2004 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

Here you go friends (and foes) the top Google search terms of 2004.

Based on billions of searches conducted by Google users around the world, the 2004 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and trends. We hope you enjoy this aggregate look at what people wanted to know more about this year.

Enjoy!

I Can't Spell

Steven had the courtesy to point out that I can't spell courtesy. Which is good, because I was doing it wrong and I knew it looked wrong, but alas I was too lazy to look it up. Apparently even Google caught on before I did. I'm the number three listed wrong speller for the word curtosy.

Now I'm not going to go back and fix all my typos, because it takes the edge off of my blogging. Plus, I'm human, I make lots of mistakes. The raw, Jeramey doesn't proofread, feel would be lost with the editing of my spelling errors.

Moment of Zen: Frozen Pizza

I had this moment of zen about 20 minutes ago. I'm sitting here looking at this frozen pizza and I start thinking. There is the scary part, I started thinking. So as I went on thinking (still scary), I realized that this pizza in front of me just looked to thick. It looked too nice to be a frozen pizza. I wanted a cheaper frozen pizza.

I can bet you that almost no one else wants cheaper frozen pizza.

Paper Napkin Rejection Service

Man, eWeek is a endless source of goodness. If you're looking for a great rejection email made easily just use an email address that's @papernapkin.net. The website has all the details.

Disco Squirrels

As with the previous post, this is once again from eWeek, a technology news magazine. Disco Squirrels sing Disco Sauna.

Give Bush A Brain!

I found a great game curtosy of eWeek, Give Bush A Brain. If you're interested in helping King George be able to pass first grade, this game is for you.

I'm Amazing

So it's 1 A.M. and I'm sitting here making a backup copy of Visual Studio 2003 my programming environment of choice right now. I'm starting to look for a Sharpie to label my cds and I can't seem to find one anywhere. I'm about to tell the people that I'm talking to online that I'll be right back, I go to hit the pause button on the podcast I'm listening to (Adam Curry) and then I look down. Boom! There it is, my Sharpie. Hiding next to my keyboard.

Either I can create things with my mind or I'm insane. The great thing about this medium is you get to make up your mind.

Badgers Down Alabama

Went to see the Wisconsin Badgers beat 13th ranked Alabama tonight at the Kohl Center. Final score was Wisconsin 78, Alabama 62. Alando Tucker led the way scoring (shooting in the picture) with 21 points.

More Hockey

Hockey game. Thursday night. 5:30 PM. Janesville Ice Arena.

Top Ten Signs You're Addicted To Blogging

Curtosy of The Art of Getting By comes The Top Ten Signs You're Addicted To Blogging.

Visit Google (Sort Of)

Because we all use Google daily it would be nice to see what we're actually sorting. The nice folks at 6S have taken care of that for us. They posted a few photos online when they visited the Googleplex.

Don't Make Fun of the Google Artist

Word to the wise, don't make fun of the Google logo artist dude. Someone sent in an email and Google posted it online along with their response. That said it would be a good way to get some free press if you were to send in an email critizicing Google.

Google in 1337

Curtosy of Smash comes Google in 1337. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, just go look. It will blow your mind.

Sneaking Into Apple

If you got fired from somewhere, would you be dedicated enough to sneak back in to finish a project you were working on? Ron Avitzur was. He snuck back into Apple to finish a graphing calculator application, Wired has the story.

Why I Love Work

Dilbert and the Sales Team
Originally uploaded by compujeramey.

I have to go back to work tomorrow and wow; I can't wait for more situations like this. I hope your Christmas was filled with lots of slacking off, including catching up on all that sleep you missed out on in weeks prior. It's back to the mine tomorrow.

Pirillo's Predictions

Chris Pirillo has predicted a few interesting things for 2005. He does have two that are way above and beyond any of his other predictions.

4. Adobe Reader 7.0.1 will be released, solidifying its place in the Guinness Book of World's Records as the "Most Painfully Long Boot Process for an Application that Everybody Needs."

5. eBay will eBay itself on eBay

There are a few other good ones including Microsoft and George Lucas.

