Archive for January, 2009

by Vera H-C Chan

If months had psychological disorders, January 2009 would either go down as manic depressive or schizophrenic. In the United States, it was in one era and out the other as a new Oval Office tenant moved in. Inauguration highs however fell to wrenching lows, as pink slips flew like New Year's Day confetti paper. People couldn't even turn to some comfort foods, due to a peanut butter recall. But at least, in one of the coldest winters in years, one man showed just doing his job was enough to be a hero. Here's a quick rundown of January Buzz, and a peek ahead to February.

Welcome, No. 44 and Family
The most searched event of this month, and one of the most closely watched occasion in recent history, was the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, which came on the heels of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Frigid climes couldn't keep an estimated 1.8 million away, and everything from the inaugural address, the oath stumble (and later do-over), and Dick Cheney in a wheelchair drew millions to television sets and the Web to watch. After a night of partying, Barack Obama got to work in short order with executive orders, calling world leaders and wooing Republicans -- who promptly voted against his stimulus package.

Unexpected Twists
Many stories took unexpected turns. As if it weren't tragic enough that John Travolta's son, Jett, died of a seizure during a family Bahamian vacation, three people tried to extort the family ... In another shocking case, Brazilian model Mariana Bridi da Costa's urinary tract infection was misdiagonosed as kidney stones, and her hands and feet were amputated before she finally died of sepsis; the death also triggered searches for Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the bacteria that caused the sepsis ... Meanwhile, to add insult to salmonella, the Georgia peanut processing plant responsible for a peanut butter recall knew its food was contaminated, plus had mold and roaches ... Finally, a seemingly happy—if extravagant—octuplet birth spurred ethics discussions with reports that the single mother already had six kids, and still got fertility doctors to implant lots of embryos.

The Event of the Water Landing
Amidst seeming bedlam in politics, weather, and snacktime, one hero pilot emerged when Chesley B. Sullenberger III piloted a US Airways air bus onto the Hudson River ... and the crew and passengers emerged safe. The Web rallied around the captain, especially as his work in aviation safety emerged. For his day's work, Sullenberger got invited to the presidential inauguration, attended a rally in his California hometown, and received an Super Bowl honorable mention, along with his crew.

January 2009 Fastest Movers in Search
Search Terms with the Biggest Percentage Changes

1. Jett Travolta (off the charts.)
2. Peanut Butter Recall (off the charts.)
3. UPCAT Results 2009 (+52,476%)
4. Helena Christensen (+40,766%)
5. New 7 Wonders of Nature (+37,100%)
6. 2009 Detroit Auto Show (+31,216%.)
7. 2010 Ford Mustang Concept (+28.883)
8. Federal Tax Return (+23,981%)
9. Malia Obama (+23,880.)
10. Salmonella Symptoms (+21,924%%)

1. Britney Spears (-14%)
2. Jessica Alba (+4%)
3. Barack obama (+133%)
4. Beyonce (+95%)
5. Jessica Simpson (+62%)

... And Now, a February Buzz Forecast...
Super Bowl kicks off this short month's buzz (Feb. 1)... Black History Month should take on a whole new resonance (1-28)... "American Idol" goes Hollywood (3)... Leave the poor groundhog alone, it's going to be a cold winter (2) ... Happy 200th birthday, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin (12) ... Stimulation, anyone (16) ... It's feel-good versus feel-good at the earliest Oscar ceremony ever (22) ... The White House dog should be chosen soon, barring any Senate Hearings on the matter (arf).

Posted by Rishi Chandra, Google Apps Senior Product Manager

It's that time of the year again, the spring conference season, and I've got a full schedule of appearances on tap for the next few months. Here's a quick rundown:

