Video: BlackBerry PlayBook and iPad Comparison

Video demonstration comparing BlackBerry PlayBook and iPad tablets in terms of browser speed, Adobe Flash support and HTML5 performance.

FrontierVille New Years Party Goals

Just when you thought the holidays were through, Dec. 31 crept up right around the corner, bringing yet another set of FrontierVille Goals with it. Well, at least in the world of Facebook it did. Soon enough, pioneers everywhere will find a letter on their homestead reading that Frontier Jack's niece, Bess, is headed West for the New Year. 

In the New Years Party Goals, players will have to prepare their homestead for the ultimate party to ring in the New Year for Bess. The preparations will span five new Goals wherein players will earn RSVPs, increasing their guest list to epic proportions in time for the party's end come Jan. 14. There's also a brand new item to be built in this series of Goals, the New Years Dance Floor. 

Join us behind the break for a detailed guide on how to finish all five News Years Party Goals.

In the first Goal of the New Year, "PartyVille," it's your job to make some room for that Dance Floor, buy it from the Market and randomly collect a Daily Bonus from the Barn. If you've yet to build a Barn, this Goal is going to take quite a while. Check out this guide on how to build your Barn to get things moving. Finish these requirements and 200 XP, 250 coins and one RSVP are all yours. 

In Part II of the New Years Party Goals, players will simply need to collect a few items. First, you will need to either have or buy one Fence and Saddle from the Market for 600 coins and 1 Wood. Next, you'll have to either craft or own two Fancy Clothing, which can be made in the General Store using two Ribbon and two Clothes. Ribbon can be found through the Free Gifts page, which means some requests are in order, and Clothes are created in the Cabin using six Cloth and 500 coins. And we all know where Cloth comes from (hint: say 'Hello' to your friends every once in a while), right? Lastly, you need to have or collect one pair of Winter Mittens, which drop at random as part of the new Winter Collection when Whacking the new Dance Floor, chopping down Pine Trees and tending winter Animals. Finish this and an RSVP, a Light Snack and one Piggy Poop await you.

The third of the New Years Party Goals finally requires the dreaded GIft requests. For this Goal, players will have to collect 10 Welcome Baskets through tapping their friends while crafting 15 sets of Fireworks and moving 10 Oxen. The Fireworks will take quite some time to create considering you'll need three Saltpeter, which you can only find one of at a time from turning in the Manure Collection. (Thankfully, one Saltpeter and five Fire make five Fireworks.) We'd recommend throwing this on the good old Wish List, but you're friends are going to need that Saltpeter too. If this last portion of the Goal is anything like moving the Cows in the Toll Booth Goals, you should be able to move the same Ox 10 times to fulfill the requirement. Complete these tasks and another RSVP is yours along with one Lunch and five New Years Fireworks. 

New Years Party Part IV requires some more effort, asking players to find one Hot Cider from the Winter Collection, place one Old Time Camera and upgrade the Dance Floor to Level 2. Finding that Hot Cider will take some time considering it is random, but Old Time Cameras are available in the Market for just 1,200 coins and 10 Wood. To bring the New Years Dance Floor to the next level, you will need to ask friends for these standard building parts:

• 2 Hammers
• 2 Nails
• 2 Bricks
• 2 Hand Drills
• 2 Paint Buckets
• 3 Hardwood Floors

Once these three requirements are met, enjoy the same reward as before, which isn't a bad thing. The final Goal in this series, in traditional FrontierVille finale style, will put quite a dent in your reserves of Food, cash and Energy. First, just tend to five Horses, which could be a tough sell considering many players dumped a lot of their steeds as a result of the change earlier this year. Next, just place five of those New Years Fireworks you've been rewarded all this time. And finally, bake five Cakes, which is done in the Inn using Batter and Fire. To be exact, you will need 10 Fire and 20 Batter to craft five Cakes. And that translates to 400 Food and an insane 18,000 coins. After spending your six kids' college fund, enjoy 300 XP, another RSVP and a fancy Silver Hot Tub. Then, dance the night away with the FrontierVille cast--you deserve it.

[Via FrontierVille Wiki]

Frontier New Year's Party!

