Just spent a few minutes checking out Google's latest "toy", Google Trends, which enables you to track searches and news articles in their system.

One of the more interesting things I came across was the startling increase in interest around HIV/AIDS at the time of World AIDS Day. No other major global issue seems to get this much 'bounce' on just one day.

You can also see how "Make Poverty History" died off as an issue after the G8/Live8.

I thought it was interesting to see how people search more for "poverty" but there are more articles about "terrorism".

And it's no surprise how everyone forgot about the Tsunami after it happened, but I didn't realize by how much!

You can see how ICANN consistently rates as more interesting than WSIS (thanks to the tech press)

But then I realized it was clearly broken/biased as it doesn't understand how much more trendy Melbourne is than Toronto. And I won't even provide a link to the comparison with Sydney!