When?	Where?
February 5-8 (that's next week!)	Vancouver: At Interaction 09, I'll be teaching a design patterns workshop with fellow Yahoo Lucas Pettinati and former Yahoo (and founder of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library Erin Malone from Tangible UX. This is the shorter, half-day version of our workshop. It's not too late to sign up!
March 2-4	Dallas: At the 18th conference of JA-SIG (an organization of open source communities working in higher education), I'll be giving a keynote called User Experience is Everybody's Business. It's at 8:30 am on Tuesday, so don't stay out too late Monday night if you want to catch it.
March 18-22	Memphis: At the IA Summit, I'll be teaching two workshops and giving a presentation. On Wednesday, March 18, Lucas, Erin and I will be teaching our full-day patterns workshop. People seemed to really like it last year and we've only made it better. On Thursday, March 19, I'm teaching an updated version of the architecture of social websites workshop I did last year with Christina Wodtke from LinkedIn and Joshua Porter from Bokardo. This year Yahoo social platform designer Bryce Glass (and co-author of the upcoming Designing Web 2.0 Reputation Systems from Yahoo! Press) will be joining us. At some point during the conference proper (final schedule not determined yet), Erin and I will be giving a talk on "Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Best Practices and Patterns for Designing the Social Web" (essentially the topic of our book and wiki.
March 31	San Francisco: At the Web 2.0 Expo, Erin and I will be teaching a workshop called (surprise), Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Best Practices and Patterns for Designing the Social Web on 9:00 am Tuesday.
May 12	New York. At the Enterprise Search Summit, I'll be moderating a panel on Emergent Social Search Experiences, featuring Rob Spiro from the Mechanical Zoo, Susan Chun from Steve.Museum, and Christina Wodtke from LinkedIn.

Who?
Christian Crumlish
Pattern Detective
Yahoo! Developer Network

We're right now here in Delhi, India, at IIT University to bring hack magic to the students of IIT. This sounds very corny but fact of the matter is that we've been greeted by a massive amount of huge signs announcing the university hack day sporting the little Hack-U wizard - so let's just roll with it:

For the last two days, we've introduced the students to hacking, Yahoo! web services, and the technologies used to build hacks. We covered BluePrint, BOSS, the YUI, YQL and Rasmus Lerdorf went through his veritable box of tricks how to retrieve, mix, and use the data in these using PHP.

My presentations covered the basics of hacking: I explained how every student can be an innovator as long as they believe in their idea and find the right people to make it happen together. My slides are available on SlideShare:

The second presentation covered the YUI and showed how easy it is to actually build good-looking working interfaces without having to deep-dive into the wonders of CSS and JavaScript. We wanted to make sure that people get the feeling that they can concentrate on the idea and effect of their hacks and not get stuck in wondering why things don't display the right way.

On the second day Saurabh Sahni introduced our open search product, BOSS:

All in all we had an overwhelming number of students sign up for the hack day and are very much looking forward to the hacks coming out of IIT Delhi.

Next on the agenda is IIT Bombay and the Open Hack Day in Bangalore, India. Then we head back to the US and bring hack to the University of Washington (Seattle), Georgia Tech, and the University of Michigan there. Check out the Hack U web site for details.

In Europe, we've already started with the Hack Challenge in Sunderland, England, and will go up to Dundee, Scotland next. There are some busy months ahead of us and we will keep you updated on the hacks and the happenings in the different universities here.

Chris Heilmann
Yahoo Developer Network

If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks for your understanding.

Update at 10:29 am PST: This post was revised as more precise information became available (changes are in blue). Here's StopBadware's explanation.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience

by Mike Krumboltz

If we had to sum up this past week in one sentence, we'd have to go with: 'Sheesh, we're glad that's not us.' Over the past seven days, a famous starlet was mocked for her weight, a woman gave birth to eight (count 'em, eight!) kids, and a disgraced governor was kicked to the curb after begging for his job. Revisit those tales of woe with the Buzz week in review.

J-Simp's Controversial Curves
Has Jessica Simpson (gasp!) gained weight? Pictures of her wearing a rather unfortunate pair of mom jeans seemed to indicate that the formerly svelte starlet had (how to put this delicately?) packed on a few pounds. Yes, we know. Making fun of anyone's weight is not nice, but many bloggers and searchers didn't seem to care. Fortunately for Jessica, several celebs came to her defense, including the curvacious Kim Kardashian, ex-husband Nick Lachey, and sister Ashlee. Ashlee, who knows a thing or two about being made fun of, went so far as to call the comments about her sister's weight "disgusting."

