Having Fun with "Google Suggest"
The “autofill” feature of the Google search box was designed as a timesaver, but the suggested searches can also be entertaining. Writing in Slate, Michael Agger compared the autofill of “less intelligent” and “more intelligent” queries, an exercise that has previously been conducted at Digg.
The image above is a screencap of two Google searches conducted tonight using less- and more sophisticated search terms.
A corollary question would be “What searches are most commonly conducted at Neatorama?” The Lijit search engine doesn’t have an autofill feature, but it does offer a list of the most popular recent searches at Neatorama, in descending order of frequency:
“world’s smallest,” mystery sale, halloween, what is it, disney, halloween costume, pumpkin, shop, stories, tattoo, cat, facebook, halloween costumes, pear, game, costume, movie trivia, photography, new species, zombie, bacon, lego, elena desserich, google, anvil cake, costumes, national day, notes left behind, origami, national geographic, videosift, wedding, what is it? game, 6 year old, albert einstein, brain, christmas, chum, hitler, logo, one take, pig, sex, animals, art, batman, brain shot, comic, einstein, shark.
Someone else may want to tackle the sociological implications of that list; I’m not going to touch it.
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10 Neat Facts About Google
Google in 1998 (notice the exclamation mark)
Sure, everybody knows that Google was created by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin who became gazillionaires. But did you know that Google's first storage device was cobbled together with LEGO? Or that Google's first investor wrote a $100,000 check even before the company officially existed? Or that it has its own "official" Google dog?
Neatorama presents the Top 10 Neat Facts About Google:
1. Before Google, There Was BackRub
In
1996, graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on a research
project to understand the link structure of the World Wide Web. They're
particularly interested in determining the importance of a given web page
based on its backlinks or how many other web pages link to it (which later
became the concept behind Google's "PageRank" algorithm).
The project was named BackRub (yes, a play on the word "backlink"). You can see an archived page of BackRub in the Wayback Machine:
8) Your logo is upside down: Why is the light source obviously below the image? It looks quite unnatural...
The logo is simply a scan of my hand, from a flatbed scanner converted to black and white. The "back" in the picture is the scanner cover, and the shadows are from the scanner light.
2. The Original Google Computer Storage
Photo: Stanford
Infolab's Computer History Exhibits Photo
Larry and Sergey needed large amount of disk space to test their PageRank algo, but the largest hard disks available at the time were only 4 GB. So they assembled 10 of these drives together.
While he was an undergrad at Michigan University, Larry had built a programmable plotter out of LEGO, so it's only natural that he used the colorful bricks to create Google's first computer storage!
3. Google's First Investor
Sun
Microsystem co-founder Andy
Bechtolsheim knew a good thing when he saw it. After talking to Larry
and Sergey about Google for 30 minutes, he whipped out his checkbook and
wrote a check for $100,000, made out to "Google, Inc." Problem
was, Google, Inc. hasn't existed yet!
Oh, by the way, the Sun in Sun Microsystem stands for "Stanford University Network."
4.
Google Garage
Talk about getting lucky tenants. In 1998, Susan Wojcicki rented her garage to two Stanford students - you know who they are - for $1,700 a month to help out with the mortgage. That turned out to be a life-changing decision for Susan - it got her a key early job at Google which translated to a top executive position later on, introduced a future husband to her younger sister Anne, and created a mini cottage industry for the rest of her family. (Photo: Jack Gruber/USA Today)
In
2006, Google
bought the house which had become a tourist attraction (the busloads
of people who show up to take pictures were so annoying that Google decided
not to publish the address - though ironically, you can still Google
Map it.)
5. Google's First Dog
Despite the Internet's obsession with cats, dogs rule Google. In 1999, a Leonberger breed named Yoshka came to work with Google's first VP of Engineering Urs Hölzle and became the company's "first" dog. (Photo: Google Timeline)
If you must know, Leonbergers are big dogs with lionesque mane that look really majestic. They are, however, useless as guard dogs because they're much too kind and gentle.
6. Just How Many Servers Does Google Have?
A sign near the Googleville data center. Photo: ahockley
[Flickr]
The real Googleville.
