Gotta give it to Google for reflecting various facets of our society. Remember the whole “did you mean he invented” revelation?

Now Dan Ariely of Predictably Irrational, expert and author on the subject of human irrationality, posts the results of he/she Google hints that concern the stuff we all wish we could know. Remember, Google uses algorithms to formulate these search suggestions or “hints” based on what other users have searched for countless times.

Thanks to Jen Bekman for the post.

Who knew collegehumor.com was doing such quality videos? While it doesn’t have the originality of Doctor Horrible, this retelling of the Tony-Maria love story still impresses with its production values and its spot-on parody lyrics. A sample: (to the tune of “Maria” naturally) “Pandora/ Type it in and there’s music playing/ Watch the ads and and it’s almost like paying.”

From collegehumor.com, via BuzzFeed.

Thanks (or maybe, no thanks?) to Ziggs.com, you can now get an email alert every time someone Googles your name. For $4.95 per month, you’ll learn how many times your name was searched, the keywords used to scope you out, and the location (city and state) of the searcher. Sound enticing?  Don’t you remember what can happen when you know too much about someone before even meeting them?   If you’re part of the morethanIneedtoknow squad, find like company with The Frisky:

Anyone who has a blog and checks his or her stats regularly knows that feeling when an ex’s work place ISP pops up in the list of recent visitors. There’s a visceral reaction that, depending on circumstances, can open old wounds, create false hope, and stir up old romantic feelings that probably ought to stay dormant. Aren’t relationships and dating complicated enough already? Hasn’t modern technology and the new avenues of communication and connecting shaken our mental stability enough already?  Do we really need one more thing to analyze in determining whether someone may or may not be interested us?

I say, long live mystery! What’s left of it, anyway. What say you?

Once upon a time, BG had a perfectly magical date with a then-obscure movie star who, as it turned out, was apparently on a different date at the time. One of the fun parts of the story (and its two-years-later coda) is this: the friends who set us up had told me way too much about him. I knew his hobbies, his college major, his newborn niece’s infelicitous name. The challenge for me, then, was to react to his biographical information as if it were news (“Econ, huh? So then how’d you get into acting?”) and to not ask questions about things I wasn’t supposed to know yet (“How’s your niece? I mean — how’s Nice? In the summer? Ever been?”) I met this challenge, thankyouverymuch, but it required a mighty effort. And nohedidn’tcallwhateverthat’snotthepoint.

The point is: that was before Google.

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