FrontierVille wishes all people on the frontier a happy new year and you are invited to the New Year's part. You now get a chance to have a bash on your homestead and invite all your friends to check your new dance moves. So prepare for the New Year's Part and make sure you throw a huge party and get all your friends excited. Happy New Year Everyone!

Happy New Year Pardners!


It's time to ring in the New Year on the old Homestead and we got some celebratin' to do!
Invite all your friends to your party and show off them fancy moves on this here dance floor.
Word has it Hank thinks he can dance, I'm thinkin' you fine folks will show him what's what tho!

Here's whatcha gotta do to get ready for the bash:

• Build a Dance Floor!
• Complete 5 New Missions!
• Invite your friends to the party!
• Collect New Year's RSVP's that you can redeem for Limited Edition prizes!
• Prizes will be available to redeem after the New Year, and RSVP's will be deducted from your total collected when redeemed.
• Don't forget to look for the new collection items too!

Source: FrontierVille Forums

How to get the Skype Video Calling App for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch

Skype has just announced that users can now use their iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch to make video calls. This way users can now use their iPhone 4 with the front and rear view camera to make calls to friends and relatives and share exactly what they are seeing in front of them. With this users can now make free voice and video calls over 3G and WiFi. Share video calls on Skype with people who are on the iPhone, PC or Mac. Talk face to face or show what you're seeing with front and rear facing cameras.

Skype's technology allows users to now make video calls between two PCs. Smartphones or TVs. This App has been rushed in time for New Year's Eve the most important day of the year. Skype Video Calling is not available on Android Devices.

Download the App for iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch now
Download the App from iTunes

How to control who can send you friend invites on Facebook

If you are one of those people who do not want any and everyone to send you invites. FB has a provision for you. The idea is that you allow only friends of friends to invite you. The idea is that for a person to invite you they would already need to be associated with a friend of yours. This way you control who can contact you. So, a perfect stranger will be unable to send you an invite. There are many people who need this and the reasons are varied. Maybe they look like some celebrity or have the same name. maybe a pretty face and the reasons go on and on and there are many people that just seem to get get too many invites from perfect strangers. The best way to control this is to allow only friends of friends to invite you. You may however loose on the old friend who will find it all the more difficult to add you as a friend.

To allow only friends of friends to invite you.

1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on Account
3. Click on privacy settings
4. Click on view settings under choose your privacy settings.

5. Beside " Send you friend requests" click the drop down box

6. Choose "Friends of Friends"

7. Your done.

How to use Twitter Lists on the New Twitter

List are useful when you want to follow a select group of people. So, if you want to keep a tab on what your family is saying simply create a list and be undated when tweets come from that list. This is a good way to follow people who are into something specific you want to keep your eyes on. Lists are a great way to follow and tweet with your buddies or co-workers or old school friends. Whatever be the need, everyone has their own need for a list and reasons would be too large to even comprehend.


Please find below a guide to Twitter lists on the New Twitter. This had everything you need to know about lists on #NewTwitter.



Twitter users can organize others into groups, or “lists”. When you click to view a list, you'll see a stream of Tweets from all the users included in that group. This article will help you get started with some lists basics.


Note: you don't need to follow another user to add them to a list; if you want to read a user's Tweets but not see their messages in your main timeline every day, lists allow you to do that. Similarly, following someone else's list does not mean you follow all users in that list. Rather, you follow the list itself.


How to Create a List


The list button on Twitter looks like this: 


To create a new list, follow these instructions:


Visit the profile of the first user you would like to add to your list
Click the list drop-down, which looks like the icon above
At the bottom of the drop-down menu, click "Create list"
Enter the credentials of your list, and choose whether others can see it or whether it is private
Check to see if the user you wanted to add was successfully included in that list: to do this, click the list drop-down. A blue check will be added next to lists in which that user is included (shown below under "Adding or Removing People")
Some notes about Lists:


20 lists per user
List names cannot begin with a numerical character
Maximum of 500 accounts on each list


Adding or Removing People From Your Lists


You can add users (including yourself!) from anywhere you see the list drop-down on someone's profile. This includes the following:


People searches
Profile pages (including your own)
Yours and other users followers and following lists
Check the boxes of lists you want to include that person in. Uncheck the box if you want to remove them from the list.