She has a "love-eight" relationship
Knowing you're responsible for the health and well being of one kid is terrifying enough. So, imagine the sense of pressure that comes with having eight kids. At once. Heart attack city for some, but for a proud mother from Los Angeles, the birth of healthy octuplets was a joyous occasion. Mom asked not to be identified for privacy reasons, but that didn't stop the buzz. In fact, it likely encouraged folks to search high and low for pictures and gossip. An article on the family and the six kids the mysterious mom already has stirred up a cloud of buzz. Additionally, queries on "octuplets" and "eight babies" screamed like an ornery child.

Bye-bye to Blago
He may have left politics, but we'll always remember his hairline. Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced former governor of Illinois, was removed from office this week. After making an impassioned plea for his job that apparently fell on unsympathetic ears, state representatives not only took away Blago's job, they banned him from seeking any political office in the state of Illinois. Ever. Cue the sad trombone. Blogs and talk shows weighed in on the courtroom theatrics (The Daily Show called Blago "Scumdog Million-Hairs") and searches soared on "blagojevich" as well as countless creative misspellings.

Also buzzing this week...
• Exxon Mobil posted record profits ($45 billion) for 2008 and Wall Street executives treated themselves to $20 billion in bonuses. Try to keep your blood pressure from rising too high...
• Elizabeth Hasselbeck is pregnant and she wants you know it! The co-host of "The View" (aka television's longest hour) announced the news on her show. If you saw strangers weeping with tears of joy on Thursday and wondered why, well, mystery solved.

by Vera H-C Chan

But enough about me. Here's 25 more things about me.

In the old days, when friends gathered around the piano to sing songs and share tales, anyone who reeled off a list of personal pecadillos, preferences and other assorted personal trivia would probably be put in charge of changing the chamber pot.

But in the (post)modern age of memoirs, email questionnaires, and social networking, such odes to oneself now take on a chain-letter charm, and lots of Buzz. All Things Digital, which normally deals in the matter of tech company fortunes, delved into Facebook's "self-absorbed new craze" called "25 Random Things About Me," in which people list personal "facts, habits or goals."

The social part of it cleverly lies in the instructions: "Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note about 25 random things... At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged ... [Here comes the kicker] If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you." About me? Really? 25? How flattering. Isn't this the same pitch Bernard Madoff used?

The exercise (or meme, as culturalists like to call it) has triggered a spectrum of reaction from the blogosphere, from philosophical musings to delighting in shared discovery to bemoaning the pressure upon the tagged to come up with 25 reasonably intriguing factoids. The notion, like a writing assignment, has also inspired blogospheric riffs and confessions, like the female rabbi who, in a Houston Chronicle blog, admitted to listening to Rush Limbaugh. Technorati created a tag page devoted to assorted randomness.

A small Search uptick has registered on Yahoo! for variations of 25RTAM, probably out of voyeurism. Then again, who's to say that, in Talented Mr. Ripley or Single White Female-like fashion, someone won't be "borrowing" tidbits from other people's lists and cobble together a more fascinating profile?  

Of course, in the natural evolution of Facebook fads, clubs have sprung up around the 25RTAM issues. Groups with more than 20 members, to date (listed in order of total members):

• I Have Not Been Tagged for the "25 Random Things About Me" Chain Letter
• 25 Random Things
• NO! I Will Not Post "25 Random Things About ME!"
• Stop Tagging Me in 25 Random Things Posts You Tards
• Don't Write 25 Things
• I Like the "25 Random Things About You"...BUT!!!
• I Refuse To List 25 Random Things About Myself
• I Refuse to Complete the 25 Random Things List
• I'm Tired of Learning 25 Random Things About People

 

Next craze? We're guessing a toss-up between "25 Random Things You Didn't Know I Knew About You (AKA The Stalker Edition)" and "25 Random Books I Could've Written Instead of Frittering It All Away in Lists."

by Claudine Zap

Whether you flee from your TV around Super Bowl Sunday or you're all about the big game, you're in luck: There are other bowls are out there.

Puppy Upper
The rivalry is fierce. The anticipation is high. Sunday is game day and it's a dog eat dog world. Super Bowl? Nope. Puppy lovers can tune out the football and tune in for some canine competition for the fifth annual Puppy Bowl hosted by Animal Planet. The Bowl has been getting some puppy love in Search: "puppy bowl" and "animal planet puppy bowl" saw a notable increase.

