Quite possibly the best flow chart ever (via NY Times)

Happy Birthday Google!

The one website most responsible for the explosion of growth for the Internet over the last decade turns 9 today. They "do no evil", advocate for openness and transparency on the Internet, push for an interpretation of IP law that will allow for improved development and greater exploitation of future Internet tools and information aggregation, and continue to innovate, pushing their competitors to improve.

I remember the first time I used Google. I'd been a Yahoo! search user, but always felt that limited and frustrated when I attempted to search for something. At my dot-com job one day I became frustrated when unable to find an answer to a simple coding question. My co-worker, a skilled programmer by day and drummer by night, saw what I was doing and said "Worst!" - his catch phrase. "Man, why are you using Yahoo? Try Google. I just heard about it for a buddy, and I ain't goin' back."

I entered w-w-w-.-g-o-o-g-l-e-.-c-o-m into my fancy, new, IE-whoopin' Netscape browser. The logo, a search box, and a plain white background appeared on my screen. I typed in the same search I'd tried earlier. Google returned a plain, clean list of results. I clicked on the first one and had my answer. Game over.

Sure, people have concerns about the data they collect from users, but so long as they stick with their Mission, we'll all be alright. And Google will continue to improve. My birthday was yesterday. C's birthday is Sunday. Good to know that we're bookends to the endless repository of information named Google. Happy Birthday!

Happy 25th Birthday :-)

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes -- a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis -- as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message. . . .

Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.

"I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman. "Read it sideways." [Full Story]