While checking out Google Books for the first time today, I came across a 1967 edition of LIFE magazine. Of course, I had the most fun with the ads. This one reads:

- Do you know General Electric high intensity bulbs are now available everywhere?

- No, but if you hum a few bars I’ll fake it.

Classic. Why don’t ‘they’ make advertising like that anymore (whoever ‘they’ are)?

In a matter of moments (10/20/09 @ 11am MDT), Tony Stewart will sit attached to a real polygraph and spill the beans on his feelings about Whoppers. And, while he’s at it, he’ll answer a slew of visitor-submitted questions. And he’ll have to do all of this truthfully. Watch Tony under real pressure: TruthAboutTony.com.

I did read, also, that if the account stays up for review for more than 4 hours, they’ll have to consult a doctor.

Damn, these jokes could go on for hours…

Image courtesy of: http://www.thefringething.com

In keeping with good ‘ol user-commanded interactive online adfotainment (a là Subservient Chicken – which is amazingly still live), the Edinburgh Fringe Festival has launched a micro-site with a curious eggish-looking object the begs the user to poke and prod at it with various typable instructions. Two gentlemen (presumably?) in full-on bunny suits take your instructions and apply them to this thing. It’s lovely, hilarious, and incredibly fun.

The Fringe Festival itself is an annual Edinburgh venue for hundreds (really, hundreds) of troops putting on thousands of un-vetted, wildly artistic, and often brilliantly comical performances at makeshift stages throughout the city. It was formed in 1947 to provide organization for the 8 uninvited theatre troops who showed up to the Edinburgh International Festival, but were not able to perform under that umbrella. According to the edfringe.com website, “The Festival Fringe Society (commonly known as the Fringe Office) does not produce any of the shows, does not invite anybody to perform, does not run any venues and pays no fees to performers. We do, however, help performers every step of the way.” So, talk about free range and organic.

Which is what this object seems to be- an endlessly fun (well, at least until you run out of commands) egg to play with for no particular reason at all. Well done, well done indeed.

A particularly interesting article on NYT.com today describes one of the most bizarre media buys I’ve ever heard about. In Google’s relentless (and arguably noble/criminal/insane) efforts to digitize every book that ever was, the search giant found itself running up against the law. Copyright holders settled a class-action lawsuit with Google over the digitizing and online publishing of protected materials, and as part of the settlement Google will charge customers for the materials and pay the copyright holders a percentage. Seems like a fair deal.

However, this is where it gets interesting. The reached agreement, still subject to court approval, says that Google must make “reasonable and practicable” efforts to find the authors of the works in question to allow them to opt-out of the digitizing process. Because it’s an opt-out system, and because the world of books is, well, huge, it has meant Google has to make a proportionally huge effort to find these people. The Internet itself doesn’t even hold the names and contacts of all the authors of the world’s obscure titles. As such, Google is spending $7million on legal-notice ads in newspapers around the world. 

Kathy Kinsella, of Kinsella Media in Washington, was quoted in the article as saying, “We looked at how many books were published in various areas, and we knew from the plaintiffs and Google that 30 percent were published in the U.S., 30 percent in industrialized countries. The rest of the world is the rest.” That means Google is taking out ads in papers in Fiji, the Cook Islands, Greenland and many, many others.

The greatest irony, however, is the fact that Google is now the searcher, employing one of the oldest tools around, the newspaper. The very medium that Google itself continues to make obsolete is the only medium available for this mammoth undertaking. And the fact that they’re using these newspapers in an effort to specifically transition the world’s wealth of print to the Internet makes it that much stranger.

I would love to be on that media team, to see how you would even go about buying ads in almost every country in the world (minus Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Cuba and Myanmar for trade embargo and other legal reasons). The article talks about the media agency hiring a company to man the telephone line printed in all the notices, one that needs to accept calls in roughly 80 different languages.

It’s an interesting example of how the world transitions between technologies. Google does seem intent on being this unversal source of all knowledge and, be that a good thing or a bad thing, it is nonetheless fascinating to watch them in their pursuit.

First, I thought Google might be able to show us our true curiosity. By collecting the most basic inquisitive human sentiments I was hoping to see what people really want to know.

Why do…

• cats purr (217,000 results)
• men have nipples (456,000 results)
• dogs eat grass (370,000 results)
• men cheat (895,000 results)
• fools fall in love (794,000 results)

I think it’s clear that most people want to know about fools, love and relationships. Makes sense, I guess. I would imagine love would be higher up on the social conscious that man-nipples.

I was also curious to know who people are thinking or asking about.

Who is…

• my congressman (605,000 results)
• the stig (475,000 results)
• barack obama (71,900,000 results)

Apparently the overwhelming majority of info seekers are either trying to figure out who this Barack guy is, or they are searching for his deeper being – trying to find out who he really is. I would hope it’s the latter. Top Gear also seems to be popular, as shown by the nagging curiosity over the Stig’s true identity. And people are, apparently, at least interested enough in local politics to find out who their congressperson is.

But the one thing I think is a true indicator of our collective individuality is the following statement.

I am…

• bored (2,620,000 results)
• pregnant (16,900,000 results)
• the walrus (1,050,000 results)

Somewhat expectedly, 2.5 million pages are devoted to the topic of boredom. Nor is it surprising that 17 million pages address the topic of pregnancy. After all, information and entertainment are what the Internet was built for. I am somewhat surprised that there weren’t any deeper statements. There was no “I am in love,” or “I am confused,” or whatever else I thought people might be thinking hard about. And, as an ode to both The Beatles and The Big Lebowski, I’m not surprised that there are 1 million pages on “I am the Walrus.”

And no search through the dictionary is complete without looking up the word “dictionary” itself.

Google is…

• your friend (48,800,000 results)
• making us stupid (2,220,000 results)
• a number (186,000,000 results)

Perhaps Google is all three. A companion in times of (information) need, and sometimes also an inhibitor of personal intellectual growth. When was the last time you went to the library? Exactly. For me, though, the last one may be the most telling. It’s becoming this living, breathing statistic of how we live our lives and what we care about, worry about and think about. On one hand, our society is lucky to have a historian, guide and psychoanalyst as encompassing as Google. On the other hand, Google’s got our number – and that’s a bit frightening, if you ask me.

A little bit of slap-happy humor is always a good thing.

Holy mother of all things sacred, this has got to be the worst promotional video ever – not to mention how horrid the product itself looks. And Beamz? Even the name is fugly. Who would make such a thing? Even Sharper Image didn’t sell crap this bad. Anyway, I dare you to watch the whole video.