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The Search Engine Belt Buckle
ptorrone writes "Engadget shows how they made "The Search Engine Belt Buckle" a PDA-based device which shows 24 hours of all the bizarre and banal things people are looking for on the web. Art project or pointless hack? That's for you to decide, people are searching for some pretty freaky stuff out there, so why not put in a belt buckle and get on the scene like a sex machine?"
Oh, it looks cool all right. I want people to stop me on the street and ask about it.
"Excuse me, sir, but why does your belt say 'night diaper bondage'?"
Sigs cause cancer.
Art project or pointless hack? Why can't it be both?
Love the Third Amendment?
boy, this must work well with the girls!
"hey baby, check out my new search engine belt buckle"
I remember hearing that there is a monitor at google headquaters(i think it was in wired magazine) that scrolls random searches that are currently being done, cool idea.... but not new
So how many of us geeks were twisted enough to find out what came up when you searched for "Vampire shemale beastiality bondage"?
I for one will probably be having nightmares tonight...
Speckpot?
WTF! There are 38,600 matches for "night diaper bondage"
Okay that's it, we're all going straight to hell.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Is that a Google search on your belt or are you just happy to see me?
So how many of us geeks were twisted enough to find out what came up when you searched for "Vampire shemale beastiality bondage"?
Enough to ensure it'll make the list.
this is my sig
A belt buckle is a tombstone for a dead dick.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
If anybody actually wants to do something like this, it would probably make more sense to get a cheap LCD and a microcontroller. You could put together something that works similarly for maybe $20.
A great many people use search engines as modern-day confessional booths - supposedly confidential ways to bear their most personal and private thoughts (well, search engines are more useful, but suck at spiritual advice).
And who wouldn't want to listen in on a confessional booth every now and then? Sure you'll never know who made what search, but it's a peek inside someone's psyche that you would never get the chance to see otherwise. Mental voyeurism.
Plus you may (~may~) find out that everyone else really is as weird as you in private. But why you'd need this on a belt buckle is anyone's guess.
- HOORAY!
I guess if you have no other reason to get women to stare at you crotch, this will work.
Why the hell are they using video clips to display this information? Why not, you know, a text file of the search terms? This seemed cool and all, but when I saw that they were using Windows Media Player to do screen capture on a website, they instantly lost 50 square geek points. Square points!
.. at just how pointless this is.
Fine, they're thinking "outside the box" but all they've done is duct tape a pda to a belt. Scroll some video across it and all of a sudden it's a "hack"?
I should submit a story about the day I broke the power button on my PC and replaced it, that was a hella wicked hack!
Art project or pointless hack?
There's a difference?
Besides displaying search engine queries, this belt buckle also emits powerful female repellent rays. I doubt a girl would even get close enough to say "jesus christ that's the ugliest, geekiest thing I've ever seen."
-B
A much more entertaining game to play is, which product(s) is Engadget actually shilling in its latest article?
We all know that this is a commercial blog, so for this last article, was it Windows Media 9, Dogpile's SearchSpy, the PocketPC division of Microsoft, or some combination of them all?
Get off my launchpad!
Batman: Quick! Robin! The...batoogle...search..belt....
Robin: Wha?
Batman: Never mind.
There are a few places where you can check on live searches, and there are a lot of advertisers who are very interested in the results.
5 6041
http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/21
is a site which aggregates a lot of the searches.
On occasion, I find it quite relaxing watching the queries scroll up the screen like some wierdly twisted ascii lava lamp, and the content of some of those queries makes me feel reasuringly normal by comparison.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Ooh lemme try:
"furry androgyne ferret bestiality pyromaniac necrophilia kiddie elephantitis nasal sex pics"
Now THAT's deviant. DO I WIN!? (and if so) WHAT DO I WIN!?
A restraining order? Wow, thanks...
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
I've seen at least ten searches entitled "die slashdotters"
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
Great, now I feel compelled to visit google every few minutes and search for "The person wearing this belt is a sexual pervert".
That when you look at the Searchspy list, someone has recently searched for "die slashdotters" :p
Slightly pointless all in all, there's no real skill involved in using WMP on a PDA which you've essentially duct taped to yourself. Since most people won't actually see what it says (unless you're comfortable with the idea of a large group of men and women squatting in a nightclub, huddled around your crotch... but maybe that's your thing) it would be more fun to actually play a proper movie, like a disco scene or some psychadelic winamp-style visualisation, so you could actually appreciate the belt beyond about 6 inches away...