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2008 in Google’s terms

2008 is almost over, and Google has released Zeitgeist 2008. A good time to blog about it, since it’s still quite fresh and if I don’t do it now, I would postpone it on and on and on, right? 😛

Zeitgeist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-“gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.[1] [2]

This year the chart is not as colorful as before but it was enhanced with annotations 😛

Economy

Since the first release in 2001, the Zeitgeist progressively does a better job reflecting situations of the world, from regional to international.

122608-1806-2008ingoogl1.png
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Trends for Layaway

And no, that’s really a burst, a sudden increase in term of 8 times the original volume; not because the chart is scaled! The turkeys did quite a good job!

Over the hedge comics @ overthehedge.com

Oil

Gas price contributed is part, oh well…

Look at how consumerism has taken over the world. People care about the environment not for their children but instead for their pocket. What if one day the earth stood still? 😛

Who, what and how

I comment only for what I feel like commenting 😛

Who is…

  1. who is Obama
  2. who is McCain ~ Google is becoming one of the criterion for presidency 😛
  3. who is Palin
  4. who is lil wayne
  5. who is miley cyrus
  6. who is dolla
  7. who is jonas brothers
  8. who is chris brown
  9. who is biden
  10. who is martin luther

What is…

  1. what is love ~ How can you define love 😛
  2. what is life ~ 42
  3. what is java ~ Americans doesn’t seem to use that much coffee 😉
  4. what is sap
  5. what is rss
  6. what is scientology
  7. what is autism
  8. what is lupus
  9. what is 3g ~ Proof of Apple’s influence (j/k, 3G standards are in active development)
  10. what is art

How to…

  1. how to draw
  2. how to kiss ~ Isn’t this stuff best practiced than learning
  3. how to write ~ Blog is growing, right…
  4. how to cook ~ Restaurants are now expensive for Americans
  5. how to tie
  6. how to hack ~ Adults are taking their kids apart from the fun…
  7. how to run
  8. how to cite
  9. how to paint
  10. how to spell

International queries [3]

Nothing that much interesting, since Google themselves is quite lazy to translate the international queries this year 😛

What a pity Vietnam still haven’t generated enough data to appear in the yearly list, or is it some kind of classified data? Because I’m quite sure not only Vietnam are contributing to that infamous #1 query, while the second and third appeared in the Zeitgeist…

It’s not something that makes you proud when you searched for blog the most… ;))

Loneliness

Technology takes people nearer to each other… less and less lonely since 2004. The world is getting better! 🙂 You’ve got to love it!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIoBXdQX_wY&w=425&h=344]

Translation

Google released Vietnamese support for Google Translate this year together with a couple of useful enhancements (translated search, dictionary, etc.). Before that I have always been in doubt that all the Vietnamese pages on Google is machine translated; but that’s countered by the fact that nobody in Vietnam ever succeeded in writing such a translation engine; and the translation looks natural enough :-/ Time to put that to the test 😛

Web history in Vietnamese

Same page, translated from English

Sure enough, you can see the apparent similarity: the wording is the same; the grammar on the static page is a little better than the translated one but is still far from perfect. My guess is Google has someone with basic Vietnamese knowledge, and the person’s responsibility is just to check whether the translated text is readable. Oh well, even though people has to turn to English if they want to read the TOS, this may help kids and give a good example of how hard to translate Vietnamese (O’ great language =)).

Also, since I received complaints that my English is so terrible, this blog has just been enhanced with a translator thanks to David Pozza and Google for providing the API, hope it is more readable now 😉

(Look to the right)

~ And that’s another day with Google

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