Just for fun, I thought I’d spend some time last night playing with Google Insights for Search to find out what parts of the country are most interested in technology — at least the buzzwords that fill my day — and when that interest hit its peak. It wasn’t surprising to see Silicon Valley rank at or near the top everywhere, but did you know Utah was so into next-generation programming?

As an introduction, it’s probably good to have an understanding of how Google Insights ranks search interest. Essentially, it normalizes data to give a picture of how likely people in each state are to search for a particular term, not necessarily what states had the most overall searches for any particular term. Here’s how Google explains it:

Just because two regions show the same percentage for a particular term doesn’t mean that their absolute search volumes are the same. Data from these two regions – with significant differences in search volumes – can be compared equally because the data has been normalized by the total traffic from each respective region.

The state maps are accurate as of Jan. 8, 2012. The embedded charts are live and will change over time.

Cloud computing

Search interest in cloud computing peaked in April 2011, the same month Amazon Web Services suffered a four-day outage that made national headlines. Coincidence?

Somewhat interestingly, people in Massachussetts, Maryland and Washington, D.C., were more likely do search for “cloud computing” than were people in California. However, there is a respectable tech and venture-capital scene around Boston, and a large federal presence (both government and military) in D.C. and the surrounding areas.

Big data

It’s hard to call the November 2011 the peak for interest in big data, as it has been growing consistently for the past year and might well go even higher.

Utah? Hmm. I’ll chalk up New York’s presence to the banking industry.

Hadoop

Cloudera launched in March 2009, the same time interest in Hadoop began its steady ascent.

I’m not sure what to make of the disparity in interest between “Hadoop” and “big data” among the states. Perhaps the two aren’t as tightly aligned in people’s minds as I thought. Although, “big data hadoop” was the No. 4 search term for “big data”.

NoSQL

The peak in October 2011 might have something to do with Oracle getting into the NoSQL space. I’m blanking on the March 2010 spike — any ideas?

Again with Utah, although the government seems less concerned with NoSQL than with other tech trends.

A few more interesting points

Utah ranks highly in interest for other programming trends, including Node.js.

The Salt Lake City metropolitan area actually shows up high in interest for Javascript and iOS.

If you’re wondering who’s interested in more-advanced techniques, look to advanced tech universities. I’m going to assume the presence of Carnegie Mellon University has something to do with Pittsburgh’s relative interest in machine learning.

And people apparently get interested in sharing photos via Instagram when they’re on vacation.

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In what theater purists may see as capitulation to attention deficit disorder, several Boston area theaters plan to start offering special “tweet seats” for mobile-phone wielding patrons.

Where most theaters still demand that users turn off or at least silence their devices  during performances, The Lowell Memorial Auditorium, The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Worcester’s Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts and Cambridge’s Central Square Theater, will all either offer Twitter-friendly seating or are considering that option, according to The Boston Globe. 

Critics worry that live bloggers will distract other audience members and performers. But a generation of consumers that have grown up using Twitter to post immediate,  brief reviews and updates on sporting events or TV shows may prove too strong a constituency to resist.

Boston is not a trailblazer here. Two years ago, The Lyric Opera of Kansas City reserved 100 tweet seats for its performances of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, according to the Los Angeles Times. Earlier this month, USA Today  reported that other theaters around the country including Norma Terris Theater in Chester, Conn., the Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, N.C., and Dayton Opera in Dayton, Ohio all offered Twitter-friendly seating at one point or the other.

The Palm Beach Opera actually solicited live bloggers for its December 15 final dress rehearsal of Madame Butterfly:

We are looking for people who are active on social media to attend the final dress rehearsal of an opera and tweet, Facebook, and/or blog throughout the whole thing.  We want your authentic opinions, thoughts, or maybe even play-by-plays of the action happening on the stage.  Basically, you’ll get tickets to come and see the opera on us in exchange for your social media posts.

This was a very controlled experiment, said Ceci Dadisman, director of marketing for the Palm Beach Opera who vetted each of the potential tweeters.  The goal isn’t so much to sell tickets as to broaden awareness of the opera and reach  a younger generation of potential customers.  (The resulting Twitter thread is here.) Dadisman assessed each applicant to make sure eh or she was a really active in the social networks. “We didn’t want people who were creating content, not just using Twitter to check in on Foursquare,” she said.

Dadisman and Elisa Hale, PR director for Goodspeed Musicals, the company  that runs the Goodspeed Opera House and the Norma Terris Theater,  agree that the goal is to generate more immediate word-of-mouth about productions.  Hale sees it as an additional way to spread the news on productions. “People still go out and talk about what they’ve seen but that can be a few days later and they’ll still do that. Twitter is more immediate and reaches beyond people you actually see,” she said.

Goodspeed will likely continue to offer Tweet seats, although they will probably be limited to the back row of the Norma Terris theater so as not to distract the non-connected patrons.  That theater, which tends to run more contemporary shows, is better set up to separate the tweeters from the non tweeters. The Goodspeed Opera House’s U-shaped rows would make that difficult, Hale said.