Photo: Melanie Conner/NY Times
Good question. Nobody outside the company knows, and Google ain't talkin'. The company's famously secretive when it comes to its data centers (Heck, no one even knows for sure how many data centers the company has!)
For example, The Dalles or "Googleville" data center in a small
Washington Oregon town, was cloaked
in secrecy:
"No one says the 'G' word," said Diane Sherwood, executive director of the Port of Klickitat, Wash., directly across the river from The Dalles, who is not bound by such agreements. "It's a little bit like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Harry Potter."
Recently, Google Fellow Jeff Dean gave a revealing talk on large-scale computing systems in which he discussed technical details of a new storage and computation system called Spanner, which is designed for up to 10 million servers. Skynet, anyone?
7. "Green" Search
All those hardware must use a lot of electricity (indeed, Googleville data center is calculated to require about 103 megawatts of electricity - enough to power 82,000 homes or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington), but just how much energy do you use when you perform a Google search?
Google calculated that it uses about 1 kJ (0.0003 kWh) of energy to answer the average search query. It's so efficient that your PC will likely use more energy in the time it takes to do a Google search.
Photo: Google
Solar Panel Project
To offset its electricity consumption, Google even installed 1.6MW solar panels on the rooftops of the Googleplex. A total of 9,212 solar panels generate 4,475 kWh daily, the equivalent of about the amount of electricity used by 1,000 California homes.
8. Google Trike
I'm sure you're all familiar with Google Street View and the camera-topped Google Car, but what about all of the interesting places inaccessible to cars? Enter the Google Trike, which started as a project by Daniel Ratner, a Senior Mechanical Engineer on the Street View team:
"I began thinking about building a bicycle-based Street View system after realizing how many interesting places around the world - ranging from historic landmarks to beautiful trails to shopping districts - aren't accessible by car," says Dan. "When I'm riding the trike, so many people come up to me and ask where it's off to next or how they can get imagery of their favorite spot, so I can't wait to see what our users come up with."
Previously on Neatorama: Google Car Pulled Over by the Cops - Now in Google Street View!
9. I'm Feeling Lucky Costs Google $110 Million a Year
The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google's homepage takes you straight to the first web page result. Because it bypasses Google's own search result page, where users are shown ads, the button actually costs Google around $110 million a year.
Why keep it? Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marisa Mayer said:
You know Larry and Sergey had the view, and I certainly share it, that it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money. And you know what I think is really delightful about Google and about the "I'm Feeling Lucky," is that they remind you that the people here have personality and that they have interests and that there is real people.
10. Googlebot, Revealed At Last!
Image: Ben Rathbone
In 2005, Ben Rathbone (then at Google's Hardware Operations) gave us a glimpse of humanity's future. I, for one, welcome our new Googlebot overlord:
Then I pondered the question: what does Google do? The grossly simplified answer that I came up with is Google connects the world with the Internet.
It all snapped into place: the idea of a robot, connecting a world with the Internet, with wires, that connect to big cabinets of computers. It was not hard then to make the leap to representing the internet as a world, or globe, made up of pages.
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Storm Troopers Using Google
Maybe they’ll get it right this time! From Flickr user Stefan. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
Update 11/1/09 by Alex – Stefan has the whole Storm Trooper photoset here.
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Google Street View Guys
If this doesn’t work, CLICK HERE
College Humor presents an instant classic: A funny road trip on the Street View highway, with actual Street View shots used as animated backgrounds and settings.
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The History of the Barcode
Google’s doodle for today is a barcode, in honor of the 57th anniversary of its invention. Nick Collins writes in The Daily Telegraph about the history of this label:
Granted to American inventors Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver three years after it was filed, patent number 2,612,994 was for a pattern of concentric circles, rather than the set of straight lines used today.
Their research began in 1948 after Mr Silver, a graduate student at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, overheard a local food chain boss asking one of the institute’s deans to design a system for reading product data automatically.
Mr Silver and Mr Woodland, a fellow graduate student and teacher at Drexel, first tried using patterns of ink that glowed under ultraviolet light, but it proved too expensive and unreliable.
