The Weekly Round Up...

While drinking a cup of tea today, I came to a decision about a suitable direction for the Saturday edition of Pulse of the Net. I figured that it might be interesting to do a weekly round-up article that sampled what it was that a range of different countries were busily searching for over the last seven days...

Rigidly adhering to alphabetical ordering, I first chose to swing by our antipodean friends in Australia and found them curiously obsessed with the Dukan Diet. This is, apparently, the diet that the French have 'been keeping secret for years' - although the article then goes on to mention how it spawned '200 websites, forums and blogs' (so, remind me, if I ever need to tell someone a really important secret, not to tell it to anyone French). Apparently, the Australians also wanted in on the secret this week...

The French, however, seemed entirely unconcerned that the secret they had been guarding for so long was out and, instead, were spending much of their search engine time checking out extreme skater Taig Khris as he attempted to break the world record for free fall with skates. Which apparently he did, from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. Although it appears to be a fine line between free fall skating and simply falling. Watch for yourself and see what you think...

Italians, meanwhile, had no time for either diets or skaters - they were far more interested in Social Plus, a browser extension that, apparently, adds a load of spiffy new features to ensure you can waste even more time fiddling with Facebook options than ever before. I would install and test it for you but, frankly, I've screwed my PC up far too many times already and don't want to risk buggering it up again (since it would rather limit my blogging abilities). Let me know if you use it and like it...

Finally, in the United Arab Emirates, they have a different kind of technical concern as one of the biggest searches was for Hotspot Shield - which promises to protect privacy, hide your IP address and a whole host of other things that are rather useful in a country that censors internet access to prevent people happening upon anything political or to do with alcohol, gambling or pornography. Again, like with Social Plus, I don't intend to install it and find out just how effective it is...

...although, since the one of the other popular searches in the United Arab Emirates in the last week has been 'Youtube Sexiest Video', I'm guessing pretty effective indeed!

More weekly world round-ups next week...