Needless to say, it's tough to choose a favorite among all that adorableness. But the site does note that all the puppies are from shelters and have been adopted, so the fun is guilt-free. The game takes place on a mini gridiron complete with, if not pigskin, then plenty of chew toys for all competitors. The half-time show promises a frisky feline act, there's a water bowl cam and a starting lineup of cuteness.

Puppy Bowl fans can head to the Puppy Bowl fansite to vote for their favorite pup player, check out the Hall of Fame and get to know the appealingly goofy referee who says he was born to ref a fake football game starring doggies.

Just Wing It
If you were disgusted by the over-the-top football hype coming at you for this weekend's game, then you better stop reading here. Because some in Philadelphia believe that the best way to mark the uber bowl is by eating lots and lots of chicken wings. Yep, welcome to the Wing Bowl. It's, well, fowl. Fast foodies couldn't look away, with searches on "wing bowl" up 150%.

The competition has already taken place and someone known as Super Squibb won Philadelphia's Wing Bowl by downing 203 chicken wings in about 20 minutes. The annual feeding frenzy takes place the Friday before Super Bowl Sunday. You can get instant replay through the slideshow here, although a word of caution: don't eat while you look. Hey, we warned you.

by Vera H-C Chan

Oooo, it's a bloodbath at the Buzz Multiplex ... as in, critics largely savaging the three newest releases. This weekend looks like a triple case of "when good actors take on mediocre movies." Despite the triple offering of PG/PG-13 family-friendliness, this might be a good time to catch up on all those Oscar nominees. Here's how the premieres rank among searchers.

1. Taken (PG-13). Liam Neeson hasn't taken on a starring role in a while, which might explain the Search boost in "liam neeson movies." Truth be told, however, the Web love's aimed at Maggie Grace, as the Neeson's kidnapped daughter. (Why daughters of Hollywood operatives never learn self-defense or carry weapons is a tale that deserves to be told, but not here.) The thriller hits the male Search mark, in this "reaffirmation-that-dads-can-kick-patootie-too" movie of the week.

2. The Uninvited (PG-13). In keeping with Hollywood's New Year resolution to have a horror every weekend, this one takes the family drama/evil-stepmother motif. Despite Search up-and-comers Emily Browning and Arielle Kebbel, as well as an Oscar nominee (David Strathairn as the dad), only one person matters here: Elizabeth Banks. Horror flicks are searchers' guilty pleasures, and the guilty parties are mostly people 13-29, who account for nearly two-thirds the title's look-ups.

3. New In Town (PG). Within Cupid shooting range of Valentine's Day comes Renee Zellweger as a Miami executive who heads to Minneapolis to find American values and Harry Connick, Jr. Anyone considering this romance entry, take note: Entertainment Weekly awarded the romance a "B," but that's about the kindest grade so far. USA Today suggests that Minnesotans may want to file a "class-action defamation suit" for the usual Hollywood ain't-these-Midwesterners-backwater-but-sincere attitude. Since Minnesota leads the state searches, the Gopher State might be looking into that advice. 

by Claudine Zap

Here's your tall, cold buzz.

1. Elisabeth Hasselbeck (+8,785%). The 31-year-old member of "The View" is pregnant again. The die-hard Republican, who is married to former football player Tim Hasselbeck, made the announcement on the ABC show. She said the third pregnancy was a surprise.
2. Left-handed presidents (+334%). Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and now Barack Obama are all lefties. In fact, eight presidents claimed south-paw status. Coincidence? Or some kind of evolutionary advantage?
3. 2009 Super Bowl kickoff time (+250%). Turn on the tube — or flee the house — at 6:20 p.m. Eastern Time (3:20 p.m. Pacific Time) this Sunday on NBC.
4. New York gangs (+200%). Concern is growing that with the worsening economy, New York will sink back to the dark days of the 1970s, when crime levels skyrocketed and the city services all but disappeared.
5. Peanut recall (+160%). The news about the Georgia peanut processing plant keeps getting worse. The FDA reports that despite positive tests showing Salmonella contamination, the plant continued to produce peanut products, dating back to January, 2007. The recall is one of the nation's largest. You can search the ever-expanding list of recalled peanut products here.