When President Obama hits the airwaves Wednesday night to give his State of the Union address, YouTube viewers can do more than simply watch.
According to YouTube, "this year's State of the Union speech will also make history." During the speech, those viewing the address on YouTube will be able to ask questions about the speech's content. The address will be displayed on the company's Citizentube page, where people can submit questions via text or video.
YouTube said that people will be able to continue to ask questions of the president for an additional few days, as well as vote for their favorite questions.
But here's the best part: next week, President Obama will answer the top-voted questions in a YouTube interview from the White House. It will be broadcast live on Citizentube.
For now, YouTube hasn't provided an exact time or day when President Obama will answer the questions. It plans to make that information public when it irons out the details.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University, developed a theory in the 1990s dubbed Dunbar's Number. The theory contends that the human brain is only capable of managing relationships--staying in contact at least once per year and knowing how friends relate to others--with about 150 people.
Until recently, it was believed that that only pertained to "offline" relationships.
Dunbar has now decided to shift focus to see whether Facebook has changed the number.
It hasn't.
"The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends, but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world," Dunbar told the London-based Sunday Times. "People obviously like the kudos of having hundreds of friends but the reality is that they're unlikely to be bigger than anyone else's."
For now, Dunbar's study is in its preliminary stages, meaning more testing needs to be done. Regardless, Dunbar doesn't believe that anything will change: no matter how many thousands of friends we might have on Facebook, we can't manage relationships with more than 150 of them.
Dunbar's study will be released later this year.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Job-search site SimplyHired announced Tuesday that it has launched a new tool to help job searchers use their connections to land their next job.
SimplyHired is calling itself the "first job search engine to "socialize" job search." Users can connect their LinkedIn network to SimplyHired to find any contacts they might know within a respective organization. The company contends that through those networks, users might gain an upper hand in their job search.
Aside from LinkedIn, users will also be able to integrate other personal social networks like Twitter and Facebook into the site. Upon doing so, users will be able to share contact information, expand their network, and hopefully find their next job sooner, rather than later.
SimplyHired wasn't done. The company has also overhauled the site in an attempt to make it easier for job seekers to find the most relevant jobs.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Google continued to dominate the search market in December, trailed by Yahoo and Microsoft, according to media research firm Nielsen.
According to Nielsen's December U.S. Search Rankings, released on Wednesday, Web users queried search engines more than 9.9 billion times in December. Google accommodated almost 6.7 billion queries, capturing a 67.3 percent share of the month's searches.
Yahoo placed second in Nielsen's December search rankings. It was queried more than 1.4 billion times, tallying 14.4 percent market share. Microsoft's Bing, which garnered 986 million queries, captured 9.9 percent market share, according to Nielsen. Ask.com, My Web search, and Comcast search followed, with 1.7 percent, 1.0 percent, and 0.5 percent market share, respectively.
Google's lead over the competition grew in December from November. The company's November market share was 65.4 percent, while Yahoo's search share in November was 15.3 percent. It's also worth noting that Bing dropped significantly in December from its 10.7 percent market share in November.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
The Web has quickly become America's playground. A new study from Nielsen finds that more U.S. Web users are using broadband, going social, and checking out Web videos.
According to Nielsen, of the 195 million active Web users in the U.S, 160.3 million, or 93.3 percent, access the Web with a broadband connection, representing a 16 percent increase over 2008 figures.
Nielsen also found that more Americans than ever are consuming online video content. The research firm said 138.4 million unique viewers watched online video in 2009, up 11.4 percent from 2008. All told, they average 11.2 billion video streams per month. The typical U.S.-based Web viewer watches 200.1 minutes of video per month.
U.S. Web users are also going social in a big way. According to Nielsen, 56 percent of active U.S. Web users spend an average of six hours on Facebook per month. The social network is also the third-most-visited site by users who are 65 and older. Nielsen said Twitter's growth has topped 500 percent year-over-year. All told, the amount of time Americans spent on social networking sites in 2009 increased by 277 percent.
U.S. Web users are accessing those social networks just about anywhere. Nielsen found the average U.S. worker spends five hours per month browsing social networks from the office. It also found that 32 percent of all mobile Web users visited a social network in 2009.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
A look at the Zune HD Twitter app in action.
(Credit: Screenshot by Donald Bell/CNET)It has only been available for a day, but already the Zune HD's Twitter app is being updated after it was criticized by users for automatically abbreviating explicit words in users' tweets. It doesn't even give them the option of determining when or which words should be censored.
As you might expect, the Web is overflowing with unhappy users. Commenters on the Slashdot entry discussing the censors were up in arms over the feature. Quite a few of those folks echoed "rocket97's" comments, who said that the "[censors] should be an option, not a requirement." Others took the opportunity to (you guessed it) censor curse words within the comments to voice their protest.
They might have a point. Twitter itself doesn't censor any tweets that contain curse words. Even Twitter clients like TweetDeck don't censor tweets or direct messages from Twitter users.
It didn't take long for Microsoft to respond. After seeing that users were having issues with the application, Microsoft admitted that the app does indeed censor explicit tweets. It also said in an e-mailed statement to CNET News that it plans to rectify the situation soon.
