bamgoogled

I've started to read "Googled: The End of the World As We Know It" by Ken Auletta. I told myself I had to start reading some non-fiction books (my head can't be in the clouds all the time), and I got bored of the book written by the Baja Fresh guy (and got turned off by its ridiculously huge font size). I figured I work in the digital advertising world, specifically search marketing, so why not learn more about the foundation and growing dominance of the greatest online advertising company of all time?

Few things I learned in the first two chapters:

• Both founders Larry Page & Sergey Brin come from brilliant (as in highly intelligent) families that started from very humble beginnings
  
• Google was originally going to be called Backrub, then the Whatbox (but sounded too close to wetbox), then Googol (which means the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes), but that name was taken so had to settle on Google
• Google gives their employees X amount of hours a week to work on their own individual projects (quite awesome)
  
• Their slogan is "Don't be evil" (I'd raise an eyebrow to that)
  

As I was reading the book, I couldn't help but get goosebumps from thinking about how small the company started out, knowing what Google is today. With its search engine, gmail, gchat, google reader, google docs, mobile phone apps, and now google+, Google will penetrate every little channel of our lives. It's a wee bit frightening if you really think about it. I even wrote a blog entry on how Google knows your interests and even builds a profile for you based on your browsing history, tracking your every move... Google knows more about you than your family, your friends, your lover, possibly even yourself!

Also, whenever any other company pulls off something innovative and successful, Google either buys them out (i.e. YouTube, Blogspot) or tries to replicate and one-up them (i.e. Google Offers with GroupOn, Google+ with Facebook). How can a company so menacing and monopolizing not be evil?

Easy- by having cute and clever google doodles every holiday.

Google back in the day:

Hey... where'd that exclamation point go?


and for ol' time's sake:

I remember back in the day when Facebook was called thefacebook, and there was that non-descript shadow of a man (Mark Zuckerberg, is that you?) overlaid with cryptic numbers. It was oh-so-exclusive, and I felt somewhat special to be on it. But now everyone and their mom's (literally) are on it, and it somehow lost its appeal to me (Anyone else a lil' surprised that UC Davis was among the first 30 schools with early admission?)

i love.

google time

So I was trying to look up my friend Joyce on yelp, because I wanted to check out her reviews...

But then I realized she wasn't my friend on my yelp account (I don't have friends-_-), so I decided to google "Joyce Kim yelp" on google, but while I was ever-so-slowly typing her name in, google gave me some suggestions for keywords/phrases:


Wow. I didn't know Joyce was such an accomplished person. She is a renowned gynecologist who graduated from Columbia (and is a free-lance artist and works for Soompi on the side). Plus, she's a character in the Big Bang Theory.

I got this neat lil' character description from the Big Bang Theory Wiki:

Joyce Kim (Ally Maki) was never shown in a single episode until The Staircase Implementation and she also mentioned in various situations throughout the first season. She is one of Leonard's former 'girlfriends' whom was mentioned by his friends. They were only together for twenty-seven days, after which she defected to North Korea. We still aren't sure if it was out of free will, or if it was forced in order to give an excuse to break up with Leonard. We can only assume from Leonard's friend mocking, she went to North Korea in order to break up with him. Flashbacks show during The Staircase Implementation, Leonard was working on rocket fuel at the time under a DARPA contract and Joyce Kim was a Spy attempting to obtain his work.

Cool beans! And the girl who plays her character, kinda looks like her! So strange... I wonder if Joyce knows this? Hmmm... I'm sure she does because I'm suure she's googled her name before. But on the off chance that she hasn't, here's a little tidbit of info for ya!

A little overexcited from my discovery, I also wanted to see what Google would suggest for my name:

How disappointing is that.

I wonder how Google determines these search suggestions... is it just by popularity amongst users? If anyone knows an answer to this, please let my curiosity be satiated.

lazy morning

I remember I heard this saying that you know you made it in show business if there are gay rumors circulating about you.

Well, I think you know you made it in life when there is a google logo dedicated to you.

If you are a dedicated reader to my blog (probably unlikely...), you would know that I fancy these fun, festive logos and that they bring a small sense of wonder and joy to my long, dreary days staring at the computer.

I realized that the best bet of having your own google logo is:
1. being a world leader


2. inventing something


I think I'll go with the latter... since it seems a teensy bit more plausible. And by invent, I'm thinking artistically. I'm leaning towards an iconic character(s) of some sort. I mean just look at Sesame Street... those guys got like a week's worth of airtime~

Or maybe I can somehow seduce Dennis Hwang (google logo designer) and have him fall in love with me to a point of delirium.

We'll see...

On a sidenote:
In the past 24 hours, I've consumed more bright orange food than I have in my whole lifetime...
1. tangerines (5)
2. persimmons (3)
3. carrot ginger soup
4. sweet potato fries
5. cheddar ruffles
6. leftover orange fruit snacks from a coworker (she hates the orange ones!)

And that was all totally coincidental!

the end matter

I think it must be my own personal "bomb scare" on the 60 fwy or the rapture dream I had recently, but I've been thinking more and more about the "end times" lately. We often get so sucked into the daily routines of our humdrum lives that we almost fool ourselves into thinking that we'll be going on like this forever (and sometimes it really does feel that way). But then we snap out of these delusions when we hear about some fatal freak accident or the death of some celebrity- a wake-up call of how fragile and ephemeral a human life truly is.

I remember when we were learning how to evangelize in the Philippines & Thailand, they told us that a good icebreaker is to ask people if they died right this minute, where they think they'd end up. At the time, I thought the tactic was too straightforward, even a bit harsh way to preach the gospel, but it was effective. It makes one really evaluate where they stand in terms of faith & assurance. I wonder if I asked the same question to weekly church-goers, how they would respond? I'm sure most people were never confronted with such a question.

During missions, Pastor Howard went through the study of the book of Revelation with us. In retrospect, I wish I wasn't half-asleep every morning/night so I might have learned something (I should fish out my notes though I'm sure they're just strewn with oodles of doodles).

When I was younger, I was so scared of the final book and refused to read it... those monsters with the multiples heads and such would give me nightmares. But now I really want to study it; it's really interesting how many different schools of interpretations there are on this book (e.g. Historicism, Futurism, Preterism, Idealism). I just got my ESV study bible in the mail last week, and I love the little introductions and footnotes for further explanations & historical context (My only complaint is that the thing is as big & heavy as a dictionary). It's the next best thing to having my own pocket-sized theologian professor.

on a lighter note: can you believe google is 11 years old? I thought there was a typo or my eyes were playing tricks on me when I saw this:

trippy.

seriously

why is google so damn cute?