Checking out your Lists stats


On your Twitter home page, clicking on the “listed” number (which is next to your “followers” number) will bring up a page all about what lists you are on. Click it to see yours!


Viewing List Content


To view the stream of Tweets from any group of people in lists you follow or have created, follow these steps:


Go to your "Home" page
Click the "Lists" tab on the left panel of the screen
Choose which list you'd like to view
Right away, you'll see a stream of Tweets from the users included in that list
Editing or Deleting Lists


To edit or delete a list, follow these steps:


Go to your "Profile" page
Click the "Lists" tab on the left panel of the screen
Choose to see lists you created, lists you're in, or other people's lists you follow
Click the hockey symbol on the left to edit your list's name and info, or click the trashcan to delete the list entirely.
You cannot add or remove people from your list on this page – you must do that from the profile pages of each individual you wish to add or delete. See above.
Subscribing to/Following Other People's Lists


Following a list is as simple as following any other Twitter user. Simply click on the Lists tab when viewing their profile, and select which lists options you want to see. Click the follow button to follow one of their lists.


You can also consequently remove yourself from a list by blocking the creator of the list.

Note: If the owner of a list that you're following includes a public user that you've blocked, you will still see the updates of the blocked user. This behavior is similar to visiting the profile page of a public user that you've blocked: you're still able to read their tweets.


Mentioning Lists


You can link to any Twitter List by mentioning it as you would any Twitter user, just add a forward slash “/” followed by the list name to list owners username:


@/ (example: @SchauerTime/News)


Note: Renaming a list will break any links you've posted to that list.


[Source: Twitter Blog]

FarmVille The New Years Ball Drop/Party Barn 2011 Guide

This guide is part of the official guides released by FarmVille.The New Year is right around the corner, and what better way to celebrate it than with your friends and neighbors in FarmVille? We’re providing you a way to do just that with our New Years Ball Drop and Party Barn. It’s party time in FarmVille and you’re all invited!

The Party Barn is where you’ll be hosting your party—just build it up, then invite your neighbors over for the big party. The more neighbors you invite, the better the prizes you get (there’s no redeeming for this shindig, you automatically get the prize). Then on New Years the ball drops!

Party Prep Work

You’ll get the frame for the Party Barn for free the first time you play FarmVille after the update, and you will immediately be entered into Placement Mode. You can place the Party Barn frame on your farm now, or you can choose to place it in your Gift Box for use later. You can be any level to place the Party Barn.

The New Years Ball Party Barn is a constructible building, so you’ll need a grand total of 24 parts (8 bricks, 8 nails and 8 wooden boards) to finish it:

Like other constructible buildings, you can acquire these parts by:

• Asking your neighbors for these parts by posting a help request to your feed (click on the “Ask For More” button for each type of part).
• Give parts to your neighbors via the Free Gifts page or the “Send Gifts” button.
• Acquire individual parts by spending Farm Cash (click on the “Buy” button for that particular part). Each part is 1 Farm Cash.
• Acquire all needed parts for the building by spending Farm Cash (click on the “Complete Now” button to purchase parts for the rest of the building). The Cost is X Farm Cash, where X is the amount of parts left needed to finish the building.
• Parts awarded through Special Delivery Boxes.
• Using individual parts available in your Gift Box.

When you first place the Party Barn on your farm it’ll look fairly lifeless and boring:

There’s no party. However, once you get it fully constructed you can now see where the party will be going down:

You can only have one Party Barn on your farm at any one time. If you happen to sell your Party Barn or never got one, you can buy a new Party Barn frame in the Market under the Buildings tab before the end of the promotion (it should be under “New Years Ball”). The cost is 5,000 coins.

Getting the Party Started

Now you really need to invite some neighbors over for a real party. Well, you can invite them over before the Party Barn is fully built as well, but it won’t be as fun. Click on the Party Barn and select “Go to Party!”

