UK Zeitgeist 2008

The fastest rising search terms in the UK

iPlayer
Facebook
iPhone
Youtube
Yahoo Mail
Large Hadron Collider
Obama
Friv
Cam4
Jogos

The most searched terms in the UK

Facebook
BBC
YouTube
eBay
Games
News
Hotmail
Bebo
Yahoo
Jobs

Most searched politicians in the UK

Gordon Brown
David Cameron
Barack Obama
Tony Blair
Sarah Palin
John Mccain
George Osborne
Alistair Darling
Boris Johnson
Nicolas Sarkozy

Fastest rising recipe searches in the UK

cupcake
meatballs
rocky road
crumble topping
eaton mess
pork belly
rhubarb fool
lemon posset
honey comb
beer batter

Fastest rising finance-related searches in the UK

icesave
hot uk deals
natwest
hmrc
hbos
money saving expert
halifax
barclays
rbs
lloyds tsb

The hottest tickets of the year in the UK

Oasis
Leonard Cohen
AC/DC
The Ashes
Steve Coogan
SOS
Oliver
Gladiators
Tina Turner
Nickleback

- Source: Google Zeitgeist 2008 Home page

As djlosh at TapTheHive.com points out, Google retains all rights of content usage published through its browser:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Source: Google Chrome EULA

Update: Apparently their EULA was in beta too and the offending text has been changed!

To all you rippers out there: Please don’t cut the credits!

It may save you a meg or two, but kindly remember the people who put their heart and soul into bringing it to you to re-encode in the first place. I for one love as many people as possible watching my stuff, and I don’t have a problem you ripping, please kindly leave us the one or two minutes at the end of every piece we do to remember us by.

To monitor the entire feed, simply hit the “Monitor with ZapTXT” in the RSS menu on the top right.

[photopress:zapFeed.gif,full,centered]

To just monitor new comments on a specific post, click on the “Monitor comments with ZapTXT” in the post meta date menu on the top right.

[photopress:zapComments.gif,full,centered]

Have fun

All images are copyright © Twitter.com. I list them here for your convenience only!

Twitter 404 File Not Found Error:
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Twitter 403 Permission Denied Error:
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Twitter 500 Server Error:
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Twitter Maintenance Message:
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That’s all I’ve found so far. Let me know if you find any more

BTW. I’m a twitterer too now. Why not follow me around a bit?

The future really is bright, if not with a slight orange glow. Want to play the latest game? Watch the latest movie? Listen to the coolest tracks? But are too fat to nip down to the shops? Fear not, just download it straight to your computer and save more than calories! But then there’s the catch…

All but a very few of those brave new online download retailers offer their goods to non-USA citizens. iTunes music store being one thorn in my eye. But there are others. Check out the all new BitTorrent.com site, now with fancy music and video downloads. But it’s for USA folk only

I understand it’s because of rights issues and licensing. To be honest I think it’s because US companies simply don’t care too much for markets outside their homeland. To be fair, there are new download services – like musicload.de in Germany for example – outside the US of A but they only carry crappy old content and it always lacks the original language or quality.

While we are on the topic of downloading legal content (for a change), what’s up with the whole numbers anyway? AACS used stupid software to protect their goods, serves them right. It’s comparable to a careless shop owner who sleeps at his desk only to discover people freeloading on his merchandise, and complaining about it. How do you want to sue over 700,000 16 year old PFY’s across the world?

Until those large corporations realize that they are about 100 years behind the times and that we live in a truly global village, i doubt that people will stop damaging their bottom lines (no pun intended).

First, find a niche that you want to exploit like online TV, css web design or equipment news. Then get a free website from sites like WordPress.com or Blogger.com and start filling it with content.

Hunt around the bloggosphere to find sites offering the content you need and hopefully won’t notice you are stealing theirs and passing it off as your own. Just grab either the posts feed or why not just grap the entire category? Then tell your RSS parser (WordPress already has the ability to import syndicate build-in) to take the feed and display its content on your website.

Add a little style and play around with the feed data. For example, you may want to remove the original author and originating website. Also be sure to remove any backlinks to their site otherwise they will get a trackback and be alerted to your actions. Or leave them, so you can tell them you just liked their site and wanted to provide free advertising to them.

Now to the really interesting part of getting something for nothing. Sign up with textbased ad sites like Google Adsense and surround your content with ads. Add a few digg.com or other social networking buttons, submit and wait for people to visit your site and click those banners!

And you are done

A not so nice example can be found at joostvideos.blogspot.com where you can find a multitude of other peoples content (especially videos) like my post on the free joost invites I gave away last week. Enjoy and remember to send me a cheque for my share of your advertising profits.

