There are a lot of 2012 internet video compilations that have surfaced, and even though we’re already in February of 2013, I expect there will be plenty more. 2012 was the biggest year for internet video – bigger and more powerful than 2011, which was bigger and more powerful than 2010 and so on.
Although there are a lot of 2012 video wrap-ups, this is probably the best and most fully-realized one I’ve seen so far – although it leans pretty heavily on sports, auto, and other feats of athleticism.
Here’s twelve and a half minutes of what everyone was watching for the past year. Buckle up:
2012 was a good year for Etsy, to say the least. CEO Chad Dickerson took to the company blog this morning to share some stats about the year as Etsy’s growth continues to accelerate.
“Growth of highly-personal shopping categories like wedding goods and home decor was strong in 2012,” an Etsy spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Jewelry, our #1 category, is still hugely popular, but others, like clothing and housewares, are quickly gaining steam. Furniture was the fastest-growing category on Etsy this year, growing 134% year-over-year.”
Here are some more highlights from Dickerson’s post:
Overall sales by the community in 2012 grew 70.3% over the previous year, to $895.1 million from $525.6 million in 2011.
Sales in December 2012 were 72.9% higher than 2011 (compared to 69.9% from Dec 2010-Dec 2011).
Sales in November 2012 sales increased by 74.9% over the previous year (compared to 65.7% from Nov 2010-Nov 2011).
New buyers increased by 83% in 2012.
10 million new members joined Etsy last year, nearly doubling the total number of members to 22 million around the world, in nearly 200 countries.
Etsy will celebrate its 8th birthday this year. Since opening in 2005, the site has seen over 14 million shoppers buy over 100 million items.
Etsy has only made more moves in recent months to help its growth continue. Consider that it only laumched its iPad and Android apps in the last two months. The site also continues to expand into more languages.
According to research from Flurry Analytics, more iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas Day than any other day of the year, and there were more activations of iPhones, iPads, Galaxy devices, Kindle Fires, and others, than any other day in history.
The firm claims to detect over 90% of all new iOS and Android device activations on a daily basis, thanks to 260,000 apps which utilize Flurry Analytics. Based on its numbers, here’s what the day looked like compared to the average of the first 20 days of the month:
“In order to appreciate the magnitude of new devices activated on Christmas Day, Flurry established a baseline using the average from the first 20 days of December,” says Flurry’s Peter Farago in a blog post. “Over this period, daily activations averaged around 4.0 million per day, with variance of a few hundred thousand in either direction per day. On Christmas Day, activations soared to more than 17.4 million, a 332% increase over the December baseline. By comparison, Christmas Day 2011 held the previous single-day record, having reached 6.8 million device activations. Christmas 2012 is more than 2.5 times larger than Christmas 2011, which surpassed its own baseline by more than 300%.”
Flurry also looked at app downloads on Christmas compared to the average of the first 20 days of December:
One very interesting thing the company found is that tablet activations were actually greater than smartphone activations. According to Flurry’s numbers, tablets beat out smartphones 51% to 49%, though for the first 20 days of the month, it was a much different picture at 20% to 80%.
StumbleUpon recently put out an infographic reflecting on “what the internet was up to in 2012”. It certainly doesn’t feel like 2012 when you see Marilyn Manson near the top, but who am I to question the tastes of the StumbleUpon elite?
“What was on Stumblers’ minds in 2012? We pulled data from our over 25 million members to see what was Stumbled the most and put our findings in an infographic posted below,” the company says. “Click each category or name to dive deeper. Who knows where you’ll end up next?”
Here’s 2012 in the Stumble-iverse:
2012 was a pretty big year for StumbleUpon, as it launched a major site redesign and introduced some new features core to the SU experience.
LinkedIn recently revealed its 12 most popular stories of the year, which included articles from Inc., Fast Company, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Entrepreneur, to name a few.
“Professionals gobbled up advice on how to be more efficient, more productive, and, yes, even more ‘remarkable‘ in the eyes of their bosses,” said LinkedIn’s Chip Cutter. “The self-help craze reflects, on some level, the realities of the economy. With the unemployment rate at 7.7%, and the economic recovery uncertain, businesspeople are looking for any edge they can find in the workplace.”
It’s interesting to see how much more business-oriented the list is compared to other year-end round-ups we’ve seen from social media services and search engines.
Experian Marketing Services released some findings about search trends in the U.S. for the year. The firm finds that Facebook was the top search term for the fourth year, accounting for 4.13% of all searches (up 33% from 2011).
