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If you've visited the Logical Tips or Computor Companion sites, you may have noticed that they have little ads on the side or bottom of the pages from Google. The folks at Google use their search technology to figure out the contents of the Web page and then automatically provide ads that relate to the article.
It's cool technology, but it also can be somewhat hilarious, depending on the article topic. For most of the computer tips I write in the Tales from the Mousepad articles, Google serves up the standard nerdy ads you'd expect.
The Not Necessarily Nerdy Musings are a different story, however. You just never know what weirdo ad might appear. I mean, I've written about everything from dopey dog antics to pocket gophers and snakes.
In fact, in an article I wrote about snakes, you might think that Google would come up with ads for, well, snakes. But no, it has ads for mouse cursors. You have to wonder about the algorithm that gets you from snake to mouse. Hmm.
James recently signed up for GMail, which is Google's free Web mail product. As with their Web site ads, Google uses their technology to scan your e-mail and put in ads that relate to what you've written. I haven't joined since I sort of think the idea of Google scanning my e-mail is a little creepy,
However, James tells me that GMail ads are hilarious. As with my Not Necessarily Nerdy Musings, people write all kinds of things in e-mail, so you may get ads for all kinds of stuff. James is using his GMail account to communicate with his fellow nerds and he says the ads Google is coming up with are actually a great source of entertainment.
Who would have thought nerdy communication could be so amusing?
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