The searching, buying, and selling habits of its 88 million active users have added up to an enormous dataset, one that could have easily been hoarded and sold to marketers, brands, and others with a vested interest in online retail and trends.
Although eBay isn’t releasing raw stats into the wild, it is publishing editorial content and news on trends as well as a tag cloud of most popular searches right now. Coming soon are multimedia galleries and real-time visualizations of current eBay searches.
A central traffic control computer in Montgomery County, Maryland failed early Wednesday morning, leading to widespread gridlock across the entire county. The computer, which dates to the 1970s, is the single point of unified control for all traffic signals in the county, which comprises a number of major Washington DC-area suburban communities. When the system failed, it caused all signals to default to stand-alone operation, rather than the highly-tuned synchronization that usually serves to facilitate traffic flow during rush hours. The resulting chaos is a yet another stark reminder of how much modern civilization relies on behind-the-scenes automation to deliver and control basic services and infrastructure.
Yahoo’s Flickr site has deepened its relationship with photo-licensing power Getty Images so photographers can nominate their own photos for inclusion in Getty’s Flickr Collection.