Play Things : Barack Obama

The unbearable truthiness of Google Suggest

Sidin Vadukut — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:19:00 GMT

Earlier today @rashmid sent me an image via Twitter. About Twitter:

This is a grab from a simple Google Search page. Type in a term into the box and Google automatically tries to guess what you are looking for. Mostly based on content online and previous search histories. It throws up a list with a corresponding estimate of how many results are available for each suggested search term. As you can there are a fair number of people who look upon Twitter less than favourably.

This suddenly sparked a thought in my head. Isn't Google's suggestions then something of a clandestine barometer of public sentiment on various topics? Will we get such wonderful insight into other popular topics if we did the same, i.e. type in a term followed by "is" and a space and then wait for the search engine to suggest?

PlayThings is proud to showcase the outcome of our comprehensive review of several such popular concepts using the windsock of social sentiment that is Google suggestions:

p.s. Not one of the images have been doctored. They are exactly as they appeared on my browser. Do play around with Google suggestions yourself and drop us a line if you find any hilarious ones.

p.p.s. AR Rahman IS malayalee

p.p.p.s. Gordon Brown is my shepherd as well.

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Spammers use meltdown to diversify beyond Viagra

Sidin Vadukut — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:21:00 GMT

Observe this little snapshot from my Gmail spam folder:

Spammers, those nimble footed fiends, have already tapped into the global meltdown to trap gullible email users. With the ILO stating that millions of jobs maybe lost due to the downturn spam producers are already making relevant changes to their packaging.

Astute email readers who occasionally dip into their smap folders--you know who you are--will remember that months ago spammers and hackers had already tapped into the Obama phenomenon:

Following Obama's presidential victory Tuesday, malware authors were quick to create a Trojan exploiting the high volumes of Web traffic surrounding Obama, security experts said. President-elect Barack Obama is already targeted as the subject of a malicious malware campaign designed to steal information from infected computers.

The implications are interesting. Perhaps, thanks to spammers, a reliable guide to internet and media trends exists right underneath our noses--in our junk mail folders. Journalists and internet gurus will do well to keep a close eye on their unsolicited communications.

This also means that one trend that is hard to miss--excuse the pun--is that of male erectile dysfunction. As Lisa Emery gently reminds in above picture while Obama and job losses may be temporary, performance anxiety is forever.

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Obama still a "miserable failure", says Yahoo

Sidin Vadukut — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:06:00 GMT

Just one moment before you leave heated, right of centrist, liberal comments. I am not referring to his performance. Obama's been President just for a few days and I am sure we will get plenty of chances to make digs at his presidency in the days to some.

Instead I am referring to another complicated, sucky legacy item from the Bush administration that the Obamatons will have to take care of, in addition to two wars, at least two prisons of dubious distinction, General Motors and international infamy.

Keen tube-surfers will remember the "miserable failure" conundrum of years past when entering the phrase "miserable failure" into a Google search box and clicking "I feel lucky" automatically took you to the profile page of George W. Bush at the White House website. This was the result of some concerted Googlebombing by Bush-haters. Danny Sullivan explains:

...a search for miserable failure on Google would bring up the official George W. Bush biography. This was due to a “Googlebomb” where many people had linked to his biography using those words in their links.

Eventhough Google took care of that problem, it appears that searches on Yahoo still list the presidential biography first if you search for that phrase. I was alerted by another Danny Sullivan piece today. And gave it a go:

Click on the first link and it takes you to Obama's profile page. What fun!

Here is Sullivan's piece-***-rant-***-solution to the problem. Rest assured that people at Yahoo will soon take care of this problem. In the meanwhile do Yahoo up "miserable failure" in the office and share the joy around while you still can.

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Obama's got game

Sidin Vadukut — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:41:00 GMT

Susan Davis out at the Wall Street Journal has a post on how everyone's favourite "Agent of Change" is now tapping into the online gaming posse to garner votes:

A spokeswoman for Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher, confirmed to the gigaom.com that Obama’s campaign had paid for in-game advertising. “Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates,” Holly Rockwood told the site, which gigaom.com called “far and away the most prominent use of a major online game to promote a presidential candidate’s campaign.”

