In 2002, Google brought us PigeonRank.

Today, Ask brings us RhymeRank. Check out the results for Crooked Timber (right-hand side of the screen) or try the service on your favorite search term. [UPDATE 4/2: As of April 2nd these results are no longer available.]

Yahoo! went a bit too geeky on this judging from reactions to my various past posts by making their April Fool’s all about Web 2.0 and calling it “All Your Web 2.0 Are Belong To Us”. After all, if you don’t know what Web 2.0 is then you’re certainly not going to find that post amusing. In any case, it’s just a blog post on their Search Blog, it’s not as though they introduced a whole new service.

What other April Fool’s have you come across today? No, they do not have to be search related.

This year’s Google April Fool’s joke is Google Romance, a service that will help you find your romantic match. It’s sort of cute, although I think some of their past jokes have been better.

The site does bring up something I have been meaning to blog about so I’ll take this opportunity. It concerns the paradox of matching services such as dating Web sites or job search sites. I haven’t thought about this issue too much, but enough to blog about it. (What’s the threshold for blogability, by the way?:)

Services such as dating and job search sites promise the user to find a perfect match, whether in the realm of romance or the labor market. But deep down, is it really in the interest of these sites to work well? After all, if they do a good job then the seekers are no longer relevant customers and the sites lose their subscribers.

One way to deal with this is to offer additional services that go beyond the matching process. For example, the match-making site eHarmony now has a service for married couples. It is an interesting idea. It seems like a reasonable way to expand their user (subscription!) base so they are not dependent on keeping matchless those whom they promise to connect. Moreover, I can see that they may have quite a loyal user base in those whom they helped find their matches. Job sites can also offer services that go beyond the initial match. Nonetheless, I think there is an interesting tension in all this.

On a not completely unrelated note: Happy Birthday to GMail! Fortunately, that was not an April Fool’s two years ago. I came across the Google Romance notice on Google’s homepage, because I saw the GMail birthday icon and wanted to see if they had it in bigger on the Google homepage (a page I never visit otherwise, because why would I in the age of search toolbars). The birthday image is not reproduced there, but I did see the Romance link. (Yes, I’m obsessed with knowing how people end up on various sites and I’m projecting here by assuming that anyone else cares.)

You may have to be a pretty particular breed to appreciate the following, but I can’t be the only one around here.:) I found this Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character quiz quite entertaining. I scored 33 and while it is probably a sign of something positive that I didn’t score higher, I was still a bit disappointed. My point range gets the following recommendation: “As your doctor, I recommend moving out of your parents’ basement.” The whole thing is quite amusing, try it. Don’t look at the score chart until you’ve taken the quiz, you don’t want to spoil that part of the fun.

Here is another Lifehacker feature for you by yours truly: Unique photo gift ideas. Note the kid illustration. That’s me.:) I decided to live out the 15 minutes of baby fame I never got back when. Once back at my machine, I’ll post the image on Flickr in full size and will add a link here, in case you’re curious.

UPDATE: I’ve posted the images: greeting card, movie poster.

Oh-oh, my blog is becoming a mere link farm. Sorry, dear reader.

Here is an anecdote for you. I was in the AAA office the other day getting suggestions for a trip. The guy suggested I go through Milwaukee.* He mumbled something about a metamorphosis. I did not quite understand what he was saying so I asked: “What do you mean?”. He then simply said: “Oh, a change.”

This was cute, because it wasn’t the word metamorphosis that I needed clarified. I just hadn’t heard enough of the sentence to know what he was talking about. I guess it makes sense for him to then give a synonym for the word. (I could write lots of posts about things I have misundestood in the past. This is par for the course.)

When I hear “Metamorphosis” I usually imagine it with a capital M. I read Kafka’s play back in high school in German class. Yes, it was a pretty intense German class to be reading works like that in the original. The grand treat for the year was that our teacher took us to Broadway to see the play performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov as Gregor Samsa.** It was an amazing experience for a bunch of high school students. It likely would’ve been for people at other stages in their lives as well, but it seemed extra special then.

So much for hearing the word “metamorphosis” at AAA.

* No, traveling through Milwaukee did not make sense for this trip, in case any of my readers were curious about the final route.:)
** My family was living in the US at the time. We were spending a year in Storrs, CT.

Retrievr is an interesting experiment in matching up people’s sketches with photos on the photo-sharing site Flickr (granted, for now limited to a small segment based on interestingness). There is definitely room for improvement, but it’s an interesting idea even if a bit off the mark regarding the matches for now.

I tried the service by creating some sketches of Christmas trees thinking there should be plenty in the recent Flickr pool.

Of these four, only the last one yielded any Christmas trees as results (only one of which was not itself just a drawing). The other hits were pretty random both in terms of shape and color depicting anything from cats and birds to close-up shots of flowers. One architecture image did make sense since it really does look like a tree (as noted by its creator in the photo’s title as well).

I played around with the system a bit more and realized that it may be most interesting for retrieving pictures based on color distribution. A blue-orange square yielded photos dominated by related colors.

It’s easy to find photos on Flickr based on topic (e.g. using tags or groups), but less obvious to find images based on color combination (there are exceptions, but these modes are less widespread). It is perhaps in that realm that Retrievr holds the most promise for now.

