Earlier this week, online news service Topix.net unveiled a new feature that enables visitors to search the news for a search term over a 12-month period, and displays the results, as well as a graph showing the intensity and frequency of news coverage over that time.

If the tool continues to develop, it could become incredibly useful for public relations and corporate types who are looking to measure long-term success of branding and media coverage, or for fans of products and companies who would like to align events with anticipated response. In fact, PR teams, if the service is tuned for accuracy, could be measured in graph form, rather than through the old-fashioned clips or more manual reporting.

For the largest companies, like Microsoft or General Electric, the spikes in day to day, week by week, media coverage is less dramatic than that for specific keywords or lesser-known brands. But even for strong brands, like Apple, you can see spikes in activity around Macworld San Francisco in January, and the recently-completed WorldWide Developers' Conference (WWDC). (See the below examples for Apple and Zune.)



The Topix news search covers more than technology companies, of course. You can even see a buildup around senatorial candidate Ned Lamont, with a dramatic spike this week, leading up to and just following his defeat of Joe Leiberman in the Connecticut Democrat party primary. (Also above)

The tool is very interesting, and if you have topics (Topix!) you would like to track, be sure to bookmark the resulting page. But the news search function isn't ideal. While it does differentiate between blogs and more standard press, it doesn't quantify results or designate between a mention and a feature story. Maybe in later iterations, if there is sufficient interest, we can see that develop.

Listening to ''Love Shines Through'', by Marcella Woods (Play Count: 8)

It's no secret that this summer is one of the hottest ever recorded across the Northern Hemisphere. After 100+ temperatures for more than a week, we saw the mercury lessen to the 90s range here in the Bay Area, unfortunately coinciding with our trip to Boston, where upon our arrival, the East Coast chimed in with their own version of a sticky heat overload. With temperatures pushing 100 outside, I did my part to stay indoors at the convention hall, keeping my external wandering to a minimal level. But the heat was certainly noticed by many outside. Even every Conan O'Brien monologue that week started out with a lame joke about the heat...

Now that we're back in the Bay Area, we're finding things a bit warm again. Not oppressively so, but enough that our fourth-floor condominium with cathedral ceilings, facing the sun, is storing more than its share of heat. And to make things worse, our housebound beagle, playing the part of a latchkey dog while we've been away at the office during the day, has been panting her way through the eight or so hours, without respite.

Yesterday evening, after arriving home from the A's game, the indoors temperature was a balmy 88, so I of course started up the fans and air conditioner in a feeble attempt to knock down the thermometer a few points. Hours later, we were still at 85, and we didn't seem to be getting anywhere. To my chagrin, I then noticed the air nozzle aimed to push hot air out of the house had detached from the window, and instead of cooling us off, we had started a circle of heat pouring right back into the room we were trying to chill. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Needless to say, we reattached it, and immediately saw a drop - never perfect, mind you, but a slip from 85 to 82, to 80, and just over 75 by midnight or so. The dog, patient through all this, lifted her eyebrows at me as if she had known, but in all seriousness, if she saw something, she could have told me, rather than keeping it to herself.

Today's been a bit better - but not great. As of 7 this evening, we're at 80 indoors, down from 85 when we started, and as seen in An Inconvenient Truth, this will become more normal as time goes on if we don't make changes in our activity to thwart the gradual warming of the planet. Our dog may not be around to see it, but we will be.

Listening to ''No Reason", by Chumi DJ (Play Count: 5)

Given how many Oakland A's games I have had the opportunity to attend this year, it is no surprise that some of them don't turn out the way I had planned. Even the best teams in the league will lose 2 out of every 5, and while the A's had won six consecutive games, and were leading the American League West by 3 games at the beginning of play today, we saw the team completely fall apart in a 14 to 0 pounding at the hands of the Texas Rangers, who avenged the two previous days' losses in dramatic fashion - socking five home runs, and refusing to give the A's any kind of chance to compete.

