It’s December, and its the time where the search engines release their top 10 searches of the year. Yahoo has today released the top searches on their search engine, which is set to be replaced with Bing soon, and there may be surprises – but many of them are not so surprising. Pop culture dominated the searches this year, as Michael Jackson topped the list after his death caused an internet frenzy in finding the latest information.
Second was the Twilight Saga, mainly helped by teenage girls; with the WWE coming in third place, Megan Fox in fourth, Britney Spears taking fifth place, and Naruto back on the list (again) in sixth position – though, I still don’t get why people like the series. Seventh position goes to American Idol, thanks to fan-favourite Adam Lambert; while Kim Kardashian coming in eighth place, NASCAR in ninth and the free MMORPG Runescape coming in tenth place.
For those wanting to know what were the top gadgets this year according to their search results; the top five places were held by (in order from fifth to first place) the PlayStation 3, the iPod touch, the PSP 3000, Nintendo Wii and the iPhone.
Google has been testing a brand new design for its search engine, which some users have been able to access (either via Google’s random selection or using a piece of JavaScript). The new design, which looks like it has been inspired by Google Wave, still includes the suggested search terms and the two familiar buttons; but the colours are lighter and that there is a gradient on the buttons.
When you thought all the good idea for patents are gone, "The USPTO issued US Patent No. D603,866 to six Google inventors for their 'graphical user interface for display screen of a communications terminal.' Among the six inventors is the guy who introduced Google Patents. Ironically, Google Patents can't seem to find the new Google patent for Google Patents."
What does this mean? The fact Google has a patent to Display patents using a Graphical User Interface (GUI
Just when you thought Google could get any more creepy, just look at this video from the TV Show "Hungry Beast" showing in Australia on the ABC Television network. Maybe you should think twice about pushing that signup button to gMail or pushing that "Sign up to latitude" on your iPhone. I know I haven't!
Microsoft has revealed its updated design and logo to its MSN.com homepage, hoping to stay relevant in a battle between Yahoo and AOL. The site, though not receiving the same amount of attention than Bing or its Windows Live services, still remains a significant source of traffic for both sites and a crucial part of Microsoft’s online division.
The redesign, that has been in the works for months, will see less focus on several of its lesser services but more on News, Sport, Shopping, Lifestyle, Entertainment and Money – along with local content from NBC News (via MSNBC), and integration with Facebook and Twitter to update your status on the page.
It will offer inline video streaming, using Silverlight and from a massive catalogue of sources including Hulu, FOX Entertainment Group and National Geographic.
“More than half of people online start their sessions on sites like MSN and they told us they want simplicity — yet still want the latest information and their favorite services delivered together,” Senior Director of MSN, Lisa Gurry, said. “With our large audience and sophisticated technology, we were able to gather a tremendous amount of customer feedback to ensure we delivered the online experience customers are really craving.”
While the design isn’t being rolled out just yet, you can have a look at the new version at http://preview.msn.com and play around with the design. Full image of the new homepage can be found below.
Twitter has rolled out its Lists feature today, though don’t expect it to come to you anytime soon. Only a few people have been given access to the feature; and I was lucky to get it, along with ABC774 Melbourne. Basically, the feature allows you to create lists of your friends and share them to the public or even privately, and though it may sound silly, if you have over a hundred to follow, then you might need this to sort out your friends from the news services.
While WordPress is still the best blogging software tool out there in the web, it is still being criticised for not being a “real CMS (Content Management System)”. But, it seems that will change once the 2.9 beta is released around the end of October with brand new features, according to Dougal Campbell.
Campbell has said that the next version of 2.9 will include Post Thumbnails, meaning that an image will be automatically created of the post – making it easier for people to create a list of “Featured Posts” without creating custom metadata for the post; simple image editing – including cropping, resizing, flip and rotating options; and custom post types - so you can post things outside the conventional page, post or attachment page.
Also included is the integration of a plugin that allows you to simply paste the URL that contains anything that you can embed, like a YouTube video, and it will find the embed code and put the code for you. So far, according to Campbell, it only supports YouTube, Google Video, PollDaddy (owned by WordPress developers Automattic).
Theme and plugin developers will also be happy to find out that you can now place widgets outside the Loop; and you can now access the metadata for all comments. Plugin developers will also be allowed to add additional theme directories to the core, allowing plugins to ship with their own themes.
Those who cannot wait for the beta of WordPress 2.9, you can follow these instructions to get involved. WordPress has also said that the final version of 2.9 will hopefully be released in late November to early December.
MySpace - it was (and to some still is) the biggest social networking site of once upon a time. Nobody was cool unless you had it - employers, potential co-workers and friends at school all bragged of using it. Facebook was just thought of as a "it'll never grow" site and Twitter was no where to be heard of. Well, times are-a-changing.
In a recent survey, data results show that MySpace has lost close to 50% of the social market share, despite it's loyal users staying on the site longer then Facebook or Twitter. Facebook and Twitter now have 8 million and 1.5 million members respectively, according to a recent Nielsen Poll and have been the two main winners in the social rush for glory.
Reasons touted for this drop in user base is largely due to the average age group of the MySpace population and user disappointment at site maintenance, user interactivity and overall site content. MySpace hopes to remedy this problem by turning MySpace into a more music & video driven social networking site.
Facebook has a passionate translation community, with Facebook supporting over 70 languages, ranging from variations of English, Pirate, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Arabic, Persian, Yiddish and Chinese (Simplified, Hong Kong and Taiwan versions).
Now, Facebook is adding five more languages; which include Georgian, Nepali, Faroese and Azeri. But what stands out is that Facebook has now translated their site into Latin, despite being only used within the Catholic Church and in Vatican City.
So, if you are willing to try it, you can change it by changing the language settings to “lingua latina” at the very bottom of a Facebook page.
Despite being a very useful tool in keeping up with breaking news, it seems that people don’t know where to find interesting users, mainly because they are afraid of adding them or don’t really have anything to say. While there are many tools that do that job for you, but that means you have to go to another site outside of Twitter.
Well, until now. Twitter has announced a brand new feature that will be implemented soon. Called Lists, it will allow users to create custom lists of users they follow with a click. Lists will be public by default, meaning that everyone can see who is in that particular list, but you can set it to private. Just like the profiles themselves, you can subscribe (or “follow”) the list.
“We started working on this feature because of the frequent requests we received from people who were looking for a better way to organize information on Twitter,” Project leader Nick Kallen said on Twitter’s blog.
Currently, it is in limited testing, meaning that you most likely won’t see it, unless you are really, really lucky; but after that, it will be launched for all accounts. Twitter developers will also be given the API once it receives a public launch, so apps can take advantage of the new feature.
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It’s December, and its the time where the search engines release their top 10 searches of the year. Yahoo has today released the top searches on their search engine, which is set to be replaced with Bing soon, and there may be surprises – but many of them are not so surprising. Pop culture dominated the searches this year, as Michael Jackson topped the list after his death caused an internet frenzy in finding the latest information.
