So I'm a big fan of Oprah and I DVR every episode (season pass, obviously). Last night, I watched the "Are You Normal?" episode which aired yesterday. Throughout the show, Oprah did a series of polls with the audience about people's random habits to discern if the quirky things we do in private are "normal." Exploring tame questions like "How often do you pick your nose?" to much more personal and embarrassing subjects, it was human nature at its most candid and the results were funny to everyone.

Throughout the show Oprah dropped a teaser question: "What is the most Googled word?" Perhaps to indicate what people are most curious about. After all, the anonymity of the Web is the perfect cloak to hide those secretive sort of inquiries.

What's your guess?

The answer...

Google Trends

was love. I cross-referenced with Google Trends to investigate and found that sex is actually way higher in average worldwide traffic. As in, love comes nowhere near the search volume! Where is Oprah getting this information from? I would love to know.

Hmm, but this got my wheels turning. At SnapStream, we often compare Google Trends to TV Trends because it's cool to see how trends differ between online searches and TV news coverage.

The way I see it, it's like information economics: TV is the outgoing supply of information (one size fits all) and Google is the information you demand to know (what whets your appetite). Sometimes, they match identically. Other times, there's zero correlation.

TV Trends

So I took it to SnapStream's TV Trends for good measure. The results truly astonished me. In the course of 2009, money dominated the topic of media conversation. Okay, no surprise there, owing to the recession year, but wait, there's more.

Let the sun shine all over 2010: love and money interwine on the graph, dancing above and below each other in unpredictable steps. Who would have thought that love would spread like butter on the media's radar? Mush. Not exactly hard-breaking news.

Although... a recent (very recent) news story featuring love pops into mind. Did you watch the Chilean miners' miraculous rescue mission unfold?! All of the reporters were exclaiming how captivating the individual stories and relationships were: to see husbands and wives reuniting was like "watching a wedding," one CNN reporter said, but with deeper gravity in the circumstances. Emotions were running with adrenaline through this positive, uplifting story, proving that maybe sometimes, in our business-focused society, "love rules." That's how Oprah put it.

On the way to work, The InterWebs runs into a new-old friend...

The InterWebs: There’s something different about you… Did you get a haircut? Drop a few lbs? Hmm, got some work done?? Whatever it is… I’m definitely feeling it.

SnapStream: I’m glad you noticed. Over the summer, I’ve been working on my fitness and dropped a few kilobytes here and there.

The InterWebs: Looking good! Is that the only thing?

SnapStream: I also went to the spa and got the “so fresh & so clean” package. I highly recommend it. I feel like a new site!

The InterWebs: Good for you. Everyone deserves to pamper themselves every once in a while. I definitely see a pep in your step!

SnapStream: Yup! You know it. I also met a couple of new friends, DJ JQuery and S to the EO, and we shared stories and I was able to learn a thing or two from them.

The InterWebs: Oh, cool. I know them too. They are well-known in my circle.

SnapStream: I have so much more to tell you but I have visitors waiting. Take my URL. SnapStream scribbles down snapstream.com for The InterWebs to remember. Bookmark me and keep in touch!

On October 4, SnapStream is escaping the Houston humidity and making a break for beautiful Ottawa, Canada to exhibit at the annual GTEC (Government Technology Exhibition and Conference).

GTEC draws folks from the public sector within Canada to learn about the latest and greatest technologies around. I believe the GTEC website (http://www.gtec.ca) summarizes the conference to a T!

“For the past 17 years, GTEC has brought together leading public and private sector experts to collaborate on serving citizens better through innovation and technology. Our conference, exhibition and Distinction Awards program celebrate best of breed technology, and best practice leadership in Canadian and international government.”

Personally, I’m happy to be participating in GTEC for the first time. It will give us a chance to not only introduce our TV media monitoring technology to new Canadian government departments, but also to reconnect with many of our existing customers.

We’re also thrilled to announce that our Canadian partner, CBCI Telecom, will be attending the show! CBCI Telecom is Canada’s leading full-service Telepresence, Videoconferencing & Audiovisual solutions integrator.

A little background on SnapStream and CBCI Telecom: The working partnership was established in 2009, when CBCI introduced the SnapStream product line to the Canadian NMSO (National Master Standing Offer). Since then, SnapStream and CBCI have rolled out systems to many municipal, provincial and federal government departments across all of Canada, including the RCMP.

If you’ll be in the area, feel free to visit with either SnapStream or CBCI. Hope to see you up North!

The popular New York Times Blog, Media Decoder, pointed out a noteworthy trend this week. You may have speculated on this, owing to Apple's flashy press events and drawn out product releases, but a recently-published study from Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism confirms it. (Hey, they use SnapStream to analyze TV, high fives!)

The nitty-gritty: Apple is commanding an inordinate amount of broadcast hours, columns per inch and online real estate in our mainstream media. Encoding a year of technology news articles by topic, here's what the researchers found:

We took it to our own rich source of television monitoring data, TV Trends, to graphically show how these tech competitors have duked it out over time. So what's the verdict? Apple takes the cake, visibly, with high-frequency mentions frenzied by date. The playing field appeared level between Apple, Google and Microsoft up until Jan. 27, 2010, the day the iPad was born.

Houstonian Christine Tremoulet is shining a spotlight on local businesses through her passion for photography. She's capturing the movers and shakers around town—from the crave-worthy Dessert Gallery to the hands-on helpers of Houston Habitat for Humanity. Christine's project is a stroke of a larger movement, "We #SLGT," which encapsulates a community-centric message and call to action: Support Local, Grow Together. We love what Christine is doing with the SLGT Photo Project, a very cool way of showcasing the entrepreneurial spirit that lives in Houston.

