A popular television series, sports, panda cubs, comics and toxic foods were among the top 10 most-searched-for items this year on Yahoo-Kimo Inc, the Taiwanese unit of Yahoo Inc, the online search engine said.
Despite being spread across a broad range of categories, Yahoo-Kimo said the keywords all related to everyday life in Taiwan, citing “baseball” and “toxic starch” — the first and third-most popular terms respectively — as examples.
The popularity of “baseball” searches was driven primarily by the EDA Rhinos’ signing of Manny Ramirez in March, as well as the Chinese Professional Baseball League Championship, this year’s Asia Series tournament and the Brother Elephants being put up for sale.
“Toxic starch” became a hot search term after authorities in May discovered that some manufacturers had been putting maleic anhydride-laced starch in their food products.
Food safety continued to be a popular topic following the emergence of two high-profile food scandals: the Top Pot Bakery chain getting caught using artificial flavoring agents in its products — despite touting them as being all-natural — and the recent revelation that several brands of edible oils were illicitly mixed with cottonseed oil and copper chlorophyllin, a colorant.
Searches for “color runs” went up by 60 percent after a color race event was held in September, making it the eighth-most popular search term this year, said Eponine Chen (陳婉怡), senior director of marketing at Yahoo-Kimo.
In second place was TV drama Lord Lanling (蘭陵王), with the widely popular mobile app Tower of Saviors (神魔之塔) in fourth and comic book Attack on Titan (進擊的巨人) at No. 5, followed by singer-actress Kuo Hsueh-fu (郭雪芙), who recently also grabbed the title of “No. 1 Dream Girl” in an online poll.
Yuan Zai (圓仔), the offspring of Taipei Zoo’s giant pandas, Yuan Yuan (圓圓) and Tuan Tuan (團團), came in as the seventh-most-searched-for term, while the No. 9 spot was claimed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s Rubber Duck installation, while “hot air balloons” occupied 10th place due to a hot air balloon carnival that took place in June.
According to Chen, more than 90 percent of netizens look things up online every day on a multitude of search engines, adding that this year’s biggest trends seem to be gastronomy and traveling, with seven of the top 10 keywords falling under these two categories.
This shows that Taiwanese Internet users are mostly concerned with issues pertaining to their everyday lives and society, she said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
RSS