Yahoo’s 2014 Top Searches: Ebola Overshadowed Celebrities!

People used Yahoo this year to get the scoop on celebrities and tech products, but it was a deadly disease that elicited the highest volume of searches.

Revealing its Year in Review for 2014, Yahoo cited the Ebola virus as the most-searched item of the year as the disease ravaged several African countries and turned up in isolated cases in the US and Europe. Minecraft, a popular video game whose developer was bought by Microsoft in September, came in at No. 2.

Trendy celebrities dominated the list as usual, with Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lawrence, Kaley Cuoco, Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus and Jennifer Aniston all making their way onto Yahoo’s top 10. The Disney film “Frozen” was No. 7 among the top searches.
Apple’s new iPhone 6 squeezed onto the list in the No. 9 spot. The iPhone has been among the most-searched terms on Yahoo in four of the past five years, the company said.

“Each year, we see some recurring archetypes such as the female musical ingenue,” Yahoo Web Trends expert Vera Chan said in an email. “This year, that person was Ariana Grande — a former Nickelodeon star whose Billboard success made her number three on this year’s top searches. There’s also usually a cultural mood (‘Frozen,’ which also made our obsessions list), a social media promotion (Kim Kardashian and her ‘Break the Internet’), political or social disasters or concerns (Number one Ebola), and finally technological advances.”

While Yahoo users were searching for Ebola and Kim Kardashian, Yahoo itself was searching for more traffic and renewed stature. In November, Yahoo became the default search engine for Firefox, displacing Google in the process. Yahoo’s new default status in Firefox, which owns around 13 percent of the desktop browser market according to Net Applications, is a big coup for the search engine.

The more traffic a search engine generates, the more opportunities that advertisers have to display their ads. The more that people respond to such ads, the more the search engine can prove itself a viable and profitable platform for advertisers.

“At Yahoo, we believe deeply in search — it’s an area of investment and opportunity for us,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a blog post at the time. “This partnership helps to expand our reach in search and gives us an opportunity to work even more closely with Mozilla to find ways to innovate in search, communications and digital content.”

Tech users were also busy tapping into Yahoo this year.

The iPhone 6 captured the top spot among tech searches, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4 smartphones. Sports camera GoPro came in fourth, Apple’s iPad Mini came in fifth and Microsoft’s Xbox One came in sixth. Rounding out the list were the Amazon Kindle, Sony’s PlayStation 4, Apple’s iPad Air and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3.

People also used Yahoo to stay abreast of the latest items in the news by searching for information on the death of actor and comedian Robin Williams, the 2014 elections, the leaked photos of popular celebrities, the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Mo.

Source

Google celebrates Earth Day 2013 with an animated doodle

Google on Monday came out with an animated doodle to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the Earth Day.

Earth Day is observed every year on April 22 to create awareness among the masses on environmental issues.

Events are held across the world to sensitize people about the need to protect our environment.

John McConnell in 1969 at the UNESCO Conference in San Fransisco first proposed the idea to observe Earth Day on March 21. But a month later, Gaylord Nelso, US Senator from Wisconsin, proposed April 22 as the date for observing Earth Day.

Nelson was also a conservationist and an environmental activist and he pushed for Earth Day celebration as a national teach-in on environmental issues after the frightful oil spill off the coast in 1969.

Every year millions of people across the globe come together to celebrate the Earth Day.

Non-profit organizations, governments, schools and communities hold several interactive programmes and activities to create awareness about the need to protect environment.

The Earth Day 2013 doodle released by Google features a landscape and a static sun with a featured button inset inside.

When clicked on the doodle’s featured button, the sun starts moving and gradually sets in the west.

As the sun sets, the moon rises in the glittering sky. The moon can be seen in different phases as it moves across the sky.

The doodle also features the cycle of seasons – spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Earth Day 2013 is the best time to let people know about the need to conserve nature and create more awareness.

Earth Hour 2013: World To Dim The Lights On Saturday, March 23

A record 7,000 cities in 152 countries are expected to turn off the lights for an hour on Saturday night for Earth Hour 2013.

Some of the world’s most famous landmarks — including the Empire State Building, Big Ben, the Sydney Opera House and the Burj Khalifa — will go dark from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. local time during the seventh annual Earth Hour. The event started inSydney, Australia in 2007 when 2.2 million people turned off all non-essential lighting.

The initiative, led by the World Wildlife Fund, is meant to raise global awareness about climate change and extend beyond the hour-long event.

“The hour itself is symbolic,” Andy Ridley, executive director of Earth Hour, wrote in a blog entry on HuffPost. “It signifies their concern for the future of this planet, but it doesn’t mean an hour-long lights off is the one action they are committed to.”

One of the biggest changes to the program this year is an expansion of the ‘I Will If You Will’ challenge. Someone makes a promise to complete an action if enough people pledge to perform a green act, like plant a tree or walk to work (like this incredible video of a women pledging to get a tattoo of a happy panda if 10,000 people start recycling).

Critics of Earth Hour have downplayed its symbolic message and criticized its relatively minor impact on emissions. Yet, as HuffPost’s Tom Zeller Jr. notes, Earth Hour isn’t meant to “demonize electricity,” but rather “raise awareness about resource use, resource constraints and the looming consequences of doing precisely nothing to address climate change.”

Google Maps Captures The Most Famous Mountains On Earth

Google Maps has been going beyond simply mapping streets lately as they’ve been able to map NFL stadiums and the Grand Canyon earlier this year. You would think that would be enough to earn a pat on the back from the majority of the tech world, but Google is announcing they’re taking Google Maps where most people haven’t gone before: mountains.

Google Maps now allows you to explore a number of the most famous mountains on Earth, which includes Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Aconcagua in South America and Mount Elbrus in Europe. Each of these mountains belong to a group of peaks known as the Seven Summits, which means they’re the highest mountain on each of the seven continents.

The imagery that is now a part of Google Maps was captured by a lightweight tripod and a digital camera equipped with a fisheye lens, and of course actual people scaling these huge mountains. We’re sure the trip was as easy as going down to the local grocery store and picking up a pack of ice on a hot summer’s day.

Google will also be hosting a Google+ hangout at 10 a.m. PT to tell their tales of adventure, romance and intrigue they experienced during their time mapping the Seven Summits.

Baby with HIV: Cured in Mississippi !

A child born with HIV has apparently been cured in Mississippi, scientists confirmed yesterday, marking only the second time in history a patient with this disease was able to fight it off entirely.

The announcement was made yesterday at an AIDS meeting in Atlanta, as Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said of the now-two-and-a-half-year old:

“You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we’ve seen.”

Tests have determined that mere traces of the virus’ genetic material are lingering.

 

Treatment was given to the baby within 30 hours of birth, at a time where doctors were only aware he was at risk because his mother was diagnosed as HIV positive during labor.

Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi, was responsible for the treatment, acting so quickly because she said she “felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk.”

The first person cured of HIV was Timothy Brown, known as the “Berlin patient.” That middle-aged man also had leukemia and received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor genetically resistant to HIV infection.

“For pediatrics, this is our Timothy Brown,” said Dr. Deborah Persaud, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and lead author of the report on the baby. “It’s proof of principle that we can cure HIV infection if we can replicate this case.”