Like this stuff? Get it delivered to your email inbox daily!
Archives | Subscribe | Share:  
Big book reader? Looking for something new to read? There's an email newsletter for that, too! It's called AnyNewBooks, sends weekly, and lets you decide which genre(s) to subscribe to. Subscribe here. -- Dan
Stupid Google Tricks
Today is Groundhog Day, and if you're familiar with the movie of the same name (you should be!), your initial reaction to today's holiday may be a single word: recursion. The movie, starring Bill Murray as meteorologist Phil Connors, focuses on a day in Connors' life -- a day which repeats over and over and over again, in a seemingly infinitely repetitive loop. Recursion.
Google the term "recursion" and you'll see this search result, below. (Or try it yourself: click here.)
Pay particular attention to the "Did you mean" line.
The silly humor of Google engineers.
There are a number of similar "easter eggs" in Google search. Ask Google for the "answer to life, the universe, and everything," and you'll get a baked-in calculator result: 42, a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The loneliest number? No, not 6 (because it's afraid of seven, which 8 9), but 1, per Harry Nilsson, which is also the number of horns on a unicorn. "Anagram" has its own anagram suggested ("nag a ram"). Put in "ascii art" and you'll get exactly that, in Google-logo form.
And these neat little tricks extend beyond traditional web search. You can use Google translate to beatbox; search the Web in Klingon, Pirate, or as Elmer Fudd; use Google Maps to see the Google Maps team in Street View; and put the Konami Code into Google Reader to make a ninja appear.
If they'd just get Gmail to do the laundry (click and scroll), that'd be perfect.
Bonus fact: Ever wonder where Microsoft's search engine (and Google competitor), Bing, gets its search results from? It turns out that they get some of it from Google -- as demonstrated by this incredible sting operation revealed yesterday.
Archives | Subscribe | Share:
|
