Google Trends

If you haven't played around with Google Trends yet, now is high times to start. If you have an interest in statistics, pretty much any at all, and also fell like you want to know how people are spending their time using Google then this is your lolcats. I have easily spent hours upon hours weighting different searches against each other, looking at what the hottest searches trends are for this week, and trying to figure out why the Kardashians no longer are more popular than Justin Beiber.

However, Google have now upgraded their Trends with a new visual interface, and you can now find out what's trending in any given month with a new Top Charts feature from Google Trends.

Updated monthly and going back to 2004, Top Charts is built on Google Knowledge Graph, so it's smart enough to house related keywords under one term for more accurate rankings. For example, searches for "giants baseball" and "sf giants" would go toward pushing "San Francisco Giants" up the ranks in a sports-related chart.

Right now there are more than 40 top ten lists with more than 140 time periods available for your perusal. In addition to the charts, the Trends team has also rolled out a new visualization tool for "hot searches" that displays trending topics in a large colorful layout -- enjoy!

Shoot the messenger

I can’t stand bad presentations. I just hate them. Countless are the times I found myself trapped in a meeting where the PPT slides boarder graphical murder. Cluttered with a superfluity of needless jargon and useless word filling, these demonstrations habitually brings no clarity to just most any issue. You feel like your mind has been blown, sadly not in a good way. Rather in the same way a balloon reacts when you try to cramp too much air into it - it pops. So do brains when infused with worthless information. They pop.

Thankfully the answer is again simple. Keep it simple. Simple. Say what you need to say, and nothing else. Has the sales gone down ten percent in the last quarter, and you need to present this in you quarterly budget meeting, don’t write all that. Say: "Sales - 10%". People will draw the rest from context, and the number will stick - THAT'S the important part!

Thankfully there is help out there. Here is an awesome presentation that everyone who is think of presenting anything to anyone should

Why most presentations suck from Slideware Manager