Rumsfeld in Iraq

Mitch Ratcliffe has an interesting piece up on his blog about Donald Rumsfeld's trip to Iraq. It's definitely worth the 2 seconds it takes to read. Check it out.

Matrix in ASCII

Ben Guild just hooked me up with an ASCII Matrix trailer. That's right ladies and gentlemen, it's Neo drawn by the almighty keyboard. It's one of the coolest things I've seen on the Internet lately.

Advice On Kid Naming

The Google Blog has recently put up a post to all parents on how to name your kids to make sure they're able to be found in a search engine. As a one of a kind person (Jeramey Jannene, who else would have that name?) I can tell you that there is definitely ups and downs to being easy to find online. For the most part it has been good for me, but it could definitely be bad. If you're worried about privacy give your child a generic name.

Bloglines Folders

As many of you are aware by way of my previous posts or big mouth, I'm a huge fan of the Bloglines RSS aggregation service. It's much better than having any aggregator on just one computer, as I often find myself moving from computer to computer every few hours. I have a complaint though, of which I'll shortly be emailing it to them.

Dear Bloglines,

Hello and Happy Holidays. First off let me say that I'm a big fan of the service you provide and I'm not sure how you've been able to keep it free, but I'm thankful. I do have an issue with the creation of new folders though. Why do you make it so hard for me to make a simple folder? I've been a user for close to a year now and I love the overall simplicity (in my eyes) of your service. I am amazed however at how cleverly you hid the "create a new folder' function. To put you in my shoes, I had created folders many months back and use them as a great way to further sort my feeds. Tonight though I decided I needed a ".Net" blogs folder, something I thought would take me seconds. After playing around with just about everything I thought imaginable (including searching Help for "folder"), I was ready to scream in agony. Than it clicked that you may have buried it awkwardly inside of the Edit function. I went and looked and sure there it was under "Move To: New Folder". The reason it took me so long to find that? It's buried in the list of my already existing folders. Please do something to make this feature easier to find, don't bury it with my existing folders or at least make a note of this in help section.

Sincerely,
-Jeramey Jannene-

Going to Target

I appear to be clearly in the minority, but I will go to Target more in the winter because they don't have the solicitations. I hate the sound of ringing bells, it drives me up the wall. Now don't get me wrong, I like charity. I work for a non-profit organization (that survives on donations), volunteer actively in my community, and have rang bells for Salvation Army. The last thing I want to deal with during December is the sound of clanging bells. I just want to go to the store and get home.

Call me Scrooge, but I can't stand the cold or Christmas music. Good job Target on giving me a safe place to go during this brutal shopping season.

Now let the flaming of me begin.

Get Rid of Spam on Gmail

Sean Reifschneider has posted on Tummy.com about a strategy to keep spam down on Gmail. Chances are you haven't noticed much spam yet on Gmail, but watch out it's increasing. As more spammers work to get at Gmail, Google will have to step up to the test to block that spam. If it doesn't Paul's techniques should work quite well, I hope.

Paint.NET

For those of you that are long-time fans of Microsoft Paint, myself included in that group, there is a version out that takes advantage of the .NET Framework. Paint.NET was created by students from Washington State University and is a turbo-charged version of the original Microsoft Paint. After just a few minutes of using it I was quite impressed. If you're interested in a great, free upgrade to Paint on your Windows computer look no further than Paint.NET.

Hockey game

I must strongly encourage everyone to come to the Janesville Bluebirds hockey game tomorrow night, 7:00 at the Janesville Ice Arena. We are taking on the Madison East Purgolders, and the notorious Craig High School pep band will be making a cameo appearance.

Trillian 3 Is Out

Trillian 3 is finally available. It's a great IM client that spans numerous networks including AIM, MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo. It now includes video and audio chat that are supposdly supported really well (haven't used them yet), which is different than previous versions.

I found perhaps the coolest new feature to be the built in Wikipedia search built right into your conversations. You're able to left click on all kinds of nouns (automatically detected) and choose "Search Wikipedia", which is a great time saving tool. Especially when you have friends that use big words.

