Our words say a lot about us (and it's not always good)

Now this is a powerful campaign.

Adweek recent profiled a campaign for UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, that shows how our words — accessed via auto-completed Google searches — reveal how rampant gender discrimination remains worldwide.

Christopher Hunt, head of art for Ogilvy & Mather Dubai, who created the campaign, said:

“This campaign uses the world's most popular search engine (Google) to show how gender inequality is a worldwide problem. The adverts show the results of genuine searches, highlighting popular opinions across the world wide web.”

The actual Google searches in the ads were performed on September 3, 2013. Ten weeks later, in the U.S., not much has changed.

The ad:

The search today (November 13, 2013):

The ad:

The search today (November 13, 2013):

Adweek points out that "these ads do a stellar job driving home the daunting fact that enough people around the world share these vile opinions that Google has come to expect them."

We can, and must, do better.

In fact, Nicole D'Alonzo of the blog TASTEdaily has taken to re-imagining the campaign with a positive spin and is encouraging others to "join us in rewriting the search." There's even a hashtag: #RewriteTheSearch.

This is great work exposing a very important issue.

Source: Adweek

'@Bing' your health & fitness

Your health is coming to your browser.

With Windows 8.1 (coming "late 2013"), Microsoft is introducing two new Bing "apps" — one for food and drink and the other for health and fitness.

The Bing Health & Fitness app, for desktops and tablets, will allow you to track exercise, diet and medical information. It will have 3D body maps and an interactive way to check your symptoms (Bing advises "The guide is not intended to be medical advice but simply a reference guide"). There will also be tutorials and videos to help you learn a new workout and links to articles about health (there's the search part!).

It was not clear how these apps will integrate with phones, which will be critical for long-term adoption by consumers. 

But it's encouraging to see major players continuing to try to innovate in this space.

What and why people share online (it's not what you think!)

Forget cat pictures. People want to share real information.

Of the 15 most shared news stories on Facebook on June 17, only one was fluff. That's the conclusion from a report published by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 

The top shared stories were all of substance — all going deep with information, insight or perspetive.

This provides content owners and creators — especially in the health care arena — with a prime opportunity to be that trusted source of information.

Read more at the Knight Blog.

Source: Knight Blog, accessed 6/24/13.

Visualize what's trending on Google

All Google's "hot searches" are now available in living color.

Google's trends page has a cool visualizer that sets the hot searches into motion — creating animated colored squares that live update as searches are entered.