The Year that Was 2006, according to Google

What did we ever do without Google for search engine entertainment and taking our cultural pulse?

I was checking out Google's annual Zeitgeist for the past year and I couldn't help but opine on the results. Google Zeitgeist aggregates user searches over the past year in various categories displaying our collective consciousness and online activity. With roughly 70% of the U.S. now on the Internet and with Google now controlling over 50% of the search engine market I think it is safe to safe that Google Zeitgeist captures the "pulse" of our society.

Read and interpret it as you would like but this is what I learned:

- According to the top search results, social networking is here to stay and we are only going to spend more countless hours on Myspace, Bebo, and Wikipedia.

- A review of Google News searches reveals that we wanted the latest information on Paris Hilton and Orlando Bloom over both cancer and Hurricane Katrina. Last year Janet Jackson beat out Hurricane Katrina.

- The item we wanted defined most was "promiscuous" and we really wanted to learn how to "refinance."

- The Duke Lacrosse scandal received three of the top five spots for "US Scandals"

- Suri beat out Shiloh in searches and Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise came in #1 and #2 for wedding searches

- The most coveted ticket this year was for the Cheetah Girls

- The World Cup killed the Olympics this year and Bob Baker's retirement beat out Tiki Barber, Samy Sosa and Bill Gates.

Interesting year, 2007 predictions? Check out the 2005 results here.

Digging Iraq

It is Christmas eve and you would think I had something better to do than post to Digg but I was reading the New Yorker and there was a great article. The article is on Iraq and I would highly recommend it. Really gets to the heart of the issue and has some ties with what I am going to write my thesis on. I am going to write about it more but first I posted it to Digg--social networking site where articles are posted and based on how many people "digg" your story it gets a higher ranking.

Cool to get hits on your stories and people still care about this issue.

Check it out here

My Sister, 1000 Chinese Students and Christmas

As many of you know my rock star sister, Natalie, is in rural China (Hunan Province) teaching English. She has been blogging on her trials and tribulations since September and the stories have been amazing. I just read her latest post and it is a must read as it is so indicative of how great of a job she is doing over there. It blows my mind that this little white girl has such confidence, charisma, and creativity in a foreign communist land. I really hope she took pictures as I can only imagine the scene.

Nat, I really hope you turn all your writings into a book someday!

Check out her blog here and the latest post here.

Best Albums of 2006

I just listened to NPR's All Songs Considered Best Songs of 2006 and I would highly recommend a listen. A lot of the bands are fairly obvious since there have been some standout albums this year, including the Decembrists, Bob Dylan, Beck, etc. but I also downloaded some new albums that are really awesome.

New albums I am listening to:
The Gourds: Heavy Ornamentals
Jenny Lewis: Rabbit Fur Coat
TV On the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain
M. Ward: Post War

My favorite albums of the year include:
Belle and Sebastian: The Life Pursuit
Flaming Lips: At War With The Mystics
Bob Dylan: Modern Times

Others?

Nerdy Water Bottles

I was reading Wired magazine last night and aside from staying in on a Friday night, reading Wired magazine, I came across an incredible yet nerdy device--the HydraCoach. Basically, the device monitors how much water you are drinking out of this high tech water bottle and makes sure you drink the "recommended" amount. I know what you are thinking, are you kidding me, who needs an electronic water bottle to monitor how much you drink??

I , however, see this as an inredible idea not just because it is a new toy to play with but it does all the work for you. We all know that drinking water is supposed to be good for us and most people do not drink nearly enough. This gadget beeps and hollers whenever you are not drinking enough. How cool is that!? Just keep in next to you during the day in your cage/cubicle and piss off your co-workers with the beeping bottle of water that is keeping you hydrated. Especially in this world of high coffee and booze intake, this is a great thing. It is only $30 as well.

Ok, someone buy me one for Christmas, please!

No Google = Threat to National Security?

While attempting to write my thesis proposal tonight, I got distracted by a very disturbing article. The article was in the Washington Post today and titled "Seeking Iran Intelligence, U.S. Tries Google." It begins:

When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft.

Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way -- by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as "Iran and nuclear," three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations.

This article begs the question: How much does our national security apparatus rely on Google? Personally, at my government client site, we depend on the use of search engines, such as Google, to conduct open source research all the time. When I worked at USAID in the Office of Iraq Reconstruction, we did not turn to the Department of Defense or State Department for statistics on reconstruction costs, the Iraq population, or foreign development projects--we turned to Google. With our information sharing mechanisms within the government in such disarray, I wonder whether it would be a bigger national security risk if one of the U.S. classified computer networks went down or Google? This might seem like a ridiculous claim but it would not surprise me to find that Google would cause a greater risk. I am not going to go into the tiresome debate about how miserably the U.S. Government adopts new technology but it does bring up an interesting issue about whether the government has a responsibility to help protect private information technology, such as Google.

Much government focus is on protecting national security systems but when does a non-classified and open system become such a powerful aggregator that it itself becomes a national security system?