With this display you can see how the party is going in the “Progress” tab. Right now, not too well—there’s no one to keep the pig and duck company. You can change that by clicking on the “View Guest List” tab. From here you’ll see all your FarmVille neighbors and friends all lined up, ready to be invited:

Click on the “Share” button under the ones you want to invite, and you’ll be prompted to make a post to their wall. A purple “Invited” label will appear over their profile picture if they’ve been invited, and if they’ve accepted you’ll see a green checkmark and a “Coming” label under their profile picture.

Once they accept, you will see their avatar on your farm, standing next to the Party Barn (this shows they’ve accepted your RSVP—you can click on them and the avatar will go away). When you look in your Party Barn you can see them in all their glory on the party floor! Note that if the people you invite are not your FarmVille neighbors (but friends that play), a default avatar will be shown on the party floor. Now’s a good time to become neighbors!

You will also see a button below your neighbors/friends display asking if you want to make use of extended permissions called “Allow Permissions”. By allowing this setting this will allow you to post feeds on neighbor’s walls without another prompt—it’s automatic as soon as you hit the “Share” button.

As your participants increase, you will unlock the special prizes available for the Ball Drop. No you don’t need to collect items and redeem them for these prizes; you get them automatically as you add partygoers (they’ll get added to your Gift Box). 

After the Party Ends

You won’t be able to invite people to your New Years Ball Drop after January 1, though you will still be able to access it, re-watch the Ball Drop, or purchase the prizes in the Market for the month of January (if not longer). You also won’t be able to purchase a Party Barn frame in the Market. It will be storable, however.


[Source: Zynga Forums]

FarmVille new Year Items

Limited Edition New Years Items:
New Year Horse – 22 Farm Cash
Party House – 25 Farm Cash
Gold Party Dress – 10 Farm Cash
Purple Party Dress – 10 Farm Cash
Silver Party Dress – 10 Farm Cash
Silver Tuxedo – 10 Farm Cash
New Year Band – 20 Farm Cash
Cider Fountain – 15 Farm Cash
Happy New Year – 4,800 Coins
Black Tiara – 5 Farm Cash
Silver Tiara – 5 Farm Cash
Black Top Hat – 5 Farm Cash
Silver Top Hat – 5 Farm Cash
Confetti Tree – 5 Farm Cash


Mystery Game:


A new Mystery Game is now available in the Market!


There is a new animal, building, and a set of new decorations available to purchase, and we have all of the information about these new items here for your browsing pleasure.

All together, these items are mostly Farm Cash items that will set you back a pretty penny (or virtual Farm Cash) if you choose to purchase them all, but there is one item for those that would rather stay clear of spending premium currency. Meet us behind the break to find out what it is.

First off, the new animal is the New Year Horse, which should look familiar, as we brought you a Sneak Peek of this (and many other items in this release) last week. The New Year Horse costs 22 Farm Cash, and comes outfitted with a cute Top Hat, noise maker, and New Years Sash. If purchased, you can harvest from your New Year Horse once every three days, to receive 140 coins each time. Of course, you'll also be able to place the New Year Horse in your Horse Stable, offering the potential to receive a New Year Foal (with matching top hat and sash).

Moving on, the new building is the animated Party House. This building costs 25 Farm Cash, and is a brightly decorated building with pulsing lights shooting from the windows, two rotating spotlights from the roof of the home, and four clusters of balloons perched at the home's corners. Sure, it might be a tad expensive, considering that it is just a decorative building, but the sheer quality of the animation seems to make it worth the price.

Finally, there are three decorations that are now available to purchase, two of which are Farm Cash-only. These items are the Cider Fountain and the New Year Band. The Cider Fountain is another animated item, which consists of a large tower of glasses over which Cider is pouring down, into a large trough at the bottom. It costs 15 Farm Cash to add to your farm. The New Year Band costs 20 Farm Cash, and is a truly clever item, consisting of a three piece band, instruments, stage equipment and lighting, with the band being made up of a Chicken drummer, a Duck guitarist, and a sheep playing the keyboard. How cute!

The other decoration is a simple stationary Happy New Year sign that costs just 4,800 coins to add to your land. Even if you don't want to spend the Farm Cash on these other items, this sign will allow you to still celebrate the holiday in fashion. You'll gain 48 experience points for purchasing the sign, which will only be available for the next 5 days.

