As the conversations and african myth busting continue at TED Global Arusha today, i would like to take a moment and point out a great tool by Google Labs (One of the sponsors of TED Global 2007 – making it possible for fellows like me to be here – Thank you!).
Google Trends is an interesting tool for looking at the most popular search terms on the net, relative to other search terms. For example, searching for Africa in google trends yields some interesting information.
Regions and cities associated with the search term africa.
The first 5 cities are in South Africa, which has high internet connectivity, followed closely by Nairobi Kenya.
Its also a great tool for bloggers to see the related search terms similar to those that bring them lots of traffic.
*Many thanks to Anetto from google for telling me about google trends, its an awesome tool.
Hey girl, hasn’t the conference been an amazing experience? I’m very confident that we can finally begin being proud of our continent!
On Google trends, nice application definitely! I think Kalo still doesn’t want to hear about South Africa taking so many of the top cities showing up on trends
It definitely was an incredible conf. Just saw your comment a week later
Yeah, Kelo wouldn’t be pleased am sure!!
I love the blog. Sorry for leaving a comment that is not totally relevant (though I enjoyed this post on Google Trends), but I couldn’t find another way to contact you.
I’m hoping you might be willing to join our campaign to reform US food aid. As you may know, the US is the only major food aid donor that still is not moving away from in-kind food donations, which are a form of agricultural dumping that can undercut prices for poor farmers. We are hoping to change that, and add flexibility to the US program that would allow cash to be provided to purchase food from nearby farmers.
The campaign, included a short video and a web page, is here:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/issues/foodaid.html