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The list of Yahoo's Top 10 all-time searches

March 8th 2010 05:32

The history of accessible online search engines, boys and girls, goes way back to the pre-Gen Y days of 1995.

Oh, yes, you can argue, as they do here, that the concept of hypertext and memory extension can be traced to Vannevar Bush's wonderfully crazy data storage ideas in 1945 ...

And you can argue that the first online search engine was Archie (archives — get it?), created in 1990 by a Montreal university student named Alan Emtage ...

And you can argue that Excite, introduced in 1993, and Lycos, Webcrawler, Galaxy and Altavista, all introduced in 1994, are worthy of mention ...

But the truth is that the only really important moment in search engine history that does not feature the word Google came in April 1994 when David Filo and Jerry Yang the Yahoo! Directory.

And now Yahoo!, the company with the exclamation mark in its name which has generated much debate about whether or not it is grammatically correct to use a comma after it to denote a pause, is celebrating its 15th birthday.

As part of its birthday celebrations, Yahoo! has produced a list of the 10 most popular searches in its 15-year history. The list is a fascinating insight into the things we think about. Take out the predictable disasters, and we are a banal lot.

The Yahoo! 15-year Top 10

1. September 11

2. Cloning

3. Iraq war

4. Saddam Hussein

5. Harry Potter book releases

6. Michael Jackson death

7. Steve Irwin death

8. Tsunami

9. Enron scandal

10. The Millennium

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: History, Internet, Technology

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Burj Khalifa: facts about the world's tallest building

January 8th 2010 00:05

The Burj Khalifa, which officially opened in Dubai this week, is the world's tallest building and the highest structure ever made by man. The following list of facts has been gathered from a variety of sources.

Burj means tower in Arabic.

Construction began in 2004 and took 1,325 days.

The building cost US$1.5 billion, but is part of a $20 billion, two square-kilometre (490-acre) development called Downtown Dubai which is described by the developer as a "new urban masterpiece".

The official height is 828 metres (2,717 feet), a staggering 328 metres higher than the world's second-highest tower, the 500-metre Taipei 101 in Taiwan, and 275 metres taller than Toronto's 553-metre CN Tower, which had been the tallest man-made structure on Earth since 1976.

The owner is Dubai-based developer Emaar Properties. The architect was Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. The primary contractor was South Korean construction company Samsung C&T, which also built Taipei 101 and Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Twin Towers

The Burj Khalifa's 200 storeys house a hotel, residential apartments and retail space. Prices for the apartments when they went on sale in March 2009 reached US$37,500 per square metre. If you want one you're too late, they're all gone.

The building contains 330,000 cubic metres of concrete, 39,000 tonnes of reinforced steel, 103,000 square metres of glass in 24,000 windows, and 15,500 square metres of embossed stainless steel.

It weighs 500,000 tonnes.

It has 57 elevators.

It has the world's highest observation deck, highest swimming pool, highest elevator, highest restaurant and highest fountain.

The contract to clean the 24,000 windows was won by an Australian company named Cox Gomyl. All the windows will get washed once every three months.

The Armani Hotel in the tower is described as an "ultra-luxe seven-star" hotel. It self-proclaims itself as the world's most luxurious hotel, which will annoy the folks at the Burj Al-arab, Dubai's famous sail-shaped hotel which makes the same claim.

At the Armani Hotel, you can slum it in one of the 160 guest rooms down on levels five through eight, or you can go upmarket in the suites on floors 38 and 39, where room rates are probably measured in oil tankers rather than mere money.

The name of the building was Burj Dubai until the global economic crisis became a cash crisis for Emaar Properties. The company was heading for collapse until a white knight appeared. He was Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, current President of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi. With his help, Emaar survived, and Burj Khalifa was renamed in gratitude.

Although there are 200 storeys, 40 are uninhabited and unnumbered. The top floor is therefore the 160th floor, immediately below the spire. It is full of mechanical stuff. Floors 156 to 159 are used for communication and broadcast purposes and 155 is more mechanical stuff. The best people can do is floors 139 to 154, which house corporate suites.

www.burjdubai.com, Reuters, abc.net.au, Wikipedia, www.dubai-architecture.info

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Tall buildings

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The list of common household smells

December 22nd 2009 10:26

Houses smell. According to research recently completed in the UK, the individual smell of our own homes plays a more important role than furniture or decor in making them what they are — our havens of physical and psychological comfort.

Professor Tim Jacob, of Cardiff University, is an expert in the psychology of smell. He said, "Smells make a house a home because of the positive associations being 'home' has. Your home is filled with the things you love — your children, partner, perfume, pets — so when you smell them, you instantly feel better and at ease.

But what are those smells?

The British research determined that the 10 most commonly identified domestic aromas are:

1. Air freshener

2. Washing powder

3. Last night's dinner

4. Cleaning products

5. Pets

6. Coffee

7. Candles

8. Toast

9. Perfume/aftershave

10. Sunday roast

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Science

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10 reasons to fear spiders

October 26th 2009 22:52

1.
Arachnophobia is a scary word

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Fear, Phobias

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The big list of small luxuries

September 7th 2009 03:39

There is some magic in wealth, which can thus make persons pay their court to it, when it does not even benefit themselves. How strange it is, that a fool or knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty!

Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Luxuries

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Fun list of headline bloopers

July 20th 2009 02:26

The bright lights, red carpets and star status of the movie world mask the sweat, tedium and long hours which are the day-to-day reality of film-making. In the same way, the notion of the investigative journalist as an indefatigable and incorruptible defender of truth and social justice is replaced by a less glamorous, more humdrum reality for anyone who spends some time in the newsroom of a major newspaper.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Journalism, Newspapers, Publishing

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Hello life: most interesting new species discovered in 2008

June 8th 2009 23:40

A sea horse the size of a pea, the world's smallest snake and a bacterium that lives in hairspray were amongst the wonderful and the weird species discovered on Planet Earth in 2008. The following list, comprising the most wonderful and most weird, was compiled by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists. The top 10 list was chosen from thousands of species found across the globe last year.

Institute director Quentin Wheeler said the annual top 10 list helped draw attention to biodiversity, taxonomy and the importance of natural history museums and botanical gardens

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Science

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The big list of pick-up lines for groan-ups

April 15th 2009 12:40

Normally the heart beats 35 million times a year. Mine would reach that in one evening with you.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Relationships

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List of oddest book title finalists

March 28th 2009 01:36

Professor Philip Parker has come out on top in one of the most keenly contested competitions in the literary meritocracy calendar. We refer, of course, to The Bookseller's Oddest Book Title of the Year.

Professor Parker, already famous for being most prolific author in the galaxy and for being mentioned twice previously before on Chris Champion's blogs here and here, beat off some stern challenges for the 2009 odd title title

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Publishing

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