Search Engines and All This Is That

By Mona Goldwater, Computing Ed.

Traffic (a/k/a readers) into All This Is That is heavily skewed to Google, mainly, we assume, because Google owns blogger and Blogspot, where this blog is located.  

According to Searchenginewatch, current search engine popularity is :

• 67.6% Google
• Bing 18.7%
• Yahoo 10%
• Ask 2.4%
• AOL 1.3%.  

Wait...that's 100%?? I guess that means that Apple's Safari, Mozilla Firefox, etc. are statistically irrelevant?  We are guessing that, although Bing is at an 18.7% market share, they tend not to refer to Google-oriented sites?  Or maybe it's just us!

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More fun with Google search. . .

By Jack Brummet, Research Ed.

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What's up with Jeri Kehn Thompson?

click to enlarge Jeri and the cop


Interestingly, over 100 people came to All This Is That yesterday specifically looking for photos of Fred Thompson's wife, Jeri Kehn. I can't figure out why. At first I thought she might have died. She doesn't seem to be in the news. Neither has Fred Thompson, as far as I can tell. There're always a couple of people looking, but 100? That seems crazy--and I can't figure out what triggered all the Jeri Kehn searches.

Usually when tons of people come looking for something specific, it is because there was a link on a web site, or that person or thing hit the news. There are about 20 people and things where All This Is That is at or near the top of Google searches (things like the Enumclaw horse case; the Walribi tribe handshake; The cuckoo sign and the shocker; craig's list sex scandal; Alien lore; The Johnson Treatment, etc). Those things get hits all the time. . .but this Jeri Kehn one is baffling. Maybe she was in the news and I am missing it. It looks like we are one of the first Google hits in images, but still something has to drive people to look in the first place. I don't know. This is kind of strange...

In case you're one of those people looking, here are the links to the many Jeri Kehn pictures published here:

Where is Jeri Kehn Thompson? A dearth of photos plagues the internet. . .
Jeri Kehn Thompson On The Road/All This Is That's Comprehensive Jeri Kehn Coverage Continues With New Photos Even Jeri Kehn can't resuscitate her husband's wheezing, tubercular campaign (but it's fun to watch while she tries) This week's photographic update on Jeri Kehn Thompson
Photomontage: Jeri Kehn pressing the flesh (includes one photo of her husband) and links to Jeri Kehn photo motherlode
Latest Jeri Kehn sightings and photographs
Two more Jeri Kehn Thompson Photos
Latest Jeri Kehn sightings and photographs
Jeri Kehn Thompson photo update No. 12--eleven new Jeri Kehn photographs
Two more Jeri Kehn Thompson Photos
A Jeri Kehn Thompson cameo appearance in a Fred Thompson campaign video, four new Jeri Kehn photographs, and a Mrs. Fred Thompson photo roundup
Three additional photos of Mrs. Fred Thompson a/k/a Jeri Kehn
Meet the Thompson Twins: Fred Thompson's wife, Jeri Kehn (with photos)
One More Jeri Kehn Thompson photo
Jeri Kehn Photos, Part 3: Three more photos of Mrs. Fred Thompson
More Jeri Kehn photos--> A follow-up to "Meet the Thompson Twins: Fred Thompson's wife, Jeri Kehn (with photos)
Not Jeri Kehn: people who are not Mrs. Fred Thompson, yet who often turn up in search engine searches on "Jeri Kehn"
Three new Jeri Kehn photos; links to Jeri photos; and Fred Thompson describes the beauty of having a hot first lady;
New photographs of Jeri Kehn Thompson on the campaign trail (and a couple of her husband Fred too)
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We beat The Beach Boys?

By Pablo Fanque,
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

and

Jack Brummet
All This Is That Poetry, Pranks, Paranormal, Pop, Painting, and Persiflage Editor

As you probably don't know, All This Is That is named after a Beach Boys song with the same name. The song itself is about eastern philosophy and meditation. Why did we name this blog All This Is That? Because we liked The Beach Boys, and we liked the way it sounded. And because All This IS That. It really is.

These days on most search engines (especially Google), All This Is That is the first result. We beat the Beach Boys! Jack's wife Keelin looked at us with a jaundiced eye when we told her that. Kind of a "OK. Who cares?" look. And she's probably right. It's narcissistic? Maybe. But it really just feels like a tiny bit of vindication. . .something we don't get a lot of. Just an acknowledgement that maybe four and a half years flogging this blog hasn't gone completely unnoticed...

Craven, 'though we may be, it's kind of cool. A video of the song appears below. . .


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Google presents: An incredible motherlode of photos from Life Magazine, soon to include 10 million images

Just last month, Life Magazine opened up their treasure trove of photographs and they are available here on Google.

Charlie Parker - click to enlarge

Marilyn Monroe in Capris - click to enlarge

The official Google blog goes into great detail on these images: "We're excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We're digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos."

Jackie Kennedy - click to enlarge


Crosby Stills Nash & Young - click to enlarge
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Could you pass the Acid Test at Google or Microsoft?

Over the years, I've known dozens of people who've interviewed at Microsoft, and who have been asked all sorts of insane questions in their interviews. In interviews, I have often found the simplest questions were the best, like "What is the last book you read, and when was that?" When is almost always instructive. The answer ranges from "on the bus coming here," to "7th grade."

The Pingdom website came up with this compilation of questions:

Questions by Google

How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

Describe a chicken using a programming language.

Questions by Microsoft

You have a bucket of jelly beans. Some are red, some are blue, and some green. With your eyes closed, pick out 2 of a like color. How many do you have to grab to be sure you have 2 of the same?

Pairs of primes separated by a single number are called prime pairs. Examples are 17 and 19.

Prove that the number between a prime pair is always divisible by 6 (assuming both numbers in the pair are greater than 6). Now prove that there are no ‘prime triples.’

Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o’clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs?

How much does a 747 weigh?

Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?
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Fiddling around with Grand Central from Google

As you might see on the sidebar, I've installed a Call Me! button.

This is kind of a mindf***er, really. Google Grand Central assigns me a telephone number (in my Seattle area code even) and if you click the button on my sidebar a 'bot will call you and connect you to the All This Is That voice mailbox. I can access all this from my smartphone or my computer or a a public PC. I chose the direct to voice mail option for calls from this blog (since Pablo Fanque and whatever scurrilous slander he decides to post generates plenty of hate mail.

They claim I have this phone number for life. This one phone number will ring me direct or via voicemail at any or all phones I use --work, home, and cell. I can even switch phones in the middle of a call. And it will call all my phones at the same time, if I choose that option, whichever one you pick up becomes your phone. I'm not explaining this well.

Other cool stuff--if you leave a message, I can post it directly to my blog with one button push. And I can download all the messages as MP3 files. A side benefit is that I can once again phone in voice calls to this blog (which has been defunct for two years). I tested this tonight (see below), but this looks to be interesting technology anyhow...if only for a voicemail box with no public number (and callers have the option of giving no name or number). Obviously I don't totally get it...but it's pretty cool. Or at least it seems like it tonight. Tomorrow morning, it may just seem about as exciting as Friendster.

I kind of stumbled reading this poem, since I'd never read it out loud before (and every time I do, I find several things I want to change because I don't like saying them out loud!). And my phone was fading in and out a bit, since I am in a weak cell area...but it kind of shows a little of what Grand Central can do. So, if you're ever in the mood, call the All This Is That Voicemail Box.




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