The data is based on the top 1,000 unfiltered search terms in the U.S. across over 60 search engines. It does not include mobile.
Four different variations of the term “facebook” were among the top 10, accounting for 5.62% of searches overall (up 27% from last year). The top two terms stayed the same from year to year. Behind Facebook was “youtube” again at number two.
Notice that “amazon” moved into the top ten for the first time.
Experian says that analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 6.03% of the top 50 searches, an increase of 44% compared to 2011.
Google terms, including “youtube,” accounted for 1.91%, a 20% increase from last year. New terms that entered the top 50 included: backpage, cool math games, fox news, pinterest and pof (an acronym for dating site Plenty of Fish).
“Navigational searches continue to dominate the top search results as users continue to visit their favorite sites via search engines instead of directly entering a web address into their browsers URL bar,” said Bill Tancer, GM of global research for Experian Marketing. “Single-word searches grew 16% in 2012 as a result of continued reliance on search engine’s suggested results. Other top 2012 searches reflected the ongoing infatuation with celebrities online.”
The terms “yahoo” and “ebay” have been in the top ten since the ranking was started back in 2006.
Facebook encourages its developers to work on side projects throughout the year. Some of those projects end up being cool ideas that manage to be integrated into the Facebook platform proper. Others are just awesome ideas that must be seen to be believed. The social network dubs these projects “hacks” and is now sharing the best hacks of 2012.
Many of the hacks from 2012 actually made their way into Facebook proper as features that users have access to everyday. One such hack was a complete accident created by Facebook Engineer Pete Hunt. He was working on new photo viewer builds and accidentally created a full screen version. The Facebook team liked it enough to ship it to every user.
The other major hack that became part of Facebook proper was an Events calendar that kept track of all upcoming events. The calendar was created by Bob Baldwin and a few other members of the team and integrates posts, photos and videos. It shipped out to users in July.
Moving onto more of the extraordinary hacks, some Facebook team members painted a giant QR code that could be seen from space on the roof of one of the campus buildings. The code used to direct users to a job listing page for QR code painters, but now it goes to a page on how the code was created.
The last project that deserves specific mention involves an old friend – 3D printers. Benjie Holson, an engineer on the Timeline team, created a model of the world with spikes relative to how many people use Facebook in that area. The result is a neat 3D printed model that would look great on any modern artist’s portfolio.
Facebook will be holding a number of hackathons next year, and some of the projects will undoubtedly make their way into Facebook proper. It will be interesting to see Facebook and its hacking scene evolve through 2013.
People will never see eye to eye on every issue, but Jean-Louis Nguyen has attempted to showcase the events of the year that “brought us together”. Unfortunately, it involves a great deal of heartbreak. Still, it’s a pretty powerful video.
Earlier, YouTube itself put out a year-end video reflecting on the site’s biggest hits of the year. It’s definitely a more light-hearted look back at 2012. I probably don’t have to tell you what to expect with that.
2012 has proven to be a huge year for YouTube. The video sharing site has already looked back on a year of ads, and created a rather brilliant tribute to the biggest viral videos of the year. Now the site is looking back on the big news stories of the year, and the large role that YouTube played in getting that information out.
The stats released by YouTube today show the site is becoming more and more important to the news cycle in America and around the world. To illustrate that, the site boasts that 7,000 hours of news-related content is uploaded to YouTube daily. All of that content provides differing opinions, angles and sources to help viewers form a more educated opinion of world events than if they were to just watch one or two regular news channels.
As for the big news events of the year, YouTube rightfully points to Hurricane Sandy as being the major event of the year. In fact, 39,000 videos were uploaded in the week during the storm and the Weather Channel used YouTube to continuously live stream coverage of the storm for more than 70 hours.
The only thing that could compete with Sandy were the presidential election, and it did not disappoint. YouTube reveals that videos tagged Obama or Romney were viewed over 2.7 billion times during the election cycle. The debates also drew 27 million views on YouTube.
2012 is looking to be a stellar year for pretty much everybody who makes their livelihood on the Internet. The year has been especially kind to the folks at Hulu. The streaming service grew exponentially this year, and it looks like it’s going to keep growing.
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar took to the company blog today to announce that Hulu will close on 2012 with $695 million in revenue. He says it’s a 65 percent increase over last year, and it shows that Hulu is growing even faster than before.