After finally making it to the city this morning - about 90 minutes behind schedule, we connected for our meeting, and having knocked out the big to-do items, we, as a group, headed to Oakland expecting to give a good demonstration of the Bay Area's best team, but it was not to be today. A's ace Barry Zito started off the proceedings by giving up a home run in the first inning, and continued to struggle through 5 ugly innings. When relieved by a team of relief pitchers, they managed to fare worse, seeing a 4 run inning followed by a 7 run frame, and the rout was definitely on. In fact, I understand that the 14-0 blowout was the most lopsided shutout the Oakland A's have ever suffered. Yay... history. Woo.

It is well documented that the A's offense isn't exactly a barnburner. They simply manage to outscore their opponents more often than not, relying on strong team defense and starting pitching. But today, none of those elements shone through in any way. Not only did the team fail to score, and didn't see a base runner past the second base bag, but they also had three ugly errors, which only made things worse.

That's not to say the day wasn't fun. As they say, the worst day at the ballpark beats the best day at the office. With 80-plus degree temperatures, and an optimistic 30,000+ crowd for a day game that featured one-dollar hotdogs, we had a good time, and shook our head as the A's turned a challenging game into a comedy. Despite giving up the two touchdowns and extra points, the game counts as one in the standings, just like any contest, and the team's most-hated rival, the Angels, also managed to be shut out themselves, so the A's, though stunned, continue in first place by three games, and can press forward to their next opponent, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who return to Oakland on Friday. We will be there, doing our best to ensure a different outcome.

Listening to ''Technologic'', by Daft Punk (Play Count: 13)

In the dot-com heyday, it wasn't uncommon to expect commute times of over an hour, just to go ten to twenty miles or so up and down the San Francisco Peninsula. Traveling highways 101 or 280 between San Francisco or San Jose in either direction could be a life-halting event, as, in what seemed to be a good thing, there was a vast surplus of jobs and people with automobiles needing to get from one side to the other, more than the highways had been built to handle. When that was coupled with skyrocketing housing prices, commuters were often compromising on their distance to travel to work in order to save a few hundred thousand dollars.

When the stock market bubble burst, hundreds of thousands of jobs were seemingly erased overnight, and some of these commuters similarly disappeared. Traffic got better, even as the economy was getting worse. So there was an upside. And while the economy showed signs of revival and has picked up again, we haven't seen the out of control hiring and resulting traffic to make up the difference - which makes today's experience especially frustrating.

With a 9 a.m. meeting in San Francisco, the plan was to take Highway 101 to catch BART, the Bay Area's Rapid Transit system, and coast into the big city in time to make the appointment. But it was not to be. The freeway system in the Bay Area is built without room for error - meaning a single accident anywhere on 101 can dramatically stop the traffic flow - and leave its remnants for hours afterward, even if the glass has since been cleared and the cars dragged off to that great big scrap heap in the sky. And without warning, I found myself in this mess today, as only two or three exits north of home, I found nothing but brake lights as far as the eye could see - without police or fire engines anywhere in sight.

I watched the minutes creep by, and even told my appointment that things looked VERY bad. Since my car wasn't moving anyway, I could punch out a coherent message via Blackberry and take phone calls without any concern that I was making the problem worse. Half an hour went by and I hadn't moved. And even after we started to creep along, it was no picnic. After having "enjoyed" this for about an hour, we found a cohesive collection of glass in the middle of the road - where some traffic architect genius had conspired to have five lanes merge to three. Undoubtedly, some more-aggressive drivers had decided to share a lane with another vehicle only to learn about the physics behind what happens when one object in motion attempts to stay in motion, but is brought to a stop.

Brilliant.

Needless to say, the schedule has been blown to shreds. I didn't even make it onto BART until 15 or so minutes after I was already supposed to be in San Francisco, and we'll need to be creative on how we now put our heads together.

I'm not one to lobby for any kind of economic downturn, or wish ill will on those who are creating the traffic surplus, but if the Bay Area expects to grow further, and expects to be a world-class city (or group of cities), as we keep hearing when the San Francisco mayor makes bids to host upcoming Olympic games, the basic essentials of providing people a reliable system of getting to and from destinations on time has to be achieved. I for one can't trust that I'll get anywhere outside of a 5-mile radius in a given time. There are simply too many variables and not enough trust in the system. And I really, really would like my morning back.

Listening to ''Animal'', by The Neanderthal (Play Count: 3)