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From: Bernard Michael Tyers <bernard.tyers@dcu.ie>
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Subject: [IIU] Postcards from Planet Google *LONG*
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Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 00:05:15 +0000
I found this interesting, but not very original. Another search engine
(can't remember which one tho') was doing this a long time ago.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Business/02Dec2002_biz54.html
=====
Postcards from Planet Google
INTERNET: The search engine is taking snapshots of its users' minds and
aggregating them. So what is the world thinking about?
JENNIFER 8. LEE
At Google's squat headquarters off Route 101, visitors sit in the lobby,
transfixed by the words scrolling by on the wall behind the
receptionist's desk: animacio{AAC}n japonese Harry Potter pense{AAC}es
et poemes associao brasileira de normas te{AAC}cnicas.
The projected display, called Live Query, shows updated samples of what
people around the world are typing into Google's search engine. The
terms scroll by in English, Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Korean,
French, Dutch, Italian _ any of the 86 languages that Google tracks.
The scrolling continues: people who shouldn't marry ``she smoked a
cigar'' mr potatoheads in long island pickup lines to get women auto
theft fraud how to.
Stare at Live Query long enough, and you feel you are watching the
collective consciousness of the world stream by.
Each line represents a thought from someone, somewhere with an Internet
connection. Google collects these queries _ 150 million a day from more
than 100 countries _ in its databases, updating and storing the computer
logs millisecond by millisecond.
Google is taking snapshots of its users' minds and aggregating them.
So what is the world thinking about?
Sex, for one thing.
``You can learn to say `sex' in a lot of different languages by looking
at the logs,'' said Craig Silverstein, director of technology at Google.
(To keep Live Query G-rated, Google filters out sex-related searches,
though less successfully with foreign languages.)
Despite its geographic and ethnic diversity, the world is spending much
of its time thinking about the same things. The same topic areas bubble
to the top: celebrities, current events, products and computer downloads.
``It's amazing how similar people are all over the world based on what
they are searching for,'' said Greg Rae, one of three members of
Google's logs team, which is responsible for building, storing and
protecting the data record.
Google's following _ it is the most widely used search engine _ has
given Mr Rae a worldview from his cubicle. Since October 2001, he has
been able to reel off ``anthrax'' in several languages, including
milzbrand in German and carbonchio in Italian. He says he can also tell
which countries took their recent elections seriously (Brazil and
Germany), because of the frenzy of searches. He notes that the
globalisation of consumer culture means that the most popular brands are
far-flung in origin: Nokia, Sony, BMW, Ferrari, Ikea and Microsoft.
Judging from Google's data, some sports events stir interest almost
everywhere: the Tour de France, Wimbledon, the Melbourne Cup horse race
and the World Series were among the top 10 sports-related searches last
year. It also becomes obvious just how familiar American movies, music
and celebrities are to searchers across the globe. Two years ago, a
Google engineer named Lucas Pereira noticed that searches for Britney
Spears had declined, indicating what he thought must be a decline in her
popularity. From that observation grew Google Zeitgeist, a listing of
the top gaining and declining queries of each week and month.
Glancing over Google Zeitgeist is like taking a trivia test in cultural
literacy: Ulrika Jonsson, the Swedish-born British television host and
girlfriend of England football coach Sven Goran Eriksson, made the list
recently. So did Irish Travellers (a nomadic ethnic group, one of whose
members was videotaped beating her young daughter in Indiana) and
fentanyl (the narcotic gas used in the Moscow raid to rescue hostages
taken by Chechen rebels in late October).
The long-lasting volume of searches involving her name has made Britney
Spears something of a benchmark for the logs team. It has helped them
understand how news can cause spikes in searches, as it did when she
broke up with Justin Timberlake.
Google can feel the reverberations of such events, and others of a more
serious nature, immediately.
On Feb 28, 2001, for example, an earthquake began near Seattle at 10:54
am local time. Within two minutes, earthquake-related searches jumped to
250 a minute from almost none, with a concentration in the US Pacific
Northwest. On Sept 11, searches for the World Trade Center, Pentagon and
CNN shot up immediately after the attacks. Over the next few days,
Nostradamus became the top search query, fuelled by a rumour that
Nostradamus had predicted the trade center's destruction.
But the most trivial events may also register on Google's sensitive
cultural seismic meter.
The logs team came to work one morning to find that ``carol brady maiden
name'' had surged to the top of the charts.
Curious, they mapped the searches by time of day and found that they
were neatly grouped in five spikes, each one starting at 48 minutes
after the hour.
As the logs were passed through the office, employees were perplexed.
Why would there be a surge in interest in a character from the 1970s
sitcom The Brady Bunch? But the data could only reflect patterns, not
explain them.
That is a paradox of a Google log: it does not capture social phenomena
per se, but merely the shadows they cast across the Internet.
``The most interesting part is why,'' said Amit Patel, who has been a
member of the logs team. ``You can't interpret it unless you know what
else is going on in the world.''
So what had gone on on April 22, 2001?
That night the million-dollar question on the game show Who Wants to Be
a Millionaire? had been, ``What was Carol Brady's maiden name?'' Seconds
after the show's host posed the question, thousands flocked to Google to
search for the answer (Tyler), producing four spikes as the show was
broadcast successively in each US time zone.
The precision of the Carol Brady data was eye-opening for some.
``It was like trying an electron microscope for the first time,'' said
Sergey Brin, who as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford
helped found Google in 1998 and is now its president for technology.
``It was like a moment-by-moment barometer.''
Predictably, Google's query data respond to television, movies and
radio. But the mass media also feed off the demands of their audiences.
One of Google's strengths is its predictive power, flagging trends
before they hit the radar of other media.
As such it could be of tremendous value to entertainment companies or
retailers. Google is quiet about what if any plans it has for
commercialising its vast store of query information. ``There is
tremendous opportunity with this data,'' Mr Silverstein said. ``The
challenge is defining what we want to do.''
Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw data
because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day,
originating IP address (information that can be used to link searches to
a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People
tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly
_ Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, facelifts. What is interesting in the
aggregate can be seem an invasion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.
In aggregate form, Google's data can make a stunning presentation. Next
to Mr Rae's cubicle is the GeoDisplay, a 40-inch screen that gives a
three-dimensional geographical representation of where Google is being
used around the globe. The searches are represented by coloured dots
shooting into the atmosphere. The colours _ red, yellow, orange _ convey
the impression of a globe whose major cities are on fire. The tallest
flames are in New York, Tokyo and the San Francisco Bay area.
Each country has a distinctive usage pattern. Spain, France and Italy
have a midday lull in Google searches, presumably reflecting leisurely
lunches and relaxation. In Japan, the peak usage is after midnight, when
phone rates for dial-up modems drop.
Google's worldwide scope means that the company can track ideas and
phenomena as they hop from country to country.
Take Las Ketchup, a trio of singing sisters who became a sensation in
Spain last spring with a gibberish song and accompanying knee-knocking
dance similar to the Macarena.
Like a series of waves, Google searches for Las Ketchup undulated
through Europe over the summer and fall.
The Ketchup Song (Hey Hah) has already topped the charts in 18
countries. In late summer, Google's logs show, Las Ketchup searches
began a strong upward climb in the United States, Britain and the
Netherlands.
Haven't heard of Las Ketchup?
If you haven't, Google predicts you soon will.
===
rgrds,
Bernard
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