The revenue growth can be partially attributed to the continued success of Hulu Plus. The company now has over 3 million subscribers which is double the subscribers it had at the end of last year. The bump in subscribers can be attributed to two main causes – Hulu Plus is now available on more devices than ever before, and the service is pulling solid numbers in Japan.
Kilar notes that Hulu Plus was released on Apple TV, Wii, Wii U, Windows 8 tablets and Android devices all in 2012. Combine that with the existing apps on Xbox 360 and PS3, and you have a service that’s available to pretty much everybody. The expanded set of streaming options definitely help to attract more subscribers.
Any streaming service is only as good as its content, and Hulu Plus made good over the past year in content acquisitions. Kilar says that the company has expanded its offerings on Hulu and Hulu Plus by over 40 percent this year. That means that the service is now home to over 60,000 TV episodes and 2,300 TV series. A lot of TV series are also available soon after they air on television which makes Hulu a more attractive option compared to the likes of Netflix and Amazon.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the online streaming business evolves over the next year. Hulu has proven itself to be a major player in the arena, and the company could go into a myriad of directions in pursuit of more subscribers and advertising dollars.
In the strange world that we live in, people have come to like advertisements. Heck, we even look forward to them when it comes to the Super Bowl. That’s because advertisers are increasingly seeking to entertain as well as push a product. This strange phenomenon has resulted in us ranking ads through various means. YouTube joins in this year with the top 20 ads of the year as decided by page views.
Unsurprisingly, Super Bowl ads were popular this year like always, but they did not take the number one or two spot. The number one ad of the year goes to Nike Football which garnered more than 20 million views since its debut in May.
The second most viewed ad was for Pepsi Max. Debuting in May, it has gained more than 17 million views.
The first Super Bowl ad to show up is from Volkswagen, coming in at number three, who steals the show again with another Star Wars themed ad:
Here’s the rest of the year’s top 20 ads starting at number four and continuing down in descending chronological order:
4: The Next Big Thing Is Already Here – Samsung – Over 16 million views
5: Matthew’s Day Out – Honda – Over 16 million views
6: The Dog Strikes Back – Volkswagen – Over 16 million views
7: GoPro HERO 3 – GoPro Camera – Over 12 million views
8: Halftime in America – Chrysler – Over 11 million views
9: Mercurial Vapor III – Nike Football – Over 10 million views
10: Vampire Party – Audi – Over 7 million views
11: 2012 – Chevy Silverado – Over 7 million views
12: Pocket Like It’s Hot – Hot Pockets – Over 6 million views
13: Blown Mind – Old Spice – Over 5 million views
14: Bounce – Old Spice – Over 5 million views
15: Make It With A Firemam – Sauza Tequila – Over 5 million views
16: it’s Reinvented – Toyota Camry – Over 4 million views
17: Hot Wheels World Record – Hot Wheels – Over 4 million views
18: House Arrest – FIAT 500 – Over 4 million views
19: Bed – Old Spice – Over 4 million views
20: Vending Machine – Old Spice – Over 3 million views
2012 has been a momentous year for the Internet despite the best efforts of lawmakers and International groups to knock it down a peg. Google and Facebook have already looked back over the year, and have shared some stats on what was trending over the last year. Now Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox browser, has prepared its own retrospective on the year that was 2012.
For Mozilla, the big event of the year was when Firefox hit 3 billion add-on downloads back in July. Firefox itself received numerous updates throughout the year culminating in Firefox 17 which added the Social API and Facebook Messenger for Firefox.
Sticking to Firefox, Mozilla also released a completely rebuilt version of its Android browser earlier this year. Since then, every update has made it faster and more reliable. The latest update, Firefox 17 for Android, made the mobile browser available to even more users with support for ARMv6 devices.
Mozilla also introduced Firefox OS this year. The mobile operating system is the new name given to Mozilla’s long-in-development Boot 2 Gecko project. The new OS will be available in smartphones launching in South America early next year. For now, developers can play around with the newly released Firefox OS simulator for PC, Mac and Linux.
What’s next for Mozilla in 2013? The non-profit says that it will continue to mature and evolve its browsers. One of the first steps is to continue development of its Social API and expand the “concept of what a browser can be.” Mozilla also says that it will continue to mobilize the community to “make and build the world that we want based on this amazing, open, transparent, powerful and humbling thing we call the Web.”
Google updated its Zeitgeist site today, showing the top search trends of the year in a variety of countries and across a variety of different categories. Google also put out some year-end lists for Google Shopping, looking at “some of the most searched-for items on Google Shopping.”
