched towards midnight was in 1953, during the height of the Cold War, when it was brought to 2 minutes to midnight.  Since its inception that is the closest its been to midnight and 1991’s  11:43PM setting was the farthest from midnight it’s been.  That year saw the US and Soviet Union sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Since 2007 the clock remained at 5 minutes to midnight.  However, with the recent “worldwide cooperation to reduce nuclear arsenals and limit effect of climate change,” the clock has been set back one minute to 11:54PM in 2010, giving all of us reason for a sigh of relief.  The Bulletin of Atomic Sciences on the recent change:

It is 6 minutes to midnight. We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons. For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material. And for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable. These unprecedented steps are signs of a growing political will to tackle the two gravest threats to civilization — the terror of nuclear weapons and runaway climate change.

[Via Gizmodo; Wiki]