Found Not Lost

While stumbling around the world wide web on my laptop recently, I found an interesting article that adds to the Google stalking blog that I found previously.

I posted before about Google Stalking, the method that a lot of people have been using to find old friends and old loves just for curiosities sake. Google, in its early days was great for that, finding lost people. A lot of people were a little creeped out though and some even went to great lengths so that they are ‘Google Stalking’ proof.

However, there are some people who want to be found in Google. One example of these are business people who want their clients to be able to find them with ease. One way to do this is through the newest feature in Google, the Google Profile. When someone enters your name in Google search, they will still get the usual results that show the latest mention of your name on top, but if you have a famous namesake, your preferred target destination (could be your website) may not always show up until several pages later. With Google profile, when someone searches for your name, Google profiles for that name will appear at the bottom of the search page. Those profiles can then give the person searching the information that you want them to have without having to page through pages of search results.

This post on Read Write Web on how to Change What Google Says About You is an informative post to get you started on fine tuning the search results for your stalkers.

How do you like my new theme? I was kind of getting tired of the old minimalist theme so I thought I’d spruce things up around here. I was feeling kind of proud that I finally updated my WordPress to 2.6. I was at 2.3 for the longest time. Next, I went in search of a theme I liked, found it downloaded it and applied it to this blog.

Pretty good, eh? I forgot one thing though. I was so excited when I found this theme that I immediately downloaded it from whichever site it was that I found it on. I forget now. I forgot to follow my own advice about not downloading themes from third party sites.

Someone pointed out to me about a week later that I didn’t have the footer code that credits the creator of the theme. So I looked, and sure enough, the bottom of this page was blank and when you look at the source, there was just a bunch of gibberish code that is prefaced with the warning not to delete code beyond this point. The nerve!

When installing new themes, make sure there aren’t any weird codes like this floating around:

GNUY5QzgwRjEyRkZBRThCMjQwMDUyOEU4MUIzNEUgPSAid3BzbmMyIj\
sgQGV2YWwoJyRSMTRBRjFCRTlFRTI2QTkwOTIxRTY0QTgyRTc4MzY3OT\
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The one I found at the footer of this theme was about a whole page long! You can bet I applied the Fentraphen treatment to all that mess. LOL! Burned that sucker right up. I then found the same theme and dowloaded it again, sans the extra fat.

My blog find for today is Google Stalking. I think we’ve all done this before, Google someone’s name, an old friend, beau or foe, and see what they’re up to now. I just never thought about making a whole blog out of it! That’s what Google Stalking is all ABOUT:

Searching on Google for old and new classmates, lovers, roommates, employees, friends, teachers… Anyone you have ever met in your life. That is Google Stalking. You are a Google Stalker and these tales of Google Stalking are your stories.

The owners of this website have no affiliation with Google. As if there was any doubt. Dur.

They ask for people to submit their Google Stalking story:

Nothing should be held back when relaying your Google Stalking story, except for last names to respect the privacy of those you Google Stalked. We want you to submit all the dirty details, no matter how minor (though we prefer the major ones). We want you to tell us how you know the person you Google Stalked. We want to know what drove you to Google Stalk them. Most importantly, we want to know what you found from your Google Stalking.

and people really do submit candid and highly entertaining stories! I admit I’ve googled a few names or two and even found an old friend that I had lost touch with through googling.

Reading through some of the posts on the site, I can’t help but wonder about people’s motives when they Google an old acquaintance. Is there a perverse sense of curiosity, the type usually manifested in school reunions, that hopefully this person is worst off than you are? Sort of like the glee one would get in finding out the most popular cheerleader is now fat with six kids and is on welfare? Whatever the motives, I think it’s a fun and cathartic exercise to be able to write it down anonymously. It sure was fun reading about some of them.

Creating your own website, while doable, can be a long and involved process. My husband has been working on his website for months now and he’s constantly tweaking one feature or another and then having to scrap it and starting all over again. I come home from work sometimes and he’s ready to pull his hair out. Well, what’s left anyway.

If you are going to build a website and are not a webmaster by profession, you can save yourself a lot of headache and aggravation by hiring a web design company to do it for you. Network Solutions is one of those companies. They can set up your website from beginning to end, ultimately saving you time and money.

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