Granted, Google Shopping has only been in full swing in the U.S. since October, but it has been in transition since announced in May. Here are the lists Google is presenting:
Electronics
1. Roku 2 XD searches have reached an all time high in search popularity this season
2. Google Nexus 7 searches are up 21% since the device launched in June
3. Sony Nex 5R searches are up 76% since October
4. Kindle Fire HD searches are up 68% since mid-October
5. Samsung Galaxy SIII searches have risen by 44% in the past 12 months
Toys
1. Furby searches have risen 88% in the past 12 months
2. Skylanders: Giants searches have risen 90% since September
3. Nabi 2 searches are up 92% in the past 30 days
4. Vtech Innotab 2 searches have doubled since October
Home
1. Nespresso Pixie searches are up 36% in November as compared to October
2. KitchenAid Stand Mixer searches have been up in 2011 and 2012 over previous years by as much as 60%
3. Roomba 780 searches are up 87% since it’s launch in December 2011
4. Cake Pop Maker searches are up 70% since September
Women’s Apparel
1. Women’s Puffer Jackets searches are up 32% over November 2011
2. Fair Isle Knits searches are up 20% over last year and continue to rise in popularity
3. Searches for the color Oxblood have peaked in search popularity this season, over all holiday seasons since 2004
4. Ankle Boots searches are up 20% over last year
Men’s Apparel
1. Chelsea Boots searches have reached an all time high and are still rising
2. Toggle Coats searches are up 35% in searches over last year
3. Cable Knit Sweaters searches have reached an all time high
It’s that time of year again. Google has updated its Zeitgeist site for 2012, looking at the most popular search trends of the year. The company has been doing this for 12 years.
Google has added some bells and whistles to the site that weren’t available in previous years. There is an interactive map showing search spike locations and times, for example.
Google is also launching Zeitgeist Android and iOS apps. The Android app will be available today, the company says, but does not specify when the iOS version will be ready.
Google says it has seen 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages.
Here, Google reviews the year in under three minutes (video produced by Whirled):
“Global superstar Whitney Houston topped many countries’ lists as well as three of our overall trending lists—her unexpected death surprising fans around the world,” says SVP & Google Fellow Amit Singhal. “From Korea, YouTube sensation PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ signature dance took the world by storm, landing him the #1 spot in many countries and making his song the second most trending query of 2012. (PSY’s video became the #1 most watched in YouTube history—stay tuned for YouTube’s Rewind for more.)”
“Then there was the superhuman,” he adds. “Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s epic free fall jump made him the #6 globally trending person of the year, while the 2012 Olympics and its various athletes made it into almost every country’s top trends. And NBA player Jeremy Lin also rose on the charts this year, making him the #1 trending athlete globally.”
He also notes that web users took “a serious interest” in threats to the open Internet like SOPA and ACTA, which both appeared on many countries’ lists.
1. Whitney Houston
2. Hurricane Sandy
3. Election 2012
4. Hunger Games
5. Jeremy Lin
6. Olympics 2012
7. Amanda Todd
8. Gangnam Style
9. Michael Clarke Duncan
10. KONY 2012
Top Trending People Searches In The U.S.
1. Whitney Houston
2. Jeremy Lin
3. Amanda Todd
4. Michael Clark Duncan
5. Kate Middleton
6. One Direction
7. Morgan Freeman
8. Peyton Manning
9. Joe Paterno
10. Paul Ryan
Top Trending Events Of 2012
1. Hurricane Sandy
2. Presidential Election
3. Super Bowl
4. Olympics
5. UEFA Euro 2012
6. KONY Movement
7. SOPA Protest
8. Aurora Shooting
9. Trayvon Martin Case
10. Hurricane Isaac
Top Trending How-To Searches In The U.S.
1. How to love
2. How to rock
3. How to vote
4. How to install
5. How to hate
6. How to archer
7. How to wobble
8. How to calculate
9. How to root
10. How to tebow
Top Trending “What Is” Searches In The U.S.
1. What is SOPA
2. What is Scientology
3. What is KONY
4. What is Yolo
5. What is Instagram
6. What is Pinterest
7. What is Lent
8. What is Obamacare
9. What is iCloud
10. What is Planking
Top Image Searches In The U.S.