The tweet/no tweet divide may break down as ballet, opera and theater companies try to entice a younger, more web-inclined demographic.  It’s key to making classical performances more accessible to newbies, in much the same way New York’s Metropolitan Opera‘s simulcast of select performances to HD-equipped theaters across the country is an attempt to woo new audiences.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user markhillary

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TechStars’ Boston class came of age today at their demo day capping off a frenzied three-month program that has produced a strong, more business-focused class that was especially memorable for its health component.

I really enjoyed all of the dozen start-ups in the 2011 class and it’s hard to see a clunker in the bunch. But I was drawn to the health start-ups that applied technology in different ways to improve both physical and mental health. It’s an important area that is growing especially as companies look to leverage technology to get at some persistent problems. And it’s a worthwhile field because it affects many people on a personal level.

Katie Rae, the managing director of the Boston class said the latest crop reflected some of the local strengths of the Boston area, which has produced a lot of health tech companies as well as B2B startups. ”Boston has an unbelievable health IT community and has deep roots in B2B,” she said. “I picked these companies partly because we can support them here with great mentors and great investors.”

Here’s a look at some of companies that caught my eye:

Strohl Medical CEO and founder Heather Keith

Strohl Medical Technologies has come up with product that helps hospitals and emergency responders quickly detect if a patient is having a stroke. The portable device monitors a patient’s brain activity and their hearing and has electrodes for a person’s wrists and knees. Within five to ten minutes, the device can determine with more than 90 percent accuracy whether someone is having a stroke by looking at different signals including brain activity.

“We improve stroke triage, it’s exactly what the EKG did for heart attacks,” said Heather Keith, CEO and founder.

Keith said most stroke victims can be treated effectively with a drug called tPA but it needs to be administered within four hours. By using Strohl Medical’s device, emergency room doctors or ambulance personnel can quickly understand how serious a patient’s condition is and get them on tPA in time to reverse the effects of most strokes. There are about 800,000 strokes a year but only 32,000 patients were given tPA last year because it was administered in time. Strohl Medical is licensing intellectual property from Tufts University and is selling the disposable kits for $ 250 each to hospitals. It should go on sale this October pending FDA approval.

If Strohl Medical can execute, this should should be a pretty big opportunity. Hospitals all have EKG monitors and if the company can provide the stroke equivalent, it’s something that should sell pretty easily.

Spill CEO and Founder Heidi Allstop

Spill is an anonymous peer-to-peer support system that helps students and potentially corporate workers get attention, encouragement and information on resources from other peers. The system, which was first launched by founder Heidi Allstop at the University of Wisconsin, allows users to log in to Spill with a school address and spill their guts about what they’re going through. Spill recruits a group of first responders at a particular school who reply to their fellow students within 24 hours and give them resources to turn to. Spill provides training material for the first responders and monitors their communications with users to ensure quality and also collect data on the interactions. It can set up a Spill service at a school for about $ 12,000 a year then sell a school the data on what issues are cropping up among their student body for another $ 10,000 annually.

Allstop got the idea after struggling to settle into the University of Wisconsin and finding out that it took two weeks to schedule an appointment with a counselor. She said 80 percent of student don’t avail themselves of counselors anyway and one in four end up dropping out of school, which ends up costing colleges money. And it can save lives; Allstop said Spill has saved eight lives since it began.

The program is working at 10 colleges now and Spill is looking to sign up 25 more with funding from investors. She said at least one Fortune 500 has contacted her about setting up a similar program for employees.

There are still some questions I have about liability and privacy. But I think a system like this makes sense. It leverages people going through similar situations to produce timely responses and delivers good resources to users. We’ll still have need for counselors and other professionals but just having someone there to respond to concerns and provide a stressed out, depressed or suicidal student or worker with immediate information can be a huge help.

GINGER.io is tackling health by leveraging mobile phones and turning them into portable sensors. The company’s application, which will be distributed to users through health providers, pharmaceutical companies and others, gathers implicit data like location and the frequency of communications and combines that with explicit data gathered from users about their condition. Users can enter the data when they have a health episode or they can respond to notifications from GINGER.io or a health provider.

What GINGER.io does is take all the data it receives and analyzes it to understand if a person is suffering from a problem. It can also predict when someone might encounter a health issue. That can be an occasion to provide them or their friends and family with suggestions or recommendations. Health providers and pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars trying to understand how patients are doing and how they’re responding to medicine. But most patients are not good about filling in journals and surveys and accurately reporting their symptoms back to health providers.

“We’re at the cusp of transformation in health care,” said co-founder Anmol Madan. “We’re going from a model of going to a doctor and getting a prescription to a device and sensor that allows you to live healthy lives.”

We’ve talked about the growing importance of mobile devices in improving health. But it’s still an area that needs more innovation and investment and so I’m glad to see GINGER.io moving in this direction.

Promoboxx caught my eye because it helps brands and local retailers come together to more effectively market to users. The idea is that national brands are trying to strike up relationships with consumers and so are their retail partners. What Promoboxx does is provide a platform for the two parties to come together to build unique campaigns around specific products and retail locations that can hit both of their audiences and fans.

