16 Sept 2005

It wasn't me, if that's what you're thinking

As a practitioner of the the cutting-edge, high-tech world of code monkeying, I spend a lot of time searching on Google. If I need a refresher on how I make my C# Windows Forms application connect to the service I just wrote, I could get that from the Visual Studio online help. After all, I do have Visual Studio up and running, otherwise why would I be wanting the answer? But even so, often Google gets me the answer faster than the online help, even if it ends up getting the text from the Microsoft's online version of that same help.

But have you ever tried asking google the really important questions? If you enter the phrase "Who stole my bagel?" you get back more than 140 hits, although this one is the best. Ever wanted to know "What's on the telly"? This is.

Of course, the trick is to have the whole search phrase in quotes. Otherwise, you can type in something like Did gordon ever give you back that lunch box? and get back a result like this. And without the quotes, it's kind of cheating, but I do like the way the search result puts it:

Hang on though - try "Who gave that monkey tequila?"

Maybe Google's not as clever as I thought.

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