1. One Direction
2. Funny Pictures
3. Nicki Minaj
4. Justin Bieber
5. Love
6. Flowers
7. Selena Gomez
8. Heart
9. Money
10. iPhone 5
Top Searched Cities in Google Maps In the U.S>
1. San Francisco, CA
2. Chicago, IL
3. Denver, CO
4. Los Angeles, CA
5. New York, NY
6. Dallas, TX
7. Washington, DC
8. Houston, TX
9. Seattle, WA
10. Boston, MA
Top Searched Local Places In Google Maps
1. Hotel
2. Restaurant
3. Walmart
4. Apartment
5. Starbucks
6. Target
7. Parking
8. Bank
9. Camping
10. Home Depot
Top Searches For International Travel Destinations From U.S.
1. Toronto
2. Paris
3. San Juan
4. Cancun
5. Vancouver
6. Rome
7. Montreal
8. Tokyo
9. St Thomas Island
10. San Jose del Cabo
Top Trending Tech Gadgets In U.S.
1. iPad 3
2. iPad Mini
3. Samsung Galaxy S3
4. Kindle Fire
5. Nexus 7
6. Microsoft Surface
7. Galaxy Note 2
8. Samsung Galaxy S2
9. iPhone 5
10. Nokia Lumia 900
There are plenty more lists where those came from. You can browse numerous countries across numerous categories, including News, Pop Culture, Fashion, Lifestyle, Science, Tech & Gadgets, Sports, Humanities and Cities.
Unruly Media has put out its annual look at the top 20 video ads of the year, in terms of shares. While, it may not come across as an ad, exactly, the company has put Kony 2012 from the non-profit Invisible Children, at the top of the list.
The video has generated over 10.1 million shares since launching in early March.
“Emotive content and bottom-up sharing stole the show this year,” said Unruly co-founder and COO Sarah Wood. “The world’s biggest brands can learn from Invisible Children: it’s not about a 30-second commercial anymore when a 30-minute video gets 10 million global shares.”
The data is comes from Unruly’s Viral Video Chart, which measures shares (rather than views) across Twitter, Facebook and blogs.
As the month of December rolls along, you can expect more and more of these types of lists to pop up. It’s that time of the year for the year-in-review wrap-ups, and today it’s Yahoo that’s giving us some insight on top searches in 2012.
The top three Yahoo searches in 2012 come from three different realms: politics, tech, and pop culture. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Yahoo users were most interested in the Elections, the iPhone 5, and Kim Kardashian (in that order). Yahoo says that in the 12 years that they’ve been doing the year-in-search list, this is only the third time that a “news” event has claimed the number one search volume slot. The other two were recent events, Michael Jackson’s death in 2009 and the BP oil spill in 2010.
Here’s the complete top ten list of 2012 Yahoo searches:
Elections
iPhone 5
Kim Kardashian
Kate Upton
Kate Middleton
Whitney Houston
Olympics
Political Polls
Lindsay Lohan
Jennifer Lopez
Bing recently unveiled their 2012 search stats and there’s quite a bit of similarity among the two lists. Over on Bing, Kim Kardashian was the most-searched person of the year, beating out Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. In the news stories category, the iPhone 5 took the crown beating out the 2012 Elections and the 2012 Olympics.
When you just look at gadget searches, it’s Apple all the way. In that category the iPhone 5 finished ahead of “iPad 3” and the “iPad mini.” The rest of the top ten gadget searches were the Samsung Galaxy S3, Kindle Fire, iPhone 4, Nook, iPod Touch, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Samsung Galaxy Note.
We got word today that a bunch of new agers are climbing a mountain in France. They’re doing this to communicate with aliens who will save them from extinction when the world ends on December 21, 2012. It turns out they’re not all that unique as we are obsessed with the end of the world.
An awesome infographic from My Free Email Search details all the failed attempts at predicting the end of the world. If you thought end of the world predictions were something new, think again. The first recorded end of the world prediction is from the Assyrians in 2800 B.C. The cause of the end for them: bribery and corruption. If that was the case, every nation on earth would have been destroyed over and over again for the past 2,000 years.
Not surprisingly, a lot of predictions from Christian believers in the early days after Jesus had died. Various popes predicted the end of the world for various reasons including math and the rise of Islam. Other Christians believed the end would come in 1033, a thousand years after the death of Jesus.
Predictions started getting more common in the 20th century with noted evangelists Harold Camping and Pat Robertson both predicting the end of the world. After Robertson wrongly predicted the end twice, he got out of that race. As we all know though, Camping kept going and predicted the end of the world six times with last year’s predictions causing the biggest ruckus.
We’re not done with predictions yet though. We still have the Mayan calendar set for later this year and a few others in the far off future. Of course, the future predictions are a bit more based in science, but still way off. One prediction has the earth succumbing to overpopulation while another blames it on an asteroid.