Promoboxx’s platform allows a brand to start an online marketing campaign for Facebook, Twitter or through email or their website. They can then generate a local promotion that it can share with a particular retailer that is unique for that location. Then both of them can hit up their respective audiences and combine their efforts, rather than working separately.

Ben Carcio, Promoboxx’s CEO and founder, said by combining the power of a national brand the loyalty of local retail customers, it can increase e-mail leads and Facebook likes by 500 percent and can achieve a 24 percent conversion rate on sales. He said while brands are the initial target, local retailers can also use the platform for their outreach.

I like this because it just makes sense. Many brands are pushing social and online campaigns but they’re not effectively enlisting the help of their best advocates, their own retailers. And retailers can get better reach by working with their manufacturers.

Memrise is promising because it is taking the task of learning languages and making it fun and memorable. The start-up uses vivid encoding techniques like visual tools and mnemonic devices to help build up a user’s vocabulary.

For example, users can get cartoons and animations that help visualize Mandarin characters and attach them to accurate definitions. The company choreographs the way it serves up new words to ensure that people keep learning and reviewing words that are more troublesome. And then it schedules reminders to encourage users to review words so they’re not forgotten. Memrise actually leverages some of the same social gaming tools in Farmville to get people to keep memorizing before their memories fade away like crops in a game.

Memrise’s Ed Cooke said by blending art and science, Memrise can help users memorize an average of 27 words an hour, well above the average rate of three an hour. Memrise began with Mandarin but it’s expanding to dozen of languages with the help of users, who are contributing their own words and definitions and “mems”, the unique word/visual aid combinations. Cooke said Memrise is looking beyond language and believes this model can be used for all sorts of online learning.

I just like the idea of using clever techniques to help people learn languages. We don’t all learn the same way but tapping visual and social tools seems like a smart way to expand language acquisition.

Again, this was a strong class and saw a lot of great start-ups taking down real problems. Combined with the recent New York class, TechStars is showing that it’s still got plenty of mojo in accelerating start-ups.

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Don’t miss collaboration’s defining event, Enterprise 2.0 Boston, June 20-23, 2011. Attend to learn how to leverage web 2.0 based technologies, focused on how real customers use the latest technologies. See 40+ leading exhibitors such as Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Intrepid, Jive, Microsoft, Moxie Software, Saba, Spigit, Yammer and more. Learn about key social business topics including unified communications, social tools and technology, people, culture and internal communications (IC), mobile, community management, analytics and more.

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Don’t miss collaboration’s defining event, Enterprise 2.0 Boston, June 20-23, 2011. Attend to learn how to leverage web 2.0 based technologies, focused on how real customers use the latest technologies. See 40+ leading exhibitors such as Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Intrepid, Jive, Microsoft, Moxie Software, Saba, Spigit, Yammer and more. Learn about key social business topics including unified communications, social tools and technology, people, culture and internal communications (IC), mobile, community management, analytics and more.

Register Today with Code CPBDEB17 and Save $ 100 Off Conference Passes or for a Free Expo Pass: www.e2conf.com/boston

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Microsoft today has launched four new corporate blogs, one each for the four tech hotspots in the US (and beyond the “why US only?” questions, we would add “What about Seattle/Redmond?”).  According to the official “Microsoft Blog” on Technet, the new blogs will feature local news and more:

The blogs offer insights into Microsoft’s community efforts, regional news, local leadership and upcoming events, as well as a local perspectives on headlines coming out of the Microsoft News Center.

We’ve added the four new blogs to our “Blogs We Like / Microsoft” section, or you can get the URLs from The Microsoft Blog

LiveSide.net

The Semantic Web Summit, Nov. 16-17, 2010 in Boston, features innovators examining the business potential of the semantic web. Semantic web technologies offer opportunities to reframe the way business professionals manage information and collaborate across the web in various industries, including publishing, healthcare, government, and finance. At Semantic Web Summit, speakers will talk about their successes, the obstacles they face, and why they believe the implementation of the semantic web will transform our future.

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Speakers at the Summit include:

• Stephen Wolfram, Founder and CEO, Wolfram Research
• Dennis Wisnosky, Chief Architect and CTO, Department of Defense
• Jay Myers, Lead Web Development Engineer, Best Buy
• Martin Hepp, Professor and CEO, Hepp Research GmbH
• Mike Petit, Co-founder and CIO, Hapax Ltd.
• Mike Dunn, VP and CTO, Hearst Interactive Media
• Rachel Lovinger, Content Strategy Lead, Razorfish
• Scott Brinker, President and CTO, Ion Interactive
• Duane Degler, Principal, Design for Context
• Bernard Lunn, Co-founder, CapitalMarkets.com
• Marco Neumann, Information Scientist, CEO and Founder, KON
• Matthew Petrillo, Managing Director, Ontotext

And more. View the speaker lineup.

Through a series of high level talks, these experts will dive into key issues related to semantic technology business applications, including search, predictive analysis, user interface design, media and government, social networks, advertising, content, web apps, and much more. View the full program here.

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Here we see Steve Jobs & the almost bankrupt at the time Apple Computer making a temporary deal with Bill Gates & Microsoft. The crowd was not too happy about it.