While I read almost every HN post I saw about Snowden, I don't think I searched his name at all. In fact, I can't remember searching anything news related this year. I'm sure I have, but its really not necessary anymore. I wonder if others are starting to get into similar patterns.
You seriously mean to tell me that the most popular search on Google for 2013 is 'Paul Walker' followed by 'iPhone 5s'? What? Surely 'Weather' would be higher. I simply don't know what I'm looking at here.
Fairly sure they've filtered out what might constitute "low importance" searched like terms such as 'weather'. Searches for the weather probably remain relatively stable and don't really tell us anything.
Yes, it's trending searches, not most popular ones. By the way, non-engineers/non-analytical people usually have trouble differentiating the two. I can't recall how many meetings with product/business people that I have to explain the concepts.
I imagine this is a variant of a Latent Dirichlet Allocation[0]. Informally, this will identify words "most associated" with 2013, which is not the same thing as the most searched words in 2013.
Put another way, unless there's a huge spike of interest in the weather in 2013 compared to other years, "weather" won't be included.
I went through it, I always give a chance to content no matter how presented it is ( a habit of mine). However, it didn't tell me anything. It's like a run-of-the-mill motivation video. To make things worse, I couldn't get to the results of zeitgeist on my own to see what was actually going on.
It looks pretty, and I am sure lots of work was put into it and I appreciate that. But it's uninspired and isn't very functional. I expect functionality first from google. Well, I used to.
That was such a horribly designed UI. I had no idea what I am looking at and why. Google used to all about simplicity. I remember in prior years these kind of posts always had graphs and considerable text explaining trends. Its like someone there realized they are JS experts.
No, you're not alone. When they offer data, a lot of us think, "Oh, goodie, some interesting data!" We hustle over there to learn something new and learn it quickly.
If instead we are treated to a demonstration of javascript media virtuosity that buries the actual data too deeply to be worth extracting, we get annoyed and complain: "Where's the beef?" (But I don't think there's anybody back there[1].)
Scrolling is backwards on my Mac. I'm using the default ("natural") scrolling, where swiping up scrolls down, but this page is set to scroll down with a swipe down.
Probably has to do with the fact that they're rendering the images in a canvas element rather than plain old HTML.
It's also broken on iPads. You can't see the bottom nav in portrait and the site is slightly too large for the viewport when viewed in landscape.
That would make sense if this were something that was intended to be useful and meaningful. I think this is just supposed to remind you that Google is a thing.
I think it's just a default Google thing. Basically, it notices you're logged in but you haven't entered your password for a while, so it prompts you to login again.
Instead, I just clicked 'Log out and log in as a different user', closed the tab, and clicked the link again on HN, and it worked just fine.
So in short, it doesn't require you to be logged in, unless you are, at which point you have to log in again.
The video doesn't load for me on Firefox. It is probably just a bug and will be fixed but it coincidentally prints the correct picture of Google's current stance on browser compatibility.
Anyone else thinks that the silent conversion tactics are slowly becoming more obvious?
The video appears to be an mp4 (the network monitor says so) and it should work fine (it does here). Please ensure you have the latest FF version, available from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ (in case the update fails).
It appears to work just fine in FF26 under Ubuntu 3.10 without anything extra installed. Have you tried turning it off and on? Try a new profile (firefox -profileManager) or Restart with Add-ons Disabled (help menu), or perhaps it was just a fluke. Could not reproduce (relevant XKCD: http://xkcd.com/583/ ).
Flash is installed, no blocking add-ons were used. For that matter, I have disabled all other add-ons, that could be interfering and still get the same result.
It could be a flash (64 bit) issue. Also, that's not the video that would show for me, because of localization (Germany). Despite my preference for the English language and google.com over google.de, Google tries to show me this video instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVwx13k1QM .
I'm usually quite impressed by Google's Zeitgeist videos, this one was disappointing however. It's short (a minute shorter than 2012 and 2011), doesn't include many of the important events of the year, and is rather uninspiring. What happened?
Chrome on Windows 7 bug report: back button doesn't work, mouse wheel doesn't work (scrolls at infinitesimal speed), touch-screen style controls which don't work well with a mouse (click&drag, besides not being intuitive with a mouse, is also broken because it navigates to the selected item on mouse button release)
The first few times i visited this , i was looking for a way to access more content then quit half way round.
I tried scrolling down , it didn't work .
I had to click a link on the left corner of my screen which wasn't even that visible to me.
Affordance = 0.
63 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadGoes to show my assumption that he would be says that I'm subject to a large degree of bias.
Stealing my touch scroll isn't that nice either. I struggled to read beyond the fold.
http://www.google.com/trends/topcharts?date=2013
Put another way, unless there's a huge spike of interest in the weather in 2013 compared to other years, "weather" won't be included.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_dirichlet_allocation
Recall that Google at one time never had TV advertisements. Now you can't turn the damn thing on without seeing one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LysTmwDan8
I think it would be better to say 'Amateurs have taken the reigns'.
It renders incorrectly, had zero info and just shows me pictures of Hollywood celebrities.
It looks pretty, and I am sure lots of work was put into it and I appreciate that. But it's uninspired and isn't very functional. I expect functionality first from google. Well, I used to.
That was such a horribly designed UI. I had no idea what I am looking at and why. Google used to all about simplicity. I remember in prior years these kind of posts always had graphs and considerable text explaining trends. Its like someone there realized they are JS experts.
If instead we are treated to a demonstration of javascript media virtuosity that buries the actual data too deeply to be worth extracting, we get annoyed and complain: "Where's the beef?" (But I don't think there's anybody back there[1].)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug75diEyiA0
Probably has to do with the fact that they're rendering the images in a canvas element rather than plain old HTML.
It's also broken on iPads. You can't see the bottom nav in portrait and the site is slightly too large for the viewport when viewed in landscape.
Edit: Apparently this is linked in the bottom left corner of the page... totally missed it. What an effective site design.
Also, didn't find any mention of NSA or Snowden. Sadly, I wasn't surprised.
Instead, I just clicked 'Log out and log in as a different user', closed the tab, and clicked the link again on HN, and it worked just fine.
So in short, it doesn't require you to be logged in, unless you are, at which point you have to log in again.
Bizarre.
The video doesn't load for me on Firefox. It is probably just a bug and will be fixed but it coincidentally prints the correct picture of Google's current stance on browser compatibility. Anyone else thinks that the silent conversion tactics are slowly becoming more obvious?
It's exactly the kind of maudlin crap we have come to expect from politically correct tech companies.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lv-sY_z8MNs
Perhaps you don't have Flash installed, you lucky thing.
It could be a flash (64 bit) issue. Also, that's not the video that would show for me, because of localization (Germany). Despite my preference for the English language and google.com over google.de, Google tries to show me this video instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVwx13k1QM .
To make this more clear: Snowden was the top Google search for many days, perhaps as long as the incident of Paul Walkers death until now.
Showing a woman with a scarf...
Come on google, just go already.