{"id":660165,"date":"2013-05-24T13:01:03","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T17:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betanews.com\/?p=154369"},"modified":"2013-05-24T13:01:03","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T17:01:03","slug":"spy-on-the-worlds-web-searches-with-a-google-trends-screensaver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/660165","title":{"rendered":"Spy on the world&#8217;s web searches with a Google Trends screensaver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-154410\" title=\"google_trends\" src=\"http:\/\/betanews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/google_trends-600x281.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"281\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Google is all about searching. Well\u2026 not &#8220;all&#8221; about, but it&#8217;s what the company is known for. Any firm that logs information about how customers are using its services are usually berated, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/trends\/hottrends\" >Google Trends<\/a> can provide a fascinating insight into how the rest of the world is using the internet. This tool has been available for a while but there&#8217;s now a sexy new full screen mode available &#8212; and you can turn it into a screensaver.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve ever been curious about what people in other parts of the world are searching for, head over to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/trends\/hottrends\/visualize?pn=p1\" >full screen visualization tool<\/a> and you can find out. At the bottom of the screen you can choose from one of several countries, or opt to see an overview of global searches.<\/p>\n<p>By default you&#8217;ll be shown a single search at a time, displayed on a background in one of Google&#8217;s four colors. Want to see more? Whizz your mouse up to the upper left of the page and hover over the 3&#215;3 grid icon that appears. In the popup you can then select a number of search tiles that should be displayed &#8212; each shows a different search term, and the display can become quite mesmerizing.<\/p>\n<p>As you change country and tile options, you may well notice that the URL in the address bar changes. Each setting change results in a unique URL, and this can be exploited to turn Google Trends into a rainbow search screensaver. When you&#8217;ve chosen a view you like, copy the address to the clipboard.<\/p>\n<p>Turning a web address into a screensaver isn\u2019t something that&#8217;s built into Windows, but there&#8217;s a great free screensaver tool hosted on <a href=\"https:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/web-page-screensaver\/\" >Google Projects<\/a>. Download a copy of <a href=\"http:\/\/web-page-screensaver.googlecode.com\/files\/Web-Page-Screensaver.scr\" >Web Page Screensaver<\/a> (it&#8217;s free), and move the .scr file to C:\\Windows\\System32.<\/p>\n<p>The screensaver can then be configured from the Display Control Panel &#8212; right-click the desktop and select Personalize before clicking the Screen Saver icon at the lower right of the window. Select Web-Page-Screensaver from the drop down menu, click Settings and paste the URL you copied earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Now when your computer is idle, global web searches will be displayed on your screen. It&#8217;s hardly an incentive to get on with work, but it looks cool and is an interesting way to keep up with what\u2019s happening in the world.<\/p>\n<p>There are various other search visualization options available on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/trends\/hottrends\" >Google Trends page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.betanews.com\/~ff\/bn?a=W1_J88IHWWc:Y4km8YBNzAM:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/bn?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.betanews.com\/~ff\/bn?a=W1_J88IHWWc:Y4km8YBNzAM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/bn?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/bn\/~4\/W1_J88IHWWc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google is all about searching. Well\u2026 not &#8220;all&#8221; about, but it&#8217;s what the company is known for. Any firm that logs information about how customers are using its services are usually berated, but Google Trends can provide a fascinating insight into how the rest of the world is using the internet. This tool has been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1558,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}