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If you have a digital camera, then you know it uses templates for the name of the saved photos. For example, some Kodak cameras use this name convention: dcp#####.jpg, where ##### is replaced by a number, HP Photosmart uses IM######.jpg. Many people are too lazy to change the default file names and some of them upload the photos to their sites. Some of their sites are crawled by Google.

Random Personal Picture Finder is a site that generates random file names using the name conventions for some popular digital cameras and sends them to Google Image Search. The result is a list of unrelated personal pictures. Some would say they're a snapshot from our daily life, others will appreciate the diversity of the photos. They're people you don't know, doing familiar things, in a chaotic mix.

Note: if you don't want to see "adult images", choose strict SafeSearch in the settings.

Fortune has an interesting article about Google's management called Chaos by design. Adam Lashinsky illustrates the difference between Google and other companies using a weird situation:

"Take the case of Sheryl Sandberg, a 37-year-old vice president whose fiefdom includes the company's automated advertising system. Sandberg recently committed an error that cost Google several million dollars -- "Bad decision, moved too quickly, no controls in place, wasted some money," is all she'll say about it -- and when she realized the magnitude of her mistake, she walked across the street to inform Larry Page, Google's co-founder and unofficial thought leader. "God, I feel really bad about this," Sandberg told Page, who accepted her apology. But as she turned to leave, Page said something that surprised her. "I'm so glad you made this mistake," he said. "Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don't have any of these mistakes, we're just not taking enough risk."

This example speaks a lot about Google's attitude. They launch a lot of products, without thinking too much about their future or if they're going to be successful. Even if you make mistakes, there's always a lesson to be learned.

The article also mentions some interesting details about Google Earth, a software that has been downloaded more than 100 million times. Google makes money from Google Earth by placing ads and by offering users Google Toolbar. "We know the lifetime value of a toolbar user. So we know how much value we're getting back out of somebody who downloads Google Earth and then subsequently downloads the toolbar," says Marissa Mayer. Instead of charging users for Google Earth (a Microsoft-like attitude, and the initial strategy of Keyhole), Google chose to monetize their software in a not-so-obvious way.

Google also decided to transform orkut's failure in an opportunity to learn more about social networks. They'll provide search and ads for MySpace. "Winning MySpace kept the Web's gem of the moment out of the hands of Microsoft and Yahoo, which both privately claim that Google overpaid by several hundred million dollars. Whether that's true won't be known for years."

If this chaotic way of doing business will continue to work for Google, that remains to be seen. But if you're doing things chaotically, it's always a good idea to control the situation, at least apparently. Chaos has a small chance of creating a better order by innovation, but a small change can lead to butterfly effects.

FoxyTunes is a Firefox extension that lets you control a music player from the browser. The idea is not original, but this add-on supports a lot of music players (from Winamp, iTunes to RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Amarok and foobar2000) and autodetects the current player. You can even use keyboard shortcuts if you don't like to click on small buttons.

If you use Winamp, you can obtain a similar effect by selecting the modern skin and entering the "Windowshade mode", a mini version of Winamp that could remain always on top. Windows Media Player can also be minimized to a small player integrated into the taskbar.

So why would you install this extension? Well, maybe you use a player that doesn't have a mini mode. Or maybe you want to use the search functionality of FoxyTunes. You can find information about the artist, song lyrics, videos and buy songs from iTunes. Foxytunes takes advantage of the new medium by letting you play files linked in a web page.

The interface is customizable and there are skins you can download. If you spend most of your online time in Firefox, it's a good idea to try this extension.

Related:
SongBird - Firefox as a media player
If Google developed a music player...

After a Belgian press organization sued Google for copyright infringement and won, World Association of Newspapers decided to create "an automated system for granting permission on how to use their content", reports Reuters. The system will be called Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP).

If you're wondering why a such a system would be useful, you're not the only one. "Since search engine operators rely on robotic 'spiders' to manage their automated processes, publishers' Web sites need to start speaking a language which the operators can teach their robots to understand. What is required is a standardized way of describing the permissions which apply to a Web site or Web page so that it can be decoded by a dumb machine without the help of an expensive lawyer."

The publishers seem to ignore the fact that there is a system that lets you control what pages you want search engines to crawl: it's called robots.txt and it's available to every site owner. Probably some sites have an extremely valuable content and they need a new permission system, that will match their inflated self-importance.

Publishers were kind enough to offer an example: "In one example of how ACAP would work, a newspaper publisher could grant search engines permission to index its site, but specify that only select ones display articles for a limited time after paying a royalty." It's very strange to see this example. If you allow a search engine to crawl your site, you also allow it to display a small excerpt from the article (or at least the headline). If a site pays you to display the full articles (like Yahoo News), that site already knows it has the right to republish the content. Other sites, like Google News, send the visitors to the source of the article and they only aggregate and cluster articles.

I think news sites should be treated the same like the rest of the sites, and it's not necessary to create a new system for giving permissions to index a site.

Related:
Google Belgium homepage displays the court order
More about Google News