Apart from being funny, this video is another reminder of just how far Twitter has moved into mainstream pop-culture. We now have William Shatner reciting Sarah Palin’s tweets for a few laughs on the Tonight Show! Over the past two and a half years or so, it’s been fascinating to watch Twitter go from a relatively small geek community to a mainstream pop-cultural phenomenon.
Archive for July, 2009
Google Australia has revealed the top ten fastest rising searches for 2009 on google.com.au. A year ago the top searches included Heath Ledger, Barack Obama and iPhones. This year so far, the top three fastest rising searches have been ‘swine flu’, ‘susan boyle and ‘masterchef’.
Notably, among the top ten were also ‘twitter’, ‘bing’ and ‘stimulus package’. It’s certainly no surprise that ‘Michael Jackson’ has been one of the fastest rising people searches of the year so far, given his sudden and untimely death.
Following are a few of the top ten lists. See the rest of the lists at Official Google Australia Blog.
Fastest rising searches of 2009:
swine flu
susan boyle
masterchef
stimulus package
wimbledon
twitter
bing
one hd
afl fixture 2009
bruno
Fastest rising ‘people’ searches of 2009:
susan boyle
bruno
jade goody
michael jackson
taylor swift
lily allen
robert pattinson
lady gaga
megan fox
stephenie meyer
Fastest rising searches for products/services of 2009:
twitter
bing
one hd
windows 7
facebook
skype download
picnik
avg free download
google chrome
itunes download
Last week in this CSPAN interview, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs mentioned that “for some reason Twitter is blocked on White House computers”. He also said that people already know enough about what he’s doing from seeing him on camera. Gibbs doesn’t seem to realise there’s quite a bit more that can be done with Twitter than just telling people what he is doing.
This is a little strange considering the White House does show it values Twitter by maintaining two official Twitter accounts, @BarackObama and @Whitehouse. These accounts have a combined following of over 2.5 million. He also seems to have forgotten that Obama’s engagement with new media during his campaign for the White House helped him win the election. I would’ve thought they’d be interested in expanding on this during their administration by allowing some more officials to use Twitter from within.
Presumably the White House Twitter ban is for security reasons. Perhaps banning Twitter is just easier than developing and implementing social media guidelines. After all, people don’t always follow guidelines. The ban makes me wonder if anyone uses Twitter from mobile devices from inside the White House.
Should tweeting be allowed from inside governments, or is it the real-time nature of Twitter too much of a security risk?
Twitter has released a new search widget which updates in real-time. If you’re reading this post on my blog rather than via RSS, you’ll see in the sidebar that the title, caption, colours and dimensions of the widget are able to be customised. When you enter a search query there’s an option to loop in old results, which is recommended for low volume searches. It’s also possible to use advanced search operators to construct a search query for the widget. All-in-all, the widget is very easy to customise and install on a site or blog.
It’s great to be able to have more of the Twitter conversation visible than just your own posts. My only slight concern is that the constant real-time scrolling animation of the widget might be a little annoying for blog readers, as the scrolling is similar to having an animated banner ad next to the content; nobody complains about those, right?
I’m leaving it on my blog for the time being, as I think it’s an improvement on the previous static html Twitter widget I had, which only included my own posts. I think it’s far more interesting to see what others are saying.
via The Inquisitr
I don’t have much to say about this new season of Dexter, as the trailer speaks for itself! What I will say is that in a time when there seems to be so little great tv being made, Dexter is definitely well worth watching, if you like that sort of thing. In short, Dexter. Is. Awesome. If you haven’t seen it yet, go back to Season 01 and start from there, it’s well worth it!
