Published by KermMartian on February 23, 2007 at 5:20:55 PM CST | Discuss this article (9)

A bit over two months since I undertook the WorldTrends project, I'm happy to announce the completion of WorldTrends 1.0. For those unfamiliar with the project, it captures headlines and numerical indices for most major news sources, both niche and mass media, as well as financial market data and headlines. WorldTrends provides a web-based viewing platform for browsing this data, and also offers realtime tools to examine the data in cloud tagging views, charts, and graphs. WorldTrends 1.0 is based on a Web 1.0 model - server-generated images produced by PHP, with page refreshing to update data as it is collected by the server. In addition, I have begun WorldTrends 2.0, built on the Web 2.0 paradigm, to AJAXify and modernize the WorldTrends experience. In honor of the completion of WorldTrends 1.0, I'd like to take a look at some of the data it has uncovered in the past two months.

WorldTrends recorded 2,133,121 instances of 'iPhone' yet only 1,812,815 mentions of 'Vista', though the iPhone results cluster around a central maximum, while the Vista results are more evenly distributed [Vista iPhone]
'Iraq' appears 6,761,922 times, while 'Bush' appeared a comparable 5,238,684 times with much the same peak distribution [Iraq Bush]
'Democrat' showed up 1,550,929 times, while 'Republican' was only mentioned 440,659 times. [Democrat Republican]
In a staggering imbalance, 'war' showed up 4,708,975 times, while a mere 386,911 instances of 'peace' were uncovered. [war peace]

Without further ado, go check out WT1, drop in on WorldTrends 2 Beta and see what you think, and explore! Feel free to comment on other trends or comparisons you discover.

View WorldTrends
WorldTrends 1.0
WorldTrends 2.0 Beta [very beta]

Permalink