All other items will be available for the next 13 days, so keep these separate time limits in mind when deciding which items to purchase. You wouldn't want to miss out on collecting any of these neat items, now would you?


[Source: Games.com]

How to become popular on Facebook via your updates

FB's data team put together a lot of information and have come out with charts and info on how to become popular on the site. There are a lot of explanations given on what makes some users popular, has to do with updates of course. To analyze a person's status updates popularity about 1 million updates were pulled and analyzed. All updates were from US English speaking users. They started with a correlation between age and popularity. Younger people tend to have more negativity and older users updates were longer and also used more presuppositions and articles. Timing was also looked at the data team found that there seemed to be more positive updates in the morning. Well, comes as no surprise.


Here comes the important part, your popularity depends on what your friends like. If a user updates his status with something that is liked by friends, then there are more likes on that status and bring in more readers, since friends of friends will also read the update. " Birds of a feather flock together", becomes very true as people reading things they generally like seem to follow others with same interests. 


So whenever you write a status update it is no longer about you. It becomes more about your friends and what they like. The more "Likes" and comments your status gets the more popular you will eventually become.The more the work "I" and "first person pronouns" are used the more comments the update gets. Negative emotions also tend to get a lot of comments. Comments related to religion and sleeping attract fewer comments.


[Source: FB Data]

What is Google Trends and how does it work.

We know how trends work on Twitter it is now Google's turn to do the same and offer topics that are trending on their search engine. For those who want to know whats hot and happening on the world's largest search engine, comes Google Trends. With Google Trends you are able to view hot topics, Google insight for search, trends for specific websites and search for the latest hot topics.


With Google trends for websites all you need to do is to enter a websites address and you get a complete map on how many visitors the website gets and their geographic location. Which is really helpful if you want to know a websites popularity. 


You can also follow hot topics and hot searches and find out from where the queries originate and where visitors go after that search. Visiting Google Trends allows you know to know whats hot and happening as and when its taking place.


If you want to know a certain topics popularity or a certain events popularity on Google you need to simply Google the term for you to get all the info. Google Trends gives you all the insight you might want to know how a topic is trending on the Big G


Try Google Trends Now


Below is a Q&A guide provided by Google to help users navigate Google Trends

1. How does Google Trends work?

Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results – our Search Volume Index graph.

Located beneath the Search Volume Index graph is our News reference volume graph. This graph shows you the number of times your topic appeared in Google News stories. When Google Trends detects a spike in the volume of news stories for a particular search term, it labels the graph and displays the headline of an automatically selected Google News story written near the time of that spike. Currently, only English-language headlines are displayed, but we hope to support non-English headlines in the future.

Below the search and news volume graphs, Trends displays the top regions, cities, and languages in which people searched for the first search term you entered.

2. How accurate and up-to-date is the information provided by Google Trends?

The data Trends produces may contain inaccuracies for a number of reasons, including data-sampling issues and a variety of approximations that are used to compute results. We hope you find this service interesting and entertaining, but you probably wouldn’t want to write your Ph.D. dissertation based on the information provided by Trends.

The information provided by Trends is updated daily, and Hot Searches is updated hourly.

3. When will Google Trends be available for my country or language?

Currently, Google Trends is only available in English and in Chinese. Hot Searches is only available in English, but both Singapore and India show information specific to their regions. We hope to roll out Google Trends in other regions and languages in the future.

4. How does Hot Searches work?

Hot Searches reflects what people are searching for on Google today. Rather than showing the most popular searches overall, which would always be generic terms like “weather,” Hot Searches highlights searches that experience sudden surges in popularity, and updates that information hourly. Our algorithm analyzes millions of web searches performed on Google and displays those searches that deviate the most from their historic traffic pattern. The algorithm also filters out spam and removes inappropriate material. For each search, Hot Searches shows related searches and a Search Volume Index graph. The page also displays news, blog posts, and web results to give context about why a search may be appearing on the Hot Searches list. You can also choose a date in the past to see what the top Hot Searches were for that date by clickingchange date.

