Weatherbeaten? Beware: El Niño’s Back
Sweating in a T-shirt one day, then hibernating due to record snowfall the next. Blame it on the kid. The historic nor’easter snowstorm, wicked Southern cold, are all part of the weather pattern deemed El Niño (AKA the little boy or “Christ child,” a name given by fisherman). While he…
Host Hostilities: ’09 Media Feuds Countdown
As if the media industry didn’t have enough problems already in 2009, many media hosts found their anchor seats a little heated these days. Some feuds did start with an innocent jibe, others were deliberately set, and a couple were of the pundits’ own making—and one started off with a…
Pageants, Slumdogs and Marathons: Top Local Mobile Searches From Coast to Coast
We’ve already seen the Top Ten Yahoo! Mobile Searches of the year, but trends differ by city. While Craigslist and movies bring mobile users together, it turns out New York loves pageantry, San Fran loves LA b-ball, and Chicagoans always favor their home teams to win. The Big Apple In…
Foodie Takeover: The ’09 Trends in Eats (And Getting Those Eats)
In 2009, Americans appeared to be more preoccupied with food than ever—food as entertainment, lifestyle, politics and, oh, yes, sustenance. Be it on the small screen or large, in the bookstore, backyard or the kitchen, food dominated the conversation. Witness, along with the cult buzz of the “Food, Inc.” documentary,…
The Year’s Political Reads 2009
Bookwise, Obamamania in 2008 manifested in the re-release of two autobiographical works by the President. “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) and “Dreams From My Father” (1995) re-emerged and sat on the best-seller list alongside even better-selling anti-Obama books. In 2009, no such unifying entity drove publishing sales, but multiple political…
Keep It Moving: Top Mobile Searches of 2009
The mobile Internet has come of age. In 2009, one in four Americans used a mobile device to access the Internet every month. That’s roughly 77 million people looking to discover new things, stay connected, and keep informed—all on the go. Globally, the numbers are even more impressive. There are…
End-of-Year Sky Show: Geminid Meteor Shower
The popular Perseid meteor shower may get the fair-weather attention, but the real show comes in winter. Most amateur stargazers huddle by the fireplace in December, when the Geminids rain debris above the Earth’s atmosphere. A winter wallop has dropped temperatures to freezing in some parts of the nation, but…
A Year in a Tweet
Poetry can emerge from imposing a constraint on a message. The cut-off of 140 characters might not exactly be as strict as a haiku, but the challenge of summing up a year in a microblog is a provocative one. Outlets like the Chicago Tribune, Star Tribune, Sun-Sentinel, Tampa Bay Online,…
No. 10: RuneScape
One of the hottest video games of the year can’t be played on the Wii, PlayStation 3, or Xbox 360. We speak of Web-based RuneScape, the insanely popular (and free) massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that has captured many gamers in its web. But this is hardly the first…
No. 9: NASCAR
Jimmie Johnson was NASCAR’s golden boy this year. The 34-year-old has youthful good looks, talent, drive, and a top-notch crew. Even after a wreck set him back in Texas, No. 48 driver busted a record by winning his fourth Sprint Cup championship in a row. But he wasn’t the only…