Check out the cool screenshot from Burnout: Paradise below:

Foreign policy, experience and concrete economic plans suddenly don't look so important do they? (Answer: No they don't. A president who digs gaming is really what the free world needs.)

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Facebook demographics revelation: Indian men like Sex And The City

Sidin Vadukut — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:06:00 GMT

Well around a thousand of them at least.

Facebook boffins will do well to check out the Facebook Demographics analysis tool that is available hidden deep inside the ubiquitous social networking website. While reaching the tool is a pain, it is well worthwhile as hours of fun and frolic proceed forthwith. These are some of the key learnings this blog was able to attain after spending much of this morning with the tool:

1. No. of people on Facebook in India: 808640

2. No. of Indian males: 441,480

3. No. of Indian females: 317,520

4. No. of Indian Facebookers with mysterious ambiguous genders: 49,640

Now the cool stuff: (All for Indians on Facebook.)

5. No. of men interested in women: 160,060

6. No. of women who said they are interested in men: 37,740 (Ah... women. Sigh.)

7. No. of men interested in men: 2,160

8. No. of women interested in women: 1,980

Now for the really cool stuff:

9. No. of married women interested in men: 2,080 (Oh??)

10. No. of married men interested in women: 26,560 (Oh yeah baby!)

11. No. of married men interested in men: 140

12. No. of married women interested in women: 280 (Disclaimer: They may have been looking for company to go to the restroom.)

13. Indians on Facebook between the ages of 50 and 65: 11,080

14. No. of men who like Salman Rushdie: 120

15. No. of men who like Baywatch: 340

16. No. of men who like Sex And The City: 980 (Holy Ralph Lauren and Manolo Blahnik!)

And then of course we decided to search for the holy grail of male, geeky, online social networking: the ideal geek babe:

As Shakespeare himself once did not say: "Nay shall ye abandon hope fair geek brothers. For thy bullet-time loving maidens exist verily!"

For more fun and frolic on your own time, reach the Facebook Demographic tool like so:

1. Go to Facebook.com

2. Click on the Advertising link at the bottom.

3. Click on Get Started

4. Create a dummy ad. Click Continue

5. Enjoy! If Facebook is not blocked in your office then this shall be your poison for today.

p.s. Fact that will much please editor of this newspaper: 7120 Desi Facebookers like Obama. Less than three hundred like McCain.

All statistics are approximate. As you can make out from the wavy lines in front of them numbers. Do not base expensive marketing campaigns on them.

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McCain versus Obama for geeks

Sidin Vadukut — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

When it comes to grandstand politics I am a total sucker for the soaring rhetoric and restrained gesticulation. Yet the more I see the Obama-McCain race hotting up the more I am beginning to notice one eye-catching aspect: Sarah Palin.

When a former beauty queen can run for the Vice-President of your country you know, at some level, that your democracy is good for your people. And kudos to the McCain camp for picking the COMPLETE TOTAL ULTIMATE anti-thesis to dungeon master and sith lord *** Cheney as McCain's running partner.

If you ask me what America needs right now is a Obama-Palin ticket. Or just a Palin ticket. Imagine the foreign policy strategy: "What do you mean President Obama does not make you want to stop nuclear development Kim? By the way have you met our Vice-President?..."

Anyhow, if you are a keen follower of the american election phenomenon then you must drop in at www.perspctv.com, in the site's founder's words: "a data visualization project, essentially a dashboard to see how internet activity relates to the 2008 presidential elections".

Perspctv is an example of the brilliant mash-up work you can do with so many web services, like Twitter for instance, opening up the innards of their services and throwing up data for anyone to stream out and manipulate. What Perspctv does is pull data on polls, twitter mentions, blog mentions and so on, and build interactive visual representations of this data. It's hard to put in words. But perhaps this little image of the Perspctv widget, which you can embed on your blog or website, will help:

Of all the mash-up products I have seen on the web Perspectv is probably the best. It is dynamic, well-designed, extremely pleasing to the eye and very, very easy to get used to.

Sort of like Sarah Palin.

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