5. Is the list of Hot Searches comprehensive?

No. We know there may be numerous queries that experience sudden surges in popularity, but Hot Searches only highlights the top 40 such queries. You can view all 40 searches by clicking More Hot Searches; this list is updated throughout the day. You can also get this list through a feed. To do so, click Site Feed after you’ve clicked More Hot Searches, and follow the instructions.

6. What’s the difference between Hot Topics and Hot Searches?

Hot Topics are popular topics mentioned in news, or on Twitter, FriendFeed and other such messaging services; Hot Searches are the fastest-rising searches.

7. How many terms can I compare? And what other functionality is available?

You can compare up to five terms by separating each one with a comma. For example, to compare “boots” and “sneakers”, simply enter boots, sneakers and click Search Trends.

To see how many searches contained either term, list them and separate with a vertical bar ( | ):

boots | sneakers

To see how many searches were done for either “snow boots” or “sneakers”, use parentheses around the multi-word term: (snow boots) | sneakers.

You can also exclude terms from your search by using the minus sign. For instance, to see how many searches contained the term “boots” but not “hiking”, enter boots-hiking.

To restrict your results to only those searches that contain your terms in the specific order you’ve entered them, you can put your terms in quotation marks: "snow boots". (By default, Google Trends will show you all searches that contain the terms you entered in any order.)

Note that when you use any of these advanced features – quotation marks, minus signs, or vertical bars – Trends will only display the Search Volume Index graph. The news portion doesn’t support advanced functionality at this time.

8. How is the data scaled?

The data is scaled based on the average search traffic of the term you’ve entered.

There are two modes of scaling – relative and fixed – and the only difference between them is the time frame that’s used to calculate the average. However, fixed scaling is only available as a .csv export. Please note that the ability to see numbers on the graph and to export this data with either mode of scaling are available only after you’ve signed into your Google Account for Trends.

In relative mode, the data is scaled to the average search traffic for your term (represented as 1.0) during the time period you’ve selected. For example, if you entered the term dogs, the graph you’d see would be scaled to the average of all search traffic for dogs from January 2004 to present. But if you chose a specific time frame – say 2006 – the data would then appear relative to the average of all search traffic for dogs in 2006. Then, let’s suppose that you notice a spike in the graph to 3.5; this spike means that traffic is 3.5 times the average for 2006.

In fixed mode, the data is scaled to the average traffic for your term during a fixed point in time (usually January 2004). In our example, 1.0 would be the average traffic of dogs in January 2004. If you chose 2006 as your time frame, you would be comparing data for dogs in 2006 to its data in January 2004. Since the scale basis (1.0) doesn’t change with time, you can look at different time periods, and relate them to each other. (Note: For keywords without a historical record, it may not be possible to establish a fixed scale).

9. Is the News reference volume graph scaled?

No. The graph is for illustrative purposes, and simply shows you the number of times your topic appeared in Google News stories.

10. Is the data normalized?

All results from Google Trends are normalized, which means that we’ve divided the sets of data by a common variable to cancel out the variable’s effect on the data and allow the underlying characteristics of the data sets to be compared. If we didn’t normalize the results, and instead displayed the absolute rankings of cities, they wouldn’t be all that interesting – a densely populated area like New York City would be the top city for many results simply because there are lots of searches from that area.

Remember, Google Trends shows users’ propensity to search for a certain topic on Google on a relative basis. For example, just because a particular region isn’t on the Top Regions list for the term “haircut” doesn’t necessarily mean that people there have decided to stage a mass rebellion against society’s conventions. It could be that people in that region might not use Google to find a barber, use a different term when doing their searches, or simply search for so many other topics unrelated to haircuts, that searches for “haircut” comprise a small portion of the search volume from that region as compared to other regions.

11. Do the numbers on the graph reflect actual search traffic numbers?

No. The numbers you see on the y-axis of the Search Volume Index (which you can see after you’ve signed in to your Google Account) aren’t absolute search traffic numbers. Instead, Trends scales the first term you’ve entered so that its average search traffic in the chosen time period is 1.0; subsequent terms are then scaled relative to the first term. Note that all numbers are relative to total traffic.