I'm a Trillian user because of innovating features like this, plus I've come to love a few other things. The ability to skin the application to remove buddy icons and another annoying useless buttons is an awesome feature. Also the support for multiple networks at one time is impressive. It's stability and lack of advertisments makes it a cornerstone of my daily computing experience.

Map24

As I'm digging through the piles of magazines in my basement (and yes I am making progress in getting them into the "recycle me" pile) I have found a great little map service. I haven't done existensive testing, but I have found it to work wonderfully for my house and the surrounding neighborhood. Map24 is the service and it runs a somewhat 3D environment, as opposed to the flat dry feel of Mapquest.

Pez MP3 Player

Great forces are working to create a Pez Mp3 Player. I can't wait to be eating Pez candies and listening to AC\DC.

Barry Bonds (Takes Steroids)

Via a photo on Flickr I was alerted to a member's blog who has posted some photos of Barry Bonds, the obvious steroid user. I encourage you to check it out as I'm too lazy to go find the pictures and put them up here.

I went to a Giants game in San Fransisco last summer as part of my trip out to Sillicon Valley. I boo'ed Bonds everytime he was at the plate and I had supporters. However, one Giants fan turned around and whipped a bag of peanuts at me, I told him thanks for the peanuts and went about my booing of Bonds (long story, but the Giants don't sell peanuts at their games). I was asked why I was booing a few times, I said I didn't like the steroid use. No one even attempted to fight me on the issue, it's obvious.

Don't support Barry Bonds and the San Fransisco Giants. Steroid use is for girly men (as Governator Arnold would have it).

EA Reaches Deal With NFL

Electronic Arts has reached a monopolistic deal with the NFL according to ESPN. I don't like it.

Electronics Arts has reportedly signed a five-year deal with the NFL to be the exclusive maker of NFL-licensed video games. Those of you that know me know that I'm a big fan of the EA's John Madden Football game series, so you may be wondering why I don't like the deal.

The deal removes all real competetion for five years from EA, giving them the chance to slow advancement of the game, as they have no one to fight for sales. Just as it looked like their dominance was fading with the emergence of Sega's NFL2K5, it's all over. The advancement of NFL football games will be put on a five-year hold and the price will certainly not go down for Madden.

Who loses? We the consumer. I will not buy a Madden football game for the next five years.

My First Article At IT Observer

My first article is up (and has been been for a while now) at IT Observer. It's titled, "Firefox Saves Time and Money" and details the uses of Mozilla Firefox. I will be writing a few more articles over the weekend detailing the Google Desktop Search, Mozilla Thunderbird, and a few other new pieces of software.

Keep Your Battery Healthy

If you're using a laptop I have come across an article with a few good tips for you. I wish I would have had this a few years ago, but alas I did not.

If you're not going to read the article at least do this one thing. Remove your battery while your laptop is plugged in, it will save the life of your battery. I only use my battery when I am away from a power source (i.e. in a plane or car). You should do the same and your battery will last longer than mine.

Rice Field

at the rice field
Originally uploaded by tamaki.

Via a contact of a contact on Flickr I found this picture. Thought it was a pretty neat shot of a rice field and decided I would share it with you.

Here it is.

Ban Republican Marriage

but-ban-republican-300.gif
Originally uploaded by damien123.

It made me laugh, and then I thought oh wait, it probably is true. Hope it does the same for you.

Blade

I am not usually a big proponent of going to movie theatres, what with the ridiculously high ticket prices and such. However, I saw Blade: Trinity last night and must say that it was quite worth it. Not only were the action and special effects good, but the movie was quite funny in that Mr. Van Wilder was in the cast.

Walmart Distribution Center

walmart distribution center
Originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

If you've evern wondered what a Walmart distribution center looked like, you now have your answer.

Flickr

Flickr the website that I have been using to post photos to BobtheKing has recently been covered in Wired. Typically when something makes Wired it's a good sign that it's gone mainstream, so I figured this would be a good time to talk about Flickr again. I love the service. It combines photo-sharing with a social networking aspect. A huge plus that makes me an avid user is the ability to take any photo on the site and click the blog button. From there I just type up a few words that I want to appear with the photo and poof it's on this site. If you're a blogger I definitely recommend giving Flickr a spin. Also, read the Wired article.

