Mindless Memes

Here’s one of those mindless memes that’s going around via one group of bloggers or another – I extended it a little – the original was to type the first three letters of your first name into Google and list/link the first five sites that popped up – I figure, despite its ubiquity, there are other search engines out there in which to plug “dan”…

Google:

Divers Alert Network (and several of the next few links were different national chapters of this, so I lumped them together)
Dan Public Transportation Co Ltd (Tel Aviv area public transit company)
Defeat Autism Now! (mission of the Autism Research Institute)
Dan Hibiki (character from Street Fighter Alpha video games)
Dan’s Data (“pc hardware and gadgets independently reviewed”)

Yahoo:

Dana Holding Corporation (Yahoo’s financial information for this company, ticker abbreviation “DAN”)
Divers Alert Network (this time, just the main organization’s site)
Dan (Wikipedia’s page for the name Dan, plus a list of other possibile wikipedia pages)
dan rank (Wikipedia’s page for the Japanese system of martial arts ranks)
Dan Seals (Country Music Television’s artist page – edit: no longer exists)

Bing (MSN):

Dan (MSN’s Encarta encyclopedia listing for the name, in Spanish – edit: discontinued by Microsoft)
Divers Alert Network (this time, just the main organization’s site, and the only search result in English)
Dnevne Novine (website for Yugoslavian newspaper)
Dan om E-handel (Swedish blogger Dan Nilsson – looks like random commentary on stuff that catches his attention)
el dan (Spanish version of the dan ranking system on Wikipedia)

Dogpile:

The first four are a mix from above – Dana Holding Corp, Divers Alert Network, Defeat Autism Now, and the Wikipedia entry (English) for my name. The fifth:
BrainLog (Blog of software engineer and tech writer Dan Sanderson)

AltaVista:

Same five as Yahoo’s search engine, though in a different order – not surprising since AltaVista is now owned by Yahoo.

Lycos:

Divers Alert Network
Wikipedia listing for my name (English version)
Chinese Opera (Wikipedia listing for the term for female leading roles in Chinese opera)
Dana Holding Corporation
Dan Rather Reports (Yahoo’s online store page for hi-def DVDs of Dan Rather’s news broadcasts)

Ask.com:

Divers Alert Network again
Ticketmaster event schedule for The Dan Band (comedy band specializing in “covers” of all-female band songs)
Defeat Autism Now! again
Dan Dare (Wikipedia page for this British science fiction hero)
Scattered Blog (blog of freelance web developer Dan Cameron)

And, finally, just for kicks, the “computation knowledge engine”, Wolfram Alpha:

Just one listing, for the name Dan, complete with statistics on how common it is and related numbers… though it also has a link to click on to convert it to a “unit” instead of a “name”, which yields up a page on the Chinese dan, a mass roughly equivalent to “the weight of an adult human body”, or ? 70kg (thankfully, this Dan weighs in at a bit less than that dan).

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