Pictured below: The SnapStream Team, 50-channel TV Search Engine, Rakesh Agrawal (CEO) and Legos spelling SnapStream.

In Atlanta last week (Sept. 8-10), I represented SnapStream at the City-County Communications and Marketing Association (3CMA) annual conference. The event combined technology, creativity, information and networking in a fun-filled atmosphere.

They had dozens of workshops focusing on every aspect of communications. I was lucky enough to participate as a panelist for "Stay on Top of Your Game: Communications Survival Skills." With experienced 3CMA'ers Michelle Bono (Asst. to City Manager, Tallahassee) and Joe Munoz (PIO Manager, Maricopa County), we discussed techniques for flourishing consistently in local government communications and marketing.

It was exciting to bring television monitoring to the conversation and gauge the importance, especially at the city government level. Nearly 200 3CMA’ers made the trip to the conference and are now headed back to their work sites armed with powerful new tools to increase their communication arsenals. I'm looking forward to next year's event in Austin--3CMA Texas Style!

Congratulations to our decorated clip-show customer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, who just picked up their eighth straight Emmy for Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series. It's no wonder that Jon Stewart and his team have held on to such a supreme winning streak; they churn out 168 fresh episodes per year at a rigorous pace. That's four tapings weekly, 42 weeks out of the year.

As The Daily Show unit floated to the stage on cloud nine, the Emmy commentator prodded, "I am not sure that the Academy would be so quick to award The Daily Show these things if they knew what we used the Emmys for around the office. Executive Producer Rory Albanese will accept for the program because Jon Stewart is too busy resting in his bed of melted Emmys."

Who knows why Jon Stewart really wasn't present, but Albanese was certainly in high spirits as he acknowledged the caliber of the fellow nominees.

“This is crazy. Stephen Colbert went to Iraq. Conan. This category is insane,” Albanese exclaimed in disbelief.

Insane, indeed. We are so darn proud of The Daily Show for their continued success and back-to-back critical acclaim. And we have to give them props for having in-house TV search technology and a massive digital archive. Here @SnapStream, we always enjoy the hysterical programming that ensues.

"We keep winning it," Albanese rejoiced in television glory. "It’s tough to feel bad. We work really hard."

Yes, we know you do! Eight cheers to you all at The Daily Show! Keep up the excellent work!

Here is the full video of Jon Stewart's Glenn Beck impression shown in the nomination reel:

Rounding up a week in the news with our data collected at TV Trends, here's a cool word cloud that visually displays the nation's pulse. The words are proportionally sized to higher frequency of mention in the closed captioning data, showing the hottest and most prominent issues saturating the headlines. You see, Iraq, Brigade, Combat... Serious stuff.

It's also fun to compare how news travels differently between TV and the Internet. To track the buzz of online news, check out Google Trends and see for yourself. Which one do you think leads in breaking news first? TV or the Internet? Was it the chicken or the egg?

Hey SnapStream Fans,

Since we're always tracking the hottest topics on television, we thought we'd whip up a visual word cloud to represent the sizzling trends of the summer. Taking transcript excerpts from peaking keywords on TV Trends from May to present, we made this beautiful conglomerate of headlining news and pop culture.

Just one of the many cool things you can do with the rich information stored in TV Trends--you know it's open and free for anyone to use, right?

See the original graph that shows the scope of television media coverage.

Last Thursday, I tagged along with Rakesh Agrawal (CEO of SnapStream) to introduce TV search to the regional PIO Network meeting held at the Texas Department of Transportation. I'll tell you, public information is A LOT to keep up with, especially with all the mutations of social media multiplying every second.

There were all sorts of PIOs represented, from city offices to the Coast Guard. It was cool to see all of these diverse officials gathered with their common, collective concern for public knowledge, safety and health.

The meeting kicked off with Chuck Wolf, an integral media consultant in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill response, which is now transitioning to the gulf restoration response. (Woohoo the well is capped!) At the Joint Information Center headquartered in New Orleans, Chuck and his team dispense a mind-boggling amount of documents--fact sheets, press releases, media advisories--on a 24-7 basis.

“A Joint Information Center is a co-located group of representatives from local, state, federal and private organizations designated to handle public information needs during an incident or event.”

BP has put together quite the team to handle the world's largest oil spill response. You can see who's involved at this page of deepwaterinvestigation.com.

Having a tough act to follow, we were the closers in the presenting line-up. (In baseball, that's a very important job!) Rakesh led the presentation about SnapStream, joined by the insights of Rosie Torres, Assistant PIO, Harris County Office of Emergency Management and Dinah Massie, PIO, Houston TranStar.

At the Harris County OEM, the PIOs recently monitored flash flood warnings during Hurricane Alex. Meanwhile, the Houston TranStar office continually tracks local television news to verify and enforce correct attribution for traffic footage. Those magic words, "courtesy of Houston TranStar" must appear. (Or else, major traffic jams will incur!)

Lastly, we learned the telling results of a media monitoring survey conducted among the Houston-Galveston group. Two major stats to highlight:

That's what makes SnapStream incredibly relevant for this group. Since many of these municipal agencies share LAN connections, they can pool together and utilize one centralized SnapStream Server to access TV Search and disperse actionable news quickly to their departments. Wouldn't that be something?