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...

Sweet FA...

I'm away from the PC for one day and return to find a whole host of trends swirling around madly -not unlike Cyclone Phet which is charting higher and higher in Google trends as it approaches Pakistan - but only a few of the myriad trends really caught my eye and interest...

The recall of 12 million cadmium spiked Shrek glasses by McDonalds certainly deserves a mention. Mainly because it made me think that Ronald McDonald is probably, right now, torturing his way through a wide range of McDonald's middle management to find out just who made such a ridiculously costly mistake.

And, of course following on from the surge in interest in cadmium spiked Shrek glasses was a similar surge in interest as people began to google 'cadmium' - most likely in the hope of (a) finding out what the hell cadmium is, and (b) understanding if it is, indeed, bad for you. If you're a tad curious (but not so curious as to go googling yourself) then:

a) It's a blueish white metal similar to zinc and mercury.

b) It has both high toxicity and high carcinogenicity. This a bad thing.

Also riding high in the trends of today was the injury to Rio Ferdinand that sees him unable to play for England in the 2010 World Cup, let alone be their Captain. This is in keeping with England's need to suffer a catastrophic injury as quickly as possible in the World Cup finals to ensure that their (already infinitesimally small) chance of winning is reduced. In 2006, Michael Owen had the decency to at least wait until the third game of the World Cup before collapsing in a small, and untidy heap. Rio Ferdinand, however, decided to go one better and managed to injure himself in his first training session since England have flown to South Africa. I think Rio should be congratulated for his efficiency; to improve upon this sterling effort, perhaps in 2014 we can have our star player injure himself in the taxi to the airport?

But, the final trend that I missed in a day away from the PC was that today was National Donut Day. How did I miss hearing about this earlier? The one day of the year I can eat as many doughnuts as I want (and have an excuse - I'm just doing my bit for world peace and harmony, etc.) and I don't find out about it until it's too late to go and buy a doughnut? Aargh!

I will therefore be getting absolutely nothing. Hopefully, a Rio Ferdinand-less England won't suffer the same fate in South Africa later this month...

Close to perfect...

Once, a long time ago, I worked on a baseball game.

This was largely accidental on my part; I'd not been at the company long and I got called into the office of the Big Boss who asked me, conversationally, if I liked sport. Figuring this was my opportunity to join the company's five-a-side football team I leapt in with a quick affirmative, only to find that I'd ended up 'volunteering' myself to be the lead designer on a baseball game.

Baseball was a sport that I knew absolutely nothing about. In fact, being British, I was rather certain that baseball was simply rounders played with bigger bats.

But, as time went on, I began to develop something of an affinity with it. It got under my skin somehow and, while the rest of the team (I'm sure) never gave a second thought to baseball after we'd finished the game, I still keep in touch with it.

Therefore, I can fully appreciate one of today's big trending searches, that deals with the Detroit Tiger's Armando Galarraga's close call with a perfect game...

For those of you who, like me before the baseball game, know nothing about the sport. Let me explain a little about a perfect game - it's basically where a pitcher goes through the whole game without the opposition even getting a man on base. Every single batter who comes up fails to even reach first base. 27 batters, 27 outs. And it is very rare.

Let me put it into perspective - there are 2,430 matches of baseball played every single year. And yet, in over 100 years of the modern era of professional baseball, there have only been 18 perfect games. Out of the hundreds of thousands of games played, only 18 men have ever accomplished a perfect game.

Last night, Armando Galarraga had 26 batters out - one out from becoming only the 19th man in a century to achieve the feat - when a bad referee call by Jim Joyce robbed him of his place in history. Jason Donald, of the Cleveland Indians, was called safe at first base when he was clearly out - and Armando now has to wait to see if the MLB will look at the video replay and reverse the call. I hope they see sense and do just that - otherwise Galarraga will forever by the 'nearly perfect' guy, and Jim Joyce will likely never be welcome in Detroit...

But, while millions of people are out searching the web for Jim Joyce and Perfect Game, there are a large body of people who are far more interested in a Ms. Debralee Lorenzana...

Who, you might ask, is Debralee Lorenzana? Well, I have to admit I was asking the same question myself but - in the top five searches (so I'm guessing millions) was 'Debralee Lorenzana Facebook'.

Well, apparently, it turns out that Debralee Lorenzana is an ex-employee of Citibank who is alleging she was fired for being 'too hot' and that her choice of work attire was unsuitable since “as a result of the shape of her figure, such clothes were purportedly ‘too distracting’ for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear.” A picture of Ms. Lorenzana can be seen at the top of the page, so you can judge for yourself whether you think she has a case...

But this has obviously led to a deluge of people eagerly trying to track her down on Facebook and check out more pictures. For one Thursday afternoon in June, Debralee Lorenzana is the most sought after woman in the world. Which is both strange and slightly scary.

Anyway, if you reached this page after desperately searching for Debralee Lorenzana pictures, or perhaps, a link to her Facebook site then I must disappoint you. However, you may be interested in this particularly hot video of her I found on youtube...

For the record, Citibank claim she was fired because she was no good at her job. There are many Detroit Tiger fans who are claiming the same should be the case for Jim Joyce...

Why the Pulse?

I started this blog because it occurred to me, while writing 100 Unsuitable Jobs, that the internet is really rather a curious place...

As I waded through the chaotic jumble that is cyberspace, hunting down the job that would be just right to apply for, I couldn't help but notice that there were ebbs and flows in the sea of information; peaks and troughs as topics suddenly crested to the surface of public awareness, had their vague fifteen minutes of fame, then disappeared into oblivion...

There are, at least according to Internet World Stats, almost two billion people using the internet. Two billion. Billions of fingers typing away, billions of mouse clicks. Likely millions of people, right at this moment, pretending to be working while really surfing the net. Tens of thousands of people looking at sites they know they shouldn't be. Hundreds of people spilling hot beverages over their keyboards as we speak. And at least one person adding George W Bush as a friend on facebook...

And, alongside all of this, there are billions of internet searches. About 140 billion a month to be (not entirely) exact and Google handles 88 billion of these - which is about 32,000 every single second.

So I was curious to see just what it is that people are getting so excited about. What are they searching for? Who is having their 15 minutes of fame and why? 

My aim is to poke the hornet's nest of the internet each day and see what's going on. And possibly make fun of it. A little...