Life as it goes

Have you heard of Google Zeitgeist? It is a list of trends in search terms published every year by the search giant. Zeitgeist is a German term for "spirit of the time", and Google Zeitgeist is supposedly a compilation of what the world population's timely interest during the year.

So, in case you didn't know about Google Zeitgeist, now you do. "Well then, so what?" You might ask. Well, the 2006 Zeitgeist is out. Without surprise, ever-popular social networking oriented sites (e.g. myspace.com, metacafe.com, wikipedia.com...) top the general list. My surprise came when I read the "current events" category where people were most interested in "where is Togo" (the World Cup probably had a lot to do with that.) Perhaps this shouldn't be a real surprise after all; Less than half the people I've met ever knew where our Country is located.

Microsoft has done a good job in copy-pasting into Internet Explorer 7 many Firefox features, especially the long overdue tab browsing and zooming capabilities. The Mozilla foundation is now firing back with Firefox 2.0 released today.

I have preferred Firefox for the last year or so because of its ease of use in general. The ability to zoom was my favorite feature, the lack of which drove me away from Internet Explorer. IE7 is putting up a good battle, but Firefox 2 introduced a new feature -spell checker- that is likely to become my new favorite feature and help Firefox remain my default browser.
It feels good to have Microsoft on the defensive side of the browser market for once.

Prof. Smoot won the 2006 physics Nobel price. Media credit http://aether.lbl.gov

Tuesday, around 2:45am: Astrophysicist George Smoot received a call from Sweden. It was the Swedish Academy announcing to Prof. Smoot he has won the 2006 Physics Nobel Price. Apparently he didn't believe it at first, and he was like "how did you get my phone number?"

"I was particularly surprised because my phone is unlisted, It was these guys from the Swedish Academy; I'm going -- how did you get my phone number? ...
Then, I thought I better get on the Web and check"