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Oooh you're back! Lookin good. Have you lost weight? Yes, that was a compliment designed to butter you up for my next question. Subscribed to my feed yet? :-)

Twitter quietly rolled out a new feature today that enables users to choose a regional preference for viewing trending topics.

Called Twitter Local Trends, the new functionality gives users the option to set their regional location and view trending topics happening in their part of the world. For example, one of the screenshots pictured shows that the topic “Trafalgar Square” is trending for users that have United Kingdom set as their region (because it relates to a well known London icon), but not for users that have set their region to Worldwide.

At this stage, only seven countries and 15 cities in the US are available for selection (see screenshot below) but more will be added soon.

According to a post on Mashable, the feature has only rolled out to around 1 percent of Twitter users, but there’s nothing official on the Twitter Blog about it yet. I noticed it in my account this afternoon so I’m not sure if I’m part of the lucky 1 percent or whether it has rolled out to a larger audience since it went live this morning.

Regardless, when it does roll out to everyone, it will make a huge difference to how we use Twitter to target a regional audience. The benefits for geo-based mobile apps like Four Square and Gowalla should be immediately apparent. Add to that the ability to pinpoint regional trends in real time search and this becomes a social media game changer.

Everybody knows a business that is still sceptical about using Twitter. But when they see they have the power to follow and influence social media conversation in their specific target markets using Local Trends, I think even the sceptics could be convinced to start using Twitter as a full time marketing channel.

No doubt you’ve heard by now of the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti this week.

If you’ve visited Google.com since then you’ll see they’ve given up some home page real estate to highlight the tragic event. The home page now features the following sentence:

“Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.”

The sentence links to an information page about how the public can help disaster relief in Haiti, complete with donate buttons for UNICEF and CARE, processed by Google checkout.

As well as using their popularity to spread the word, Google has announced they will be donating $1 million to the relief fund.

Not to be outdone, Yahoo and Bing also feature Haiti on their home pages. Yahoo highlights an article about texting to support Haiti as their lead story and also includes a small link for donation options. Bing features two small links labeled “How you can help Haiti” and “Get the latest earthquake news” below the fold, at the very bottom of the page.

If you want to donate to Haiti disaster relief, you can visit the Google link above or contact one of the many charitable organizations in the region directly.

Google is no longer a search company.

That’s right – the launch of an online mobile store yesterday to sell their new smart phone means Google has crossed the threshold from search company to consumer electronics retailer.

The Nexus One was officially revealed at a press conference at Google headquarters in Mountain View yesterday, but details about the handset had already been leaked and available on the web for weeks. Referred to by Google staff as a *Super Phone*, the Nexus One is being touted as an iPhone killer and has been designed specifically for Google’s Open Source Android operating system.

While the Nexus One does look very much like an iPhone, the first difference that strikes me is the trackball. How very IBM ThinkPad. It also features a thinner profile at 11.5mm, a 5 megapixel camera, 2 microphones (one for noise cancellation), a 3.7″ OLED touchscreen display and the handset weighs in at a tiny 130 grams. Comparisons to the HTC Droid Eris phone are no coincidence – HTC manufactured the Nexus One.

Another gloatworthy, geek-pleasing feature that the Nexus has over the iPhone is the voice-activated keyboard, which I noticed a few launch attendees testing today on Twitter, with amusing results. For more details about the launch I recommend Danny Sullivan’s live blog coverage.

To coincide with the launch, Google installed the world’s largest Nexus One in their foyer (see photo). While it’s not an actual working phone, it’s still pretty impressive.

US customers can now buy the Nexus One directly from Google’s web store with a two-year contract with T-Mobile USA for US $179 or the unlocked handset for $529. Vodafone will supply Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore with the Nexus soon.

Google expects it to roll out to other countries and carriers within the coming months.

*Photo courtesy of Search Engine Land

Using a special animated logo, Google has paid tribute today to the English physicist, mathematician and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton who was born on this day in 1643.

It’s widely recorded that Newton *discovered* the concept of gravity (and the resulting science of physics) as a result of observing apples falling from a tree. In tribute, the drop apple theme is mimicked on Google’s global Home Page today.

The Google logo is partly obscured by the branch of an apple tree. After a second or so, an apple drops from the branch to the bottom of the home page. It’s unusual for Google to create an animated tribute Doodle and it makes a nice change from the static images. See the logo in action below:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Clicking on the logo takes you to SERPs for the search query “Isaac Newton”.

Apart from his wide influence on modern physical science, Newton also made great strides in mathematical research, chemistry, history and theology.

Our final issue of The Search Light is out. Yes it’s December but I don’t think we didn’t mentioned Christmas once.

I think that’s got to be some kind of record for corporate newsletters right? We thought you might be sick of hearing about it and spared you the agony of flashing Xmas lights and animated jolly fat men in red suits.

Ok, the truth is that we forgot and just hoped you wouldn’t notice.

Apart from lacking festive bling, we think the final edition of the Search Light for 2009 is pretty darn good. It includes some of the more interesting FAQs answered in this blog and an article about why Google SideWiki and public graffiti have a lot in common.

If you’re not yet a subscriber, (the horror!), you can catch it here.

Oh and even though we forgot to mention it in the newsletter, we really would like to wish all of you a safe and memorable festive season.