The Financial Crisis in Charts

Thought I’d offer a brief history of the financial crisis as seen through Google Insights, which measures the popularity of a search term over time. Interest in the word subprime spiked a couple of times in 2007 (above) before we figured out it was all about toxic debts (below): and credit crunches: Then we realised… Read More »

The Financial Crisis in Charts

Thought I’d offer a brief history of the financial crisis as seen through Google Insights, which measures the popularity of a search term over time. Interest in the word subprime spiked a couple of times in 2007 (above) before we figured out it was all about toxic debts (below): and credit crunches: Then we realised… Read More »

Fail, Seinfeld and Tina Fey: A Zeitgeist

I use Google Insights quite a bit—I find it a very useful way to measure interest in topics. Here’s one I keyed in just for the hell of it. Red is the word success and blue is the word fail. The chart covers from 2004 to today: What seems to have happened is a surge… Read More »

Social Engineering, Part XIV

Further to my earlier piece about the scamming potential of Web 2.0, here are a couple more examples of why social engineering is a bigger problem than it might appear. First off, governments and organisations are not as careful with your information as you might expect them to. There are plenty of examples of CD-ROMs… Read More »

How to Remove Swear Words from Your Online Life

Here’s how, in an age when it’s impossible to view YouTube without encountering the profane and incoherent, to make surfing the web more palatable for grandma or the tykes. Install Firefox. Download the extension FoxReplace. Once it’s installed (and Firefox reloaded), go to the options in Tools/FoxReplace: Select FoxReplace options… You’ll see a window with… Read More »