There are some people, that when you see their names trending, you assume them to be either freshly deceased, the subject of Internet death rumors, or newly accused of a heinous crime. Garth Brooks has been so safely stowed away from the limelight in recent years that his current nature as a trending topic had us fearing the worst, and teen twitter user @LouisaPaxton just generally wondering “Who is garth brooks?”
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Garth Preps for Vegas Cowboy Comeback
10/15/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Music9
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With Great Power Comes Great Twesponsibility
10/15/09 - Posted by Jennifer Hodges under Because We Feel Like it, Gossip, Industry
Last night, thousands of status updates were sent out into the Twittersphere by concerned individuals who believed they were passing on an Amber Alert for a three year old boy. Descriptions of the perp’s Mitsubishi Eclipse and license plate spread like wildfire, and #98B351 quickly became a trending topic. Not long after, celebrity @KhloeKardashian retweeted it, triggering over 3,655 different tweets in the span of one hour. A simple search engine check up, however, would reveal that this “missing boy” alert had been circulating for over two weeks, a man-made story that could not be validated by legitimate missing persons resources. In fact, it had been tracked moving coast to coast, slowly infiltrating text messages, Facebook accounts, and other pathways of technology everywhere. Last night would just be the point it would make its trending topic comeback after a week of dormancy. Whether the alert was fake to begin with, or truly once genuine, was information hidden somewhere in the bowls of the internet. Read the rest of this entry »
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The ReadWrite[Realtime]Web Summit
10/14/09 - Posted by Carmel Hagen under Industry
This Thursday, October 15, ReadWriteWeb is hosting their first realtime web summit in Mountain View, California. Being a realtime search engine and all, we figured we should go, so we’re sending Tobias Peggs (OneRiot’s GM) and Robert Reich (Co-Founder and head of our developer network) on down to chat search, sharing, social web, and all the stuff in between.
If you’re going, be sure to keep an eye out for our boys. They love talking realtime - and they’ll love you if you’ve already read this.
Stalk ‘em:
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Riding Out The Week On Your Camel
10/14/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Because We Feel Like it
If you were to compare the working week to an animal what would it be? A dog, because of how hard you work from Monday to Friday? Probably not. A rat because of the way you’re constantly racing around to get that hard earned cheese before you hide away in your house for the weekend? Well, close but no cigar…actually not even a clove cigarette. If the trending topics are any indication of how the real-time internet user treats the working week you’d be hard pressed to find a better comparative creature than a good ol’ Dromedary Camel. Something seems to happen in the minds of a good deal of search engine users once they hit the weekday wall known as Wednesday. If I’ve noticed anything about real-time trending topics , it’s that like clockwork around noon on Wednesday the word “Hump” seems to be a hotter topic than the latest Lohan-fueled travesty or celebrity death-athon.
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Finland Delivers Broadband and Sunshine
10/14/09 - Posted by Abdullah Saeed under International AffairsWe often view the use of new technology as a privilege. Hell, we still say having a driver’s license is a privilege in a country where functioning without a car is practically impossible outside of a city. However, one country is taking the first step in recognizing that we live in an age of dependence on technology, not simply a time of increased ease. Today, Finland makes broadband a legal right, and the approximate 20 resulting Tweets per minute suggest that it’s a damn good idea.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Twitter Gets Caught in a New Phishing Net
10/14/09 - Posted by Christopher Reinhard under Industry
You have to hand it to spammers—they’re always coming up with new and different ways to ruin our f$%*ing lives. And given today’s trends, some crafty little phisherman has managed to hook the info from a whole lot of Twitter accounts in just a couple of hours.
Here’s the rub: countless Twitter users logged in this morning to discover that they had a new DM (always a joy) featuring a link to a video that, allegedly, included footage of the unsuspecting user doing god knows what. Since we’re all pretty narcissistic these days, enough people clicked on the shady URL which brought up what looked like the Twitter login page. Ipso facto, users logged in on the faux-Twitter and had their accounts compromised. Read the rest of this entry »
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Time to Celebrate the Awkwardness
10/13/09 - Posted by Jennifer Hodges under Because We Feel Like it
It’s not polite to laugh at other people’s awkward nature. However, just because it’s not socially appropriate doesn’t mean we can deny the humor in pictures of gawky individuals and the situations they put themselves in. Like a puppy with one leg in a lizard costume, these people make us want to chuckle and say “awwww, poor guy” at the same time. Recently the internet masses have caught on to these photographic gems, and a whole new breed of humor has taken Twitter and the wider social web by storm. Here are some of the best sites that celebrate uncomfortable individuals and moments like never before: Read the rest of this entry »
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Clipta Hosts a Mighty Meetup
10/13/09 - Posted by Carmel Hagen under Industry
On October 28, our friends at Clipta Video Search are hosting a meetup. It’s happening at San Francisco’s Mighty, it’s free, and it’s the same week as Halloween, which means the free drinks we’ll find there will be a nice warm up for the kind of partying we’ll be doing three days later. In addition to feeding us pizza, spooning vodka down our throats, debuting something top secret and sharing over $1000 worth of prizes with attendees, Clipta will be bringing three exciting people to the stage to chat innovation in online video - including OneRiot’s own Tobias Peggs.
Read up on the official info, then RSVP here. Space is limited, so snap your spot up and be sure to let us know you’re coming - we’re excited to meet you there.
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Happy Columbus Day?
10/12/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Because We Feel Like it, US
Most people who don’t ask for directions and wind up in a completely different place than they intended are often met with heaps of ridicule. Let’s face it, recreating Christopher Columbus’ fateful trek would be like setting out for a road trip to your cousin’s house in Detroit, arriving in Flagstaff, stopping to eat some stranger’s Fruity Pebbles, then throwing a kegger for your friends before setting the cereal bearing host’s home on fire. In the olden times, however, the serendipitous exploration that resulted in landing a mere thousands of miles off your original course was seen as a greatly forgivable offense, provided there were spices on hand and plenty of people to exploit. Read the rest of this entry »
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Zibb Business Search Goes Realtime
10/07/09 - Posted by Carmel Hagen under Industry, OneRiot News
Today Reed Business Information used OneRiot’s API to add realtime results to the search pages at Zibb.com, adding another layer of relevancy to their industry-specific search results.
Say, for example, I’m a Typographer, and I want to get a broad sense for the state of my industry as a whole. A traditional search engine would give me this (basically answering the question: what is typography?) but a search on Zibb will open several interesting windows. What’s the latest typography news? What are my competitors up to? What is my industry buzzing about today (cue OneRiot!).
The layer of information that realtime results are adding to this customized search environment is exciting, and we’re thrilled about this amazing use of our API. Congrats to Zibb on their successful launch - we can’t wait to see what Reed properties this lands on next!
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