Mr Woodland then came up with the linear bar code, and later replaced the lines with circles so that they could be scanned from any angle. The pair patented their “bull’s eye” design the next year.
The barcode became widely used in UPC (universal price product code) format, and the first UPC-labeled item scanned by a reader was a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum at a grocery store in Troy, Ohio in 1974.
You can create your own personalized barcode with a tool in the links below.
Barcode Generator via Urlesque | History of the Barcode
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How Google Street View Works
(YouTube Link)
Google’s Japan division released this stop motion film explaining (in a rather fanciful way) how Street View works. It features a cute little robot puttering around town, taking film photographs and painting over license plate numbers with a marker. The video is part of an effort to make the practice less appear less invasive of individuals’ privacy.
Via Boing Boing
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Dead Pixel in Google Earth
Dutch conceptual artist Helmut Smits (blogged before on Neatorama here) came up with this idea: a "Dead Pixel" in Google Earth that is actually 82 cm x 82 cm (~ 2¾ sq. ft.) square of scorched earth – the size of a pixel from the altitude of 1 km!
From the Upcoming 
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Google's Cafeteria Doesn't Suck
As if we needed another reason to be insanely jealous of people who work at Google, here’s one more: not only is the food there free, their cafeteria doesn’t suck. Not by a long shot. The Google people periodically bring in guest chefs to cook for a day – even Mario Batali has stopped by. The baker who blogged about her experience is Kelli Bernard, the owner of Amai Tea and Bake House in New York. She brought in several varieties of cookies, including chai almond, green tea and pumpkin chocolate chip. I’m so envious.
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Google May Harm Your Computer?
What’s up with Google? Has anyone else seen this? Every single search I do on Google now returns "This site may harm your computer," even when I search for … Google!
Update: Seems like this bug was fixed already! Phew!
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Google's Carbon Footprint
How much CO2 does a google search produce if a google search produces CO2? Well, Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross did the math:
… a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”
Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.
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Finding Line Drawing Using Google Image Search
Maybe my Google-fu isn’t as strong as yours, so I’ve just found out that you can find nifty things like line drawings, faces, and clip arts in Google Images!
Here’s what you’ll find if you look for line drawings of "Neatorama": Link – via Chris Glass
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I Google You - Live Music Performance
Amanda Palmer, from Boston MA, is performing the song “I Google You” by Neil Gaiman live at Spiegelworld in New York City.
Link [YouTube] – via Google Blogoscoped
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The Google Street View Prank
When Ben Kinsley and Robin Hewlett of Carnegie Mellon University found out that Google Street View is coming to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the duo arranged a more "interesting" view of the street: they staged a marathon, a parade, a mad-scientist laboratory, and even a sword fight!
National Geographic Magazine’s Intelligent Travel Blog has the story: Link [with embedded YouTube clip] | The Google Street View of Sampsonia Way – Thanks Marilyn!
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Google Zeitgeist 2008
We posted about Yahoo’s top searches of 2008 before on Neatorama. Well, Google has just released its 2008 Year-End Zeitgeist, and the results couldn’t be any different.
Here are the highlights from Google searches from around the world in 2008:
1. sarah palin
2. beijing 2008
3. facebook login
4. tuenti
5. heath ledger
6. obama
7. nasza klasa
8. wer kennt wen
9. euro 2008
10. jonas brothers
I had to look up tuenti (a Madrid-based social networking website, referred to many as the "Spanish Facebook"), nasza klasa (a Polish social networking website), and wer kennt wen (ditto, this time for Germans).
Link – Thanks Justin!
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To-Do List in Gmail
“Tasks” is the name of a new to-do list feature that is now available from the “Labs” section in Gmail.
Take entering a new task: just click in an empty part of your list and start typing. No buttons to click and it’s saved automatically. Hit Return and you’ve got a new task right there.
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Virgle: Branson and Google Colonizes Mars
Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.
The exciting Virgle project was announced today at the Official Google Blog.
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Yann Arthus-Bertrand Layer in Google Earth
Now you get get almost 500 wonderful photographs by French photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand as a layer in Google Earth.
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Google in the Year 1407
Those were the days of Google Earth Flat.
Link – via Google Blogoscoped
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