New Search Toy

Found via the sitemeter comes finderFACE, ". . . a homegrown web site devoted to keeping tabs on people in the public eye here in the UK. Every day the site scans Google News, Amazon Products, Flickr Photographs, YouTube Videos and Blog Posts to provide all content relevant to a person on a single page."

Amazingly enough someone found the blog via a John Terry post. Who'd have thunk it?

Just typed in "George Galloway", "Tommy Sheridan", "Noam Chomsky" and "John Rees" and nothing came up. Nada. Can you believe that? Doesn't finderFACE realise that those are the four most important people in the internet universe? Granted, I only reached that conclusion myself after doing a survey of Harry's Place, Kamm-buy-hooray-yah and er, that's it, but surely the decentists wouldn't lie to me?

Ok, it appears that fF is at the baby steps stage, so I'll cut it some slack. To get a flavour of it, I think I'll click on the random button to see which five celebs it will offer to me as people I need to know everything about in the here and now.

Here goes:

Franz Beckenbauer Fine. No complaints from this corner about the choice of Der Kaiser. Euro Championships starts next week, and I watched him being interviewed on an ESPN programme that is part of the build up to the tournament. The original Becks insists that the West Germany team that won the 1972 European Championship was the best ever German team. Better even than the World Cup Champions of 1974, and by the following European Championship, the West Germany team that lost to Czechoslovakia in the final on penalties were an aging team by that point. Before my time, so I'll take his word for it. OK, who's next up?

Damien Hirst Need an eye check up. At first glance, I thought it said Damon Hill. Yeah, whatever, not that bothered. See when the enfant terrible of the modern art world dies in sixty years time (see I don't wish an early death on him or anything), I'll hear the news and my first thought will be: the bloke who directed the crappest video in the history of pop music has just died. No thoughts of formaldehyde or a pharmacy will cross my mind; just that crap video for that shite song . . . which will be ironic because I will be thinking those thoughts via my disembodied head which has been preserved in formaldehyde and will be sitting on the shelf of a Futurama like Pharmacy. Moving quickly on (and away from that piss poor joke). Who's next via the random button?

David Bowie OK, what's the Thin White Pluke up to these days? I know he lives in New York but we hardly shop in the same deli. Mmm, this looks interesting, David Bowie: 'PAUL WELLER, GIVE ME MY HAIRCUT BACK!'. Never knew that Bowie and Weller have been known to have crossed words. According to the linked to NME snippet, it turns out they've traded barbs in the past in the music press but Bowie is now being concilliatory after Weller briefly left 1966 and moved his time machine to 1972 to check out some new acts. Apparently Weller digs Bowie, and he has said as much in recent interviews . . . but there's no word back yet on what he thinks of Chicory Tip. Bowie's accepted the olive branch and even said by way of a joke that Weller should give him back his haircut. That'll be the one that Weller sports today, and which Bowie claims he was wearing back in '67. Word of warning to Bowie that he is on a slippery slope with the requests to other entertainers for giving things back. As I write, there is a séance taking place in a boarding house in Westcliff-on-Sea and the ghost of Anthony Newley is asking David Bowie for his career back. Moving on to the next celeb. Maybe finderFACE will find a female celeb this time. 0/3 isn't good going.

Frank Carson Frank Carson? Who has editorial control over compiling these lists? Stuart Maconie? OK, I now know that Frank is still alive. Fair play for still cracking the funnies at the ripe old age of 81. And I now know that he's of Italian descent, and that there once was a 'Little Italy' in Belfast. What else? His nephew is on the books at Sunderland FC as a promising goalkeeper and Frank's the director of Chasetown FC. (Think I already knew that 'cos of Chasetown's recent FA Cup run.) What else can I say about Frank? . . . nope, that's it. Maybe, with the last push of the random button, the website will acknowledge 51% of the population. Here's hoping.

Napoleon Bonaparte OK John Terry . . . Der Kaiser . . . Hirst . . . Bowie . . . .Frank Carson and now Napoleon? Guess that confirms my growing suspicion that the website must be an offshot of Nuts magazine. I guess the idea is that you check out the main Nuts website for the female celebs in a state of undress and then, when the mood takes you, you click on finderFACE for a quick two minutes of blokedom. I know that if I'd clicked on the random button for another twenty clicks it would have been nothing more than a merry-go-round of Rodney Marsh . . . Michael Caine . . . Keith Moon . . . Ally McCoist . . . Jonny Wilkinson . . . Lewis Hamilton . . . Liam Gallagher . . . Jimmy Carr . . . Jeremy Clarkson . . . Roy 'Chubby' Brown . . . and Johnny Vaughan. Yeah, not impressed. Back to the matter of the little general? What's to know? Our 21lb Menshevik Internationalist Boston Terrier has a napoleon complex and there's a documentary on Abel Gance that I taped weeks ago and I've yet to get round to watching it. Cheers finderFACE for the gentle reminder.