Read more about how we scale and normalize the data.

12. I see a number next to my search term at the top of the graph. What does this mean?

The number you see next to your search term corresponds to its total average traffic in the time frame you’ve chosen.

When comparing multiple search terms on a relative scale, the first term you enter will always be 1.0, as subsequent terms are ranked and scaled against this term. For example, you may see: blogs (1.0) and newspapers (0.51). In this case, newspapers has approximately half the searches of blogs.

If you export the data to a .csv file and you’ve selected fixed scaling, 1.0 corresponds to the average traffic for the search term in fixed point of time (usually January 2004), and all numbers are relative to this point. If you chose a time frame of 2007, the number you see for blogs (for example, 5.82) would mean that blogs has had approximately 5.8 times more relative traffic in 2007 than it had in January 2004. Similarly, the the number you see for newspapers (2.05) means that newspapers has about 2 times more traffic in 2007 than blogs had in 2004.

Note that the ratio between these numbers always remains constant and corresponds to how the keywords compare to each other; only the scaling basis (or the meaning of 1.0) changes.

Learn more about scaling.

13. When comparing two or more search terms, I sometimes see results with all zeros. Why?

If you see all zeros for one of your search terms, it could be that the term doesn’t have enough search volume to be reflected on a graph. It’s also possible that the term’s search volume is insignificant compared to the other terms you’ve entered. In those cases, the system will automatically rank your results by whichever term has greater search volume.

14. Is there a way to adjust how the terms are ranked and scaled?

Yes. Use the drop-down menu underneath the graph to change the search term by which all the data will be ranked and scaled (to 1.0). If you have more than one search term, the other terms will be ranked to the first one you’ve entered.

15. How does counting and ranking of the top regions, cities, and languages work, and are they scaled differently?

To rank the top regions, cities, or languages, Google Trends first looks at a sample of all Google searches to determine the areas or languages from which we received the most searches for your first term. Then, for those top cities, Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. The city ranking you see on the page and the bar charts alongside each city name both represent this ratio. When cities’ ratios are fairly close together, the corresponding bar graphs will be roughly the same length, and the exact ranking between these cities is less meaningful.

If you export the data to a .csv file, you’ll see numbers for the top regions and cities. These numbers are based on a scale where the top region or city for the search term which you’ve ranked the data by will be 1.0.

16. How is information gathered to determine the regions, cities, and languages?

Google Trends uses IP address information from our server logs to make a best guess about where queries originated. Language information is determined by the language version of the Google site where the search originated.

17. How can I change the time frame, region, or sub-region of the results?

Once you’ve entered your search terms, you can use the drop-down boxes at the top of the results page to restrict your results to a particular time frame or region. The restrictions will affect both the Search Volume Index graph and the News reference volume graph. Please note thatNews reference volume may not be available for every region.

When you restrict your results to a specific year or multi-year period, each point on the graph will represent a week’s worth of searches. When you restrict the results to a specific month, each point on the graph will represent one day of searches.

18. Is there a way to export the data?

Yes. You can export the data to a .csv file, which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications. Click Export this page to a CSV file at the bottom of the page. You can choose to export the file with relative or fixed scaling. You’ll also see numbers corresponding to the bars under theRegions, Cities, and Languages columns.

The .csv file will also contain data for the top regions, cities, and languages for your search term. Read how this data is counted and ranked.

Along with the search index volume data, the file will include the upper bound of relative standard error for each data point. In your spreadsheet application, every column with search index data will be followed by a column of corresponding relative standard error. This information can be used to calculate the confidence interval for a data point.

Please note that since the news data isn’t scaled, it won’t be included in the file.

19. When is it okay to use the information I find on Google Trends?

You’re free to use any of the information you find on Google Trends, subject to the Terms of Use. If you choose to use the information, please make sure to appropriately attribute it to Google.

20. This tool makes search information public. What about my personal search data?

You can rest assured your personal search data remains safe and private. Our graphs are based on aggregated data from millions of searches done on Google over time. Moreover, the results Google Trends displays are produced entirely by an automated formula. As an additional measure, Trends only returns results for terms that receive a significant amount of search traffic.

[Source Google Trends]