A Blast From The Past

For Google's tenth birthday they've put up a search of their old index from 2001 (it's not ten years ago, but it's the oldest they've got). It's interesting to have a look at how some thins have changed.

One of the big changes is the absence of Wikipedia. Today Wikipedia turns up in nearly every search you make, but was barely heard of back then. The same applies to IMDB.

Kevin Rudd has gone from being number 3 on the first page to being the whole first page. John Howard went from just being number one to being number one to five. Paris Hilton was apparently a hotel in France. An iPod was on of these. The "neil" was not Neil Armstrong but Neil Young¹. Wow had an entirely different meaning. Podcast was a word in czech but not any other languages.

Many terms relating to TV shows have had their results change a lot (Battlestar is a good example).

blog only returned about 76400 results in 2001, but now gives more than 3770000000.

Anyway, have a look and play around with it.

1 To be the "name" is to be the top result in google when you search for just the first name. E.g. Neil Armstrong is the Neil (it used to be Neil Gaiman), Sarah Palin is now the Sarah , and Kevin Rudd is the Kevin.

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Writing time: longer than necessary
Time since last post: I think one day
Current media: The Hollowmen

History Time

What notable event occurred on April 16, 1178 BC?

It turns out that this date is believed to be the day Odysseus returned home and slew the suitors of his wife Penelope.

Some researchers used a series of astronomical references in the Odyssey to narrow down the date. After analysis of the clues they came back with just one possible date.

This also seems to make it plausible that there is at least some basis in fact to the story. The consistency of the events adds credibility to the story, and it seems unlikely Homer was a great enough astronomer to get such details in his story correct. Of course, this is not to say that the story should be taken as entirely true (I'm pretty sure there aren't cyclops and witches who turn men into pigs), but certainly that someone had a big adventure on his way home from the Trojan War.

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Writing time: 28 minutes
Current media: Yes Minister

This is Nifty

I found this over on Neil Gaiman's blog. It's a tool that takes a given text and creates a tag cloud sort of thing out of it. I decided to see what it would make of this site. Here is the result.

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Writing time: 5 minutes
Current media: None

An Interesting Read

Via slashdot I came across an economics paper entitled The Theory of Interstellar Trade. It's nothing too complicated, just a look at a few factors affecting interstellar trade between two planets. I wish to point it out mainly for the fact that the guy who wrote knows more than just economics. His choice of Trantor as the Earth's notional trading partner speaks for his sci-fi cred. And his diagram of a rotation about an imaginary axis is quite novel (you'll have to see for yourself).

I highly recommend it.

Edit: It has been pointed out that the link provided no longer works. To facilitate the dissemination of this fine work, I have taken the liberty of creating an alternate source. The link has been updated.

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Writing time: 17 minuts
Time since last post: 6 days
Current media: Star Trek Voyager season 2