Time for a little geek-out. If you haven’t tried Google’s new Suggest feature, you should. It’s pretty cool in that it does a search as you type. It’s already made the rounds on Slashdot and other geek sites. Somebody went through and tried each letter in the alphabet to get the alphabet according to Google:
A is for Amazon
B is for Best Buy
C is for CNN
D is for Dictionary
E is for Ebay
F is for Firefox
G is for Games
H is for Hotmail
I is for Ikea
J is for Jokes
K is for Kazaa
L is for Lyrics
M is for Mapquest
N is for News
O is for Online dictionary
P is for Paris Hilton
Q is for Quotes
R is for Recipes
S is for Spybot
T is for Tara Reid
U is for Ups
V is for Verizon
W is for Weather
X is for Xbox
Y is for Yahoo
Z is for Zip Codes
The ABC results remind me of another little Google feature: Zeitgeist. Somebody figured out that typing porn, xxx, or sex into Suggest gets you nothing. The combination of that and P being for Paris Hilton proves that most of Teh IntarWeb is still preoccupied with one thing. Other than dictionaries, that is.
Between Suggest and Gmail, Google is doing some really cool stuff with JavaScript. They’re introducing some really cool interfaces for Web applications that jolts me out of the mindset that it’s just for form validation, swapping images and popping windows. Of course, you’re also supposed to be able to customize a good portion if not all of Firefox via JavaScript as well. I guess it’s time to take another look.
One last note, last week, our CTO, who definitely falls into the geek category (I’m sure he won’t mind), introduced his geek co-workers to Keyhole, now owned by Google. The application is pretty amazing. One look at it and the mind boggles that the possibilites of marrying that sort of location information with the stuff that they’re already storing. Of course, I’m struggling not to go and shell out the $30 for a year subscription.