Newish Computer

To all of my loyal fans: After being without a computer for over a week I am returning. Tonight I will pick up my new* computer from the honorable Jeramey Jannene and will soon be posting like nobody's business.


*Computer contains 62.35% new parts.

Monday's Words of Wisdom

If you ever have the chance to start a business, do it. I've found that over the past few months as I've stumbled through things that it is an incredibly rewarding experience and one that everyone should be part of at least. More details on my business in a week or two once the website is done.

Where Are The Packers?

It's been a rough game for the Green Bay Packers and the game is not even over yet. The Packers are currently down to the Philadelphia Eagles 44-3. It's a brutal end to the six game winning streak they had going. It's hard to say if the Eagles are that much better or if the Packers just didn't play well at all. I personally think it's a little of both, the biggest problem being that the Packer offense with Brett Favre at the helm just hasn't got moving.

Twelve minutes left in the game, may the Eagles scoring please stop.

Sneaky Yale Students

Check out these sneaky Yale students who made 1,800 Harvard alumni spell out "We Suck." It's good stuff.

Better TV Station

So I'm sitting at my kitchen counter watching TV and I start thinking to myself, "Wow, this show is really bad, I'll turn on TechTV." I flip it to channel 32 and bam, I was watching TechTV already. My failsafe method of turning on the TV and getting good programming via channel 32 has now failed me. TechTV or G4TechTV as it's called now plays way too many shows that I don't like, and the ones I do like have gone way downhill. The ScreenSavers is no longer worth the time it takes to watch it.

Many agree with me and one of them started a website called BoycottG4.com.

Iraq Adopts Terror Alert System

It appears the good people over at The Onion are up to it again. The top story for this week's edition is "Iraq Adopts Terror Alert System."

As someone who thinks our alert system is one of the most worthless uses of tax payer dollars possible, this article only gives me hope that someday we'll get rid of the system. I mean come on, are you going to get up in the morning and hear that the alart is orange, and then not go outside your house?

"Mom, we can't go to Wal-Mart right now, the alert is orange. Let's go to K-Mart instead." That's right kids, terrorists won't bomb K-Mart, you're safe there.

Sim City 4

Man, Sim City 4 is sure addicting. One minute I'm just testing out the new Rush Hour expansion and then wow it's weeks later. I've finally managed to build up a metro area with 413,000 people in it. My goal is to create a high-tech industry paradise and so far I think I'm succeeding. My goal is to have over 600,000 citizens by the end of the weekend. Screenshots of my current metro area will come tomorrow.

On a side note, if you've been wondering why my rate of posts has slowed down, blame it on this game. That and homework.

Have you ever been addicted/really hooked on a computer game?

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

So the kids at the club wanted me to play The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game at work, so I did. Worst choice ever made. I had forgotten just how annoying the music from that show got. The first few questions it's okay, after that it all goes downhill (really fast).

If you still want to play. Go ABC Games.

An Update From Jeramey

I've really wanted to write about a few things recently, but I've been extremely busy. On the computer side the computer business is still in the process of gearing up, it's taking much longer than expected to get things really up and running how I want them. Fear not, when it's ready you will know about it.

I've taken a new writing job in the IT industry. It's a great chance for me to really start practicing my skills and learning a few new ones. I'm writing about technology for small and medium businesses. I'll have a post all about that over the weekend.

I'm building a new computer for fellow BobtheKing blogger John. His old Compaq Presario desktop bit the dust, so I'm building him a new machine. Darn holiday ordering must be slowing down my distributors though, as the parts have not shipped yet.

I'm implementing the Google Desktop Search at the Boys & Girls Club along with putting a great deal of effort into improving the redunancy and efficiency of the network as a whole. The Google Desktop Search should be a great help to the full-time staff members at the club. I'll be tying more about this in with my upcoming post about my new writing job.

For now I should bid you all goodnight for I must sleep. Craig High School Jazz Band practice tomorrow morning bright and early; for those with an interest I play bass trombone. That Jazz Band comment also sparks my thoughts on how I need to write about the pep band incident that occured with me and a female basketball player last night. You'll enjoy.