1. Top 10 Lists

   Let’s face it, the only reason for putting up Top 10 lists is to drive quick traffic to your blog. Why? Because you are lazy and cannot concentrate for more than a short sound bite. In fact, i shall make this into a podcast for the activity handicapped

2. Cool Pictures / Videos

   “Oh no! Seen this thing? It’s sooo fracking cool. Digg me now.” C’on peeps. Enough already. There’s a gazillion things out there and if even the most basic deformation of a potato or Dorito crisp send shivers of excitement down your spine, you should have yourself locked in a nice comfy room with no windows and lot’s of cushions. Stepping outside your door might kill you with excitement. Be forewarned.

3. Social Networking Sites

   Whether it’s plain-old I’mSpaced or Ringed-in, what’s the point of a thousand sites trying to network everyone? The features are the same: spam farms for 10 year olds. IMHO they should all be bought by Google today and made into something useful. Everyone could have a proper website and .. oh wait!

4. PFYs discovering life outside their 10sqft dorm room

   As shocking as it may be to under-educated poor North American teenagers, but there’s a whole planet out there (/me points to behind west and east coasts)! America is not representative of people on this world, neither do they horde all the gold or have discovered law making. Here’s a shocker for you:

   North America was re-populated a few hundred years ago by outcasts adventurers from Europe (just off the east coast) and enterprising young men and women from the far east (that’s actually just west off LA). As a bonus I throw in the fact that they weren’t even the first people to live on the great plains – there were people there before them. They were called native North Americans.

5. USA World Domination

   Kinda goes with the previous rant entry. What’s up with people always trying to conquer the world? Can’t we just learn from all the failed attempts before and abandon the idea altogether? Who is next? I ponder Antartica hasn’t had a go yet.. .

6. Political Commentary

   I love the fact that the Internet is so free anyone can say anything these days! Meaningful or otherwise (the latter mostly), everyone feels they should have a go at politics. Just a shame nobody votes anymore.. .

7. Death, Destruction and Hype

   That one is actually quite disgusting. Whenever people die, get maimed or manage their 10th head-shot in a row there’s the obligatory media hype. Big, bold headlines, supported by a strap line so OTT everyone is scared instantly into voting to give up their freedom to secure it. Makes no sense. People see reports of mass murder in a far flung place, send aid Dollars and vote on new legislation making sure that those poor people will still have something to suffer from in case of the next L!VE Aid concert.

8. How to design a website

   I think everyone knows how to do a website today. Or let me put this in another way, they should. The web has been here for a long time now and all the website designing tools make it virtually impossible for people to venture off the path of good taste. Whenever you give people advice, they listen, nod a lot and then go off to do the exact opposite anyway. If someone tells me they’ve designed their own site I always ask two things:

   a) How long did it take you, and
   b) Was it any fun

   Because if it took them less than a couple of hours, chances are they have no idea why they are having a site anyway. Also, if it was fun it sure as heck couldn’t have been done professionally, right?

9. Rapid (Rabbit) Web2.0 Trashlications

   “Uhh, look it goes zoom zoom!” Yeah, but no – why? Visual interface effects are there for one reason, and one reason only: to aid the user.

   Everyone seems to be able to get their next killer app out of the door before even the basic concept is finalised. Let alone planned out and thought through. Yes, I agree that it is great to put ideas into working prototypes – but please not forget all those failed and over-venture-capitalised enterprises of the late 90′s. There’s a reason why so few are still around: they actually sat down and thought about whether that half-arsed idea they had last night down the pub would actually work.

10. Plagiarism 2.0 – Content-theft driven websites via RSS

    RSS feeds are a wicked tool. No, really RSS feeds are a thing of evil. Everytime someone sits down and writes / designs / creates something and publishes it through an XML data exchange file, ten scammers get made. Now it’s real easy to create wholesome portal websites with someone else’s content. Just register a domain and parse what ever feeds apply, slap some ads on it and bang: a free golden goose! Time to buckle down those feeds.. .

If you’ve read thus far and have no idea how you got here, I suggest PANIC! So digg me while you do.. .

“So long and thanks for all the fish.“

If you want to participate in the project, or just want to know how you can make a difference I suggest you head over to energyrace.com and subscribe to their RSS feed.

People from outside the USA are encouraged to get in touch and let him know you care.

Jay also blogs about using “compact fluorescent bulbs” (CFL) and their great energy (money) saving potential. To which I can proudly attest! I’m using CFL exclusively in my flat and compared to my previous electricity bills I’ve already made the money back I “invested” in them. At IKEA over here they are actually quite cheap.. oh and they last for donkeys.

@Jay = How about an “Invite Friends” referral button or code to include on my blog? Using the ?referrer=user for now but not sure whether that actually adds people referred to you to my profile. Also, I think you trackbacks aren’t working

BTW. Referrals as in concerned people, not money! This is not about affiliation folks – just plain caring *g