Thankfully, there are only two predictions that are spot on and we won’t be around to witness it anyway. The two end of the world predictions see our sun burning out in a billion years or the universe just stops working. Check out the full infographic for the rundown.
What is up with people being so obsessed with the end of the world? Harold Camping whipped Christian believers into a frenzy last year with his two predictions that the rapture was going to happen in May and then October when the first date passed us by. This just leaves us with one of the oldest end of the world theories – the Mayan calendar that calls for an apocalypse on December 21 of this year. Some new age practitioners have found their salvation from the end of the world inside a mountain.
The Independent is reporting that a bunch of new age hippies have descended upon the residents of the small French community of Bugarach. They aren’t interested in the people residing in the village, they care more about the mountain near it. This mountain, called Pic de Bugarach, is apparently magic and full of aliens. The new agers believe that the aliens are going to pop out of the mountain and whisk everybody in the immediate vicinity to a new world on December 21.
This isn’t a small congregation of people either. There are estimated to be about 100,000 people who are planning on climbing up the mountain during the end of the world festivities. According to one of the devotees, this mountain is one of the “major chakras of the earth” and will be “welcoming the energies of tomorrow.”
While I would be inclined to dismiss these new agers as people who have watched Escape from Witch Mountain and Close Encounters of the Third Kind too many times, there may be something to all of this. That something is increased tourism dollars for the people in the village. They are already making money from the people who are traveling there. The mayor of the village, Jean-Pierre Delord, is planning on holding an end of the world party. Turn it into an international event and the money will just flow in. Why do these people need their money when the world is going to end so soon?
But I digress, it’s obvious that the world isn’t going to end on December 21. The scientists who are paid to prove these crazy theories wrong have already proven all the claims of the Mayan apocalypse to be natural occurrences with no danger of ending the world. The other big world ending events this year, a giant asteroid and solar flares, have also missed us. Let the hippies have their fun now and help them get back up when they finally realize the past year has been a Close Encounters reenactment that went nowhere.
A strong earthquake hit Mexico City today with a magnitude of 7.4, but no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries have come in.
The quake is reported to have originated around the state of Guerrero and sent tremors to Acapulco and Oaxaca which varied in strength. Some minor damage was reported to buildings in Mexico City and some residents lost phone service, according to Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who tweeted about the natural disaster. Residents fear aftershocks and will be on guard now.
Mexico City is built on unstable ground made mostly of volcanic structures and is susceptible to earthquakes and eruptions. In 2011 the Popocatepetl volcano erupted, causing an evacuation.
Today marks the first day of spring, otherwise known as the vernal equinox, when the length of day and night are nearly the same. Astronomers define an equinox as that moment when the sun arrives at one of two intersection points of the ecliptic (the sun’s path across the sky) and the celestial equator (Earth’s equator projected onto the sky). And this year, it came earlier than it has since 1896.
With most of the country experiencing record highs in temperature after a mild winter, many people are dragging out the old chestnut of the end of the world, especially since the Mayans predicted the end to come in December of this year. And where superstitions abound, one is sure to find the one about being able to balance a raw egg on end during the vernal equinox.
While astronomers insist that planetary alignments have no effect on physical objects on Earth, that doesn’t stop people from trying–and in some cases succeeding–to balance an egg on the first day of spring. As seen in this video, it can be done…but whether on the vernal equinox or in August, it doesn’t matter.
Of course, to most, the beginning of spring just means the prospect of more daylight, baseball, and warmer weather.
Clark Kellogg’s son, Nick Kellogg , made it to the Sweet Sixteen over the weekend, with the underdog Ohio Bobcats.
Clark was calling the Lehigh / Xavier game when the 13 seed pulled another upset against South Florida to make it to the Sweet Sixteen. Ohio is the first 13 seed to make it this far in the tournament.
Kellogg was a little distracted during his play calling, watching the final seconds of the Bobcats game tick down, when Jim Nantz brought it to the attention of the TV audience.
Kellogg got a little emotional when Nantz asked if he go this nervous during his own career: “It’s all different when your kids are doing it. It’s a total different experience.”
“O wow, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. Way to go Bobcats!” Kellogg shouted after the final seconds wore out.
Clark will have to continue to watch his son while broadcasting. He will be in Atlanta calling the Baylor-Xavier and Kentucky-Indiana games while Nick is taking on North Carolina in St. Louis.
