Google suggests

· Music

Trying out the Google Guessing Rank (GGR) game outlined by Jon Scalzi, I got a kick out of watching what Google Suggest (it’s a beta) thought I might be searching for until I got four letters into my last name. Here’s the literal sequence if I type all the letters (counting even when it doesn’t change the guess, to make a prettier diagonal:

  1. cnn
  2. christmas
  3. christmas
  4. christmas
  5. christmas
  6. christmas
  7. christina aguilera
  8. christianity
  9. christianity
  10. christian dior
  11. christian coalition
  12. christian cross
  13. christian cruises
  14. christian crumlish
  15. christian crumlish
  16. christian crumlish
  17. christian crumlish
  18. christian crumlish

Big drop off in results with each new phrase, and I just barely missed the crusades along the way.

Your jukebox should know

· Music

Scalzi is spreading a meme:

  1. Open up the music player on your computer (if you have one — the music player, I mean. Clearly you have a computer, because otherwise you couldn’t read this).
  2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
  3. Hit the “shuffle” command.
  4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That’s right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty.

OK, lessee – looks like I have to start with embarrassment (that’s what I get for copying my sister’s ’70s/’80s mix CD), and I’ll include one to grow on:

  1. “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling” – Righteous Brothers
  2. “Junco Partner” – James Booker
  3. “Down in the Cockpit” – XTC
  4. “Cryptical Envelopment” – Grateful Dead
  5. “Cup of Kindness” – Emmylou Harris
  6. “Japanese Folk Song (Kojo No Tsuki)” – Thelonious Monk
  7. “Pleasant Moments” – Scott Joplin
  8. “Satellite” – Robyn Hitchcock
  9. “All We Have is Now” – Flaming Lips
  10. “A Soft Seduction” – David Byrne
  11. “Dear Prudence” – Jerry Garcia

RSS meme gets a weblog

· Music

Just when I’m thinking of saying webfeeds to people and wondering why any normal person would care if Atom or RSS were or were not offered in equal measure by some service, Dave Winer puts his weblogging where his mouth is with the new Really Simple Syndication site.
I’ve just posted more about this (and reprinted Dave’s inaugural post) over at The Power of Many where we tend to refer to much the same assorted phenomena with the umbrella term “the living web” coined by a fellow from daypop and reamplified by Marc Bernstein in his famous 10 Rules post for A List Apart, which I believe has also been linked from both Blogistan and the POM blog.