UPDATE: Here’s a pretty neat match:

Wow, there is some serious pumpkin-carving talent out there.

Halloween costume,
originally uploaded by eszter.

In true geek fashion I wore an Internet-related costume to class today. I put all sorts of signs on myself that said things like “Enter your password here”, “Click here to update your account”, PayPal, eBay, some login screens and emails. I also held a plastic fish in my hand. That was the main clue perhaps.

I had never dressed up as a verb before. It had its set of challenges.

In case you’re still wondering, my costume was “phishing“.

A few students also came dressed up to class. We had a mouse with ears and “right click”, “left click” buttons, which I thought was really funny. And we also had a superwoman, someone who put on an actual real costume. I supplied the candy and had posted a flash ghost animation game on the class blog a few days before so we were definitely in Halloween mode.

In the spirit of Halloween here are two games for your weekend amusement. (Warning: both come with audio on.)

• Dark and Stormy Night starring ghost Jinx – very basic, but still cute and fun (and should be especially enjoyable for kids)
• Transylmania – vampire with a teddy bear, very cute

[thanks]

Frappr!,
originally uploaded by eszter.

Frappr is a new service based on the wonderful Google Maps. People can add themselves to the map based on affiliation with the map’s theme such as a certain group membership.

Despite the fact that it seems like many E-BLOG readers are not nearly as into online geeky goodness as I am, I have started one for visitors of this blog and my Flickr account. Just go to the map and click on Add Yourself in the right-hand column. You’ll be asked to enter your name, your zip code (or city for non-U.S. locations), a comment (called “shoutout”) and a picture. If you’re not feeling inspired for the shoutout, you can just say hi.

C’mon, you can do it. You can leave a cartoon instead of your real picture if you prefer.

Do you like to play sudoku? Do you prefer images over numbers? You may for this game. Picture sudoku lets you choose images from photo-sharing site Flickr with which to fill your sudoku puzzle. You can specify the tag and/or the user whose images you want to integrate into the game.

Examples:
Chicagoland sudoku (with just my photos)
turtle sudoku (with everyone’s photos)
long-shadow sudoku (with everyone’s photos)
chocolate sudoku (with everyone’s photos)

As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

The game also gives you a “blank” with which to erase placement of photos. If you are intrigued by a picture and want to see it in full size on Flickr then just click on the asterisk next to its name in the left-hand column.

Have fun!

[thanks]

My Southpark character,
originally uploaded by eszter.

A few weeks ago I had Meetro running and communicated with a few folks. One of them created this Southpark character based on the photo of me on my Meetro profile. If you know me you know that this isn’t exactly what I look like. That said, it’s a pretty good rendering of the picture.

FYI, Meetro is an instant messaging application that adds a geographical component to interactions by letting you know who from the network is in your physical proximity.

[Also posted on CT.]

I am so glad that somebody finally wrote this piece regarding press fascination with iEverything. (The author does acknowledge Slate’s history with Microsoft.) The article also links to this great spoof ad, which summarizes much of the point quite well.

There is absolutely no need to educate me about the merits of Mac products. I used to and still do own several. That’s not the point here, which you’ll understand if you read the article for what it is.

My result after taking the Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you? Quiz:

I’m not sure what to make of this. It’s probably best not to make much of it given that I have no idea how things were figured out. It’s fun especially since I got the Yoda picture. That’s good enough for me.:) (No, I did not change my answers even in cases where I thought I was definitely not going to be aligned with Yoda given my choices.)

This map shows the geographical location of E-Blog visitors, courtesy of gvisits.com. This one is the map for Eszter.com.

UPDATE: I just realized the maps only show the geo location of the last twenty visitors, fyi.

Socializing with Lego Lady,
originally uploaded by eszter.

I loved playing with legos when I was a kid. I remember constructing an entire town with my brother one time. It was super fun.

Most toy stores in the US that carry legos usually sell complicated preconstructed elements. My interest has always been in starting from scratch with the very simple little bricks.

I finally found a lego store that I thought would have the basic bricks. I walked into the store enthusiastically. The store clerk who greeted me started with a simple question: “What age is the child?”. Ouch. Now how is that a good marketing plan? If I had been any less confident about my legitimate lego interest I would have turned around or had pretended I was shopping for a kid. Instead I just raised my arm and pointed my index finger at me. Then I asked for the basic bricks section.

In this same mall – located on Michigan Ave aka Magnificent Mile section in Chicago – is this lego lady at the West end of the third floor. There’s a guy on the east end of the second floor near the store itself. I wonder if I’ll find any others during my next visit.

Learn the ways of the farm with the help of Ham Solo, Chewbroccoli, C3Peanuts, Tofu D2, Obi Wan Cannoli, Cuke Skywalker, Lord Tader and Princess Lettuce. [thanks]

I didn’t write this post.

This just came through on Drago Radev’s IList:

I was visiting a government office recently and I noticed the following sign at the entrance:

By this time in the week most people are ready for a break (that’s probably why you’re checking out blogs in the first place, right?:). Here is an amusing link (in that geeky sort of way at least:).

• Get Perpendicular! (you’ll want to check this out when you can have the sound turned on)