It's bad news all around - banks are failing, yet their executives are still getting big bonuses and buying private jets (glad that's not just in Ireland!), the economy is in bits (I just read that employees at a four-star hotel in Limerick found out they were losing their jobs when they turned up for work and found the doors closed!), our Taoiseach Brian Cowen doesn't seem to be doing anything, except look annoyed with the people of Ireland for not trusting him, and to top it all, the weather is miserable, going from wet and windy to cold and grey.
But you can always find a ray of sunshine with Google. I read about Google Trends in Newsweek a few days ago. Google Trends enables you to conduct your own marketing survey about anything you want, and find out what people around the world are searching for on the web, an indication of what they're interested in. For instance, if you type in dublin, london, paris, you'll find that, worldwide, Dublin is bottom of the league, and London is slightly ahead of Paris. But then you can drill in by country or by language. Or if you type in neil diamond, joe jackson, you will find out that, yes, Neil Diamond is more popular than Joe Jackson! Now, there is obviously some fine-tuning still to be achieved, as I found that some of the Joe Jackson references are actually about Michael Jackson's father!
You can search all years (since Google records began, of course) or specify a tighter time bracket, and you can search by country if you want too.
The article in Newsweek was saying that you could use Google Trends to find out if pink will be the new black this spring. We did a search comparing black dress vs blue dress vs red dress, and yes, black dress comes on top, followed by red, with blue in 3rd place! I just did a new search, adding pink to the mix, and it comes last. Don't say I didn't warn you!
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