"The recently released Twitter for Zune HD application has been abbreviating some explicit words in tweets when viewed on the device," a Microsoft spokesperson admitted to CNET News. "However, these explicit words do appear in their full text on the Twitter site or on any other Twitter client. We have identified the issue and are taking steps to update the application as soon as possible to ensure Twitter for Zune HD users are able to view tweets in their original state."
If you're interested in learning more about the Zune HD Twitter app, you can check out our hands-on by clicking here.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Have you ever wanted to type something in English and have the tool you're using spit that same message out in Hindi? What about Greek? With the help of Google's transliteration feature, you can.
The search giant's Bangalore office wrote that typing on Roman keyboards makes it "difficult to type in Indian languages." In an attempt to find a fix, the team in India released Google's Transliteration offering. And on Thursday it announced an update to the feature.
The new and improved Transliteration allows users to select from one of 17 different languages, including Arabic, Gujarati, Kannada, and Punjabi, to name a few. Once that's chosen, they can type a message in English and have it immediately transliterated to the selected language. Users can also look up word definitions in the included dictionary.
I took a few minutes to play around with the new Transliteration and it seems to work really well. I decided to type messages into Greek and Hindi and each time, it returned quick, accurate results.
Click here to try it out.
A look at Google Transliteration in action.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
Career site Glassdoor.com has announced the employees' choice awards for the top 50 best places to work. Unfortunately, tech companies didn't make the top five.
According to Glassdoor, Southwest Airlines, General Mills, Slalom Consulting, Bain & Co., and McKinsey & Co. were the best places to work this year. Only General Mills and Bain & Co. were in the top five last year.
On the tech side, it was enterprise-solution provider Juniper Networks that led the way for the industry, placing 10th in the list with a 3.9 (out of 5) company rating from employees. Google placed 14th with a 3.9 rating, followed by NetApp, which also received a 3.9 rating. Last year, Google was ranked seventh on the list. NetApp was ranked 10th.
Some other tech notables from the list: Apple placed 22nd with a 3.8 company rating, which is a little lower than last year's 19th place. Online career site CareerBuilder took the 26th spot with a 3.7 rating. The site experienced a steep decline, dropping eight spots from its 2008 ranking of 18th.
But it was Adobe Systems that declined most of all the tech companies on the list. The company placed fourth last year. This year, its rating slipped to 3.7, giving it the 29th spot on the list.
Intel is new to the list this year, garnering a 3.6 rating and taking 41st place. Best Buy inched up to 45th place from 46th last year with a 3.6 rating as well.
CEO ratings
Glassdoor also asked employees to rate their CEOs. According to the company, Google CEO Eric Schmidt received an 87 percent approval rating from employees, while Apple CEO Steve Jobs scored a 91 percent approval rating. CareerBuilder's Matt Ferguson had a 78 percent approval rating. Adobe's Shantanu Narayen had a relatively low 60 percent approval rating. Best Buy's Brad Anderson didn't fare too well either, garnering a 64 percent approval rating from his employees.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Susan Boyle's first appearance on "Britain's Got Talent" tallied the most worldwide views on YouTube for 2009, the video site said Wednesday.
The video of the once-unknown singer captured more than 120 million views.
Her video was followed "David After Dentist" (37 million views), "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" (33 million views), "New Moon Movie Trailer" (31 million views), and "Evian Roller Babies" (27 million views).
YouTube also looked specifically at which music videos tallied the most views for the year.
Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me" had more than 82 million views this year. That was followed by two Miley Cyrus songs--"The Climb" and "Party in the U.S.A"--with 64 million and 54 million views, respectively. The Lonley Island's "I'm On a Boat" and Keri Hilson's "Knock You Down" rounded out the top five.
You may notice that Michael Jackson videos, surprisingly, didn't capture more views than the top clips of the year. According to YouTube, the pop star's "Thriller" video was one of the fastest rising searches but it failed to acquire enough views to push it into the top five most-viewed videos.
Iran's elections topped Twitter's list of most popular topics of 2009, according to the microblogging site.
"Among all the keywords, hashtags, and phrases that proliferated throughout the year, one topic surfaced repeatedly," the company wrote in a blog post Tuesday. "Twitter users found the Iranian elections the most engaging topic of the year. The terms #iranelection, Iran and Tehran were all in the top-21 of Trending Topics, and #iranelection finished in a close second behind the regular weekly favorite #musicmonday."
The fact that Iran's elections rose to the top on Twitter is noteworthy because Twitter itself became a tool for organizing post-election demonstrations in Iran.
In the category of top news topics on Twitter, items related to the Iranian elections and swine flu took five of the top six spots for the year. They were followed by Gaza, AIG, and President Obama's inauguration.
A look at the top trending topics of 2009 on Twitter.
(Credit: Twitter)Among the most-discussed people of the year, Michael Jackson took the top spot. He was followed by singing sensations Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert, respectively. Kobe Bryant, Chris Brown, Chuck Norris, Joe Wilson, Tiger Woods, Christian Bale, and Alex Rodriguez rounded out the top 10 most-discussed people of the year on Twitter.
"Harry Potter" was the most engaging film of the year for Twitter users, followed by "New Moon," "District 9," "Paranormal Activity," and "Star Trek."
"American Idol" was the top television show on Twitter, followed by "Glee," the "Teen Choice Awards," "Saturday Night Live," and "Dollhouse."
On the tech side, it was Google Wave that engaged the most Twitter users, followed by Snow Leopard, Tweetdeck, Windows 7, and CES.
