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What does Google think of you, your friends, your neighborhood, or your favorite movie? If you've ever wondered what people think of your home town, your favorite band, your favorite snack food, or even you, Googlism (http://www.googlism.com/) may provide you something useful.

39.1 The Interface

The interface is dirt simple. Enter your query and check the appropriate radio button to specify whether you're looking for a who, a what, a where, or a when. You can also use the tabs to see what other objects people are searching for and what searched-for objects are the most popular. A word of warning: some of these are not work-safe.

39.2 What You Get Back

Googlism will respond with a list of things Google believes about the query at hand, be it a person, place, thing, or moment in time. For example, a search for Perl and "What" returns, along with a laundry list of others:

Perl is a fairly straightforward Perl is aesthetically pleasing Perl is just plain fun

Among the more humorous results for Steve Jobs and "Who" are: steve jobs is my new idol

steve jobs is at it again

steve jobs is apple's focus group

To figure out what page any particular statement comes from, simply copy and paste it into a plain old Google search. That last statement, for instance, came from an article titled "Innovation: How Apple does it" at http://www.gulker.com/ra/appleinnovation.html.

39.3 Practical Uses

For the most part this is a party hack—a good party hack. Its a fun way to aggregate related statements into a silly (and occasionally profound) list.

But that's just for the most part. Googlism also works as a handy ready-reference application, allowing you to quickly find answers to simple or simply-asked questions. Just ask them of Googlism in a way that can end with the word is. For example, to discover the capital of Virginia enter The capitalofVirginia. To learn why the sky is blue try Thereasonthe skyis blue. Sometimes this doesn't work very well; try theoldestpersoninthe world and you'll immediately be confronted with a variety of contradictory information. You'd have to visit each page represented by a result and see which answer, if any, best suited your research needs.

39.4 Expanding the Application

This application is a lot of fun, but it could be expanded. The trick is to determine how web page creators generate statements.

For example, when initially describing an acronym, many writers use the words "stands for." So you could add a Googlism that searches for your keyword and the phrase "stands for." Do a Google search for "SETIstandsfor" and "DDRstandsfor" and you'll see what I mean.

When referring to animals, plants, and even stones, the phrase "are found" is often used, so you could add a Googlism that located things. Do a Google search for sapphiresarefound and jaguarsarefound and see what you find.

See if you can think of any phrases that are in common usage, and then check those phrases in Google too see how many results each phrase has. You might get some ideas for a topic -specific Googlism tool yourself.

Hack 40 GooglePeople

People who need GooglePeople are the luckiest people in the world.

Sometimes on the Web it's hard to separate the signal from the noise. It's also hard to separate information about people from information about everything else. That's where GooglePeople (http://www.avaquest.com/demos) comes in. GooglePeople takes a "Who Is" or "Who Was" query (e.g., "Who was the first man on the moon?" or "Who was the fifth president of the United

States?") and offers a list of possible candidates. It works well for some questions, but for others it's way off base.

40.1 Using GooglePeople

GooglePeople is simple: enter a "Who Is" or "Who Was" question in the query box. GooglePeople will think about it for a minute or three and provide you with a list of possible candidates to answer your question, with the most likely candidate on top, the other candidates listed underneath and rated for relevance with a series of asterisks.

Click a candidate name for a Google query integrating your original query and the candidate's name; this provides a quick test of the validity and usefulness of the GooglePeople query at hand.

40.2 Tips for Using GooglePeople

I found that for some questions GooglePeople worked very well. Who was the first African American woman in space? was answered perfectly. But some questions had GooglePeople perplexed.

40.2.1 Books and authors

GooglePeople seems to have a bit of trouble with identifying the authors of fiction books. For example, asking Whoistheauthorof "GalahadatBlandings", GooglePeople will not confidently give an answer but will suggest that the most likely person is Bertie Wooster. Bertie is close, but no cigar; he's a fictional character created by the same author of Galahad at Blandings—P. G. Wodehouse—but he's far from an author. GooglePeople was able to state with confidence that Mark Twain was the author of Huckleberry Finn.

40.2.2 Numbers

Sometimes expressing numbers as numbers (1st) rather than words (first) makes a lot of difference in results. Asking GooglePeople about the first person to do something versus the "1st" person to do something can lead to very different results, so be sure to try both versions.

40.2.3 Mind your questions

Finally, don't try subjective questions if you seriously expect a good answer. Asking GooglePeople, Who's the most popular singer? or Who is the smartest person in theworld? can net you some wild answers.

40.3 Using GooglePeople

While GooglePeople can appear to be a toy, it does come in handy for ready-reference questions. Obviously, you should be sure to double-check any answers you get against the full list of web answers for your question. And remember, just because it's on the Web doesn't mean it's credible!