I pulled Digg from my RSS reader soon after they opened up more categories a month or so ago. That site was killed by Popular Website: Retard Influx Syndrome faster than anything I’ve ever seen. So I wasn’t up to date enough to check out the 20 million “private” search queries AOL published before it was pulled on the weekend.
Fortunately some enterprising souls have mirrored the files and created sites with searchable databases, so we can all practice our online private eye skills, or even better, get all visualist and create projects using the data!
(Un?)fortunately AOL doesn’t seem to have much of a hold in Australia, so photonbombing the searches wouldn’t be quite as topical here as in the US. It’s still interesting, humorous, depressing data though, perfect source material for random word space filling or visualization experiments in Processing.
Personally, I’ve just started working on translating the HPGL Label command for my Processing Plotter library. I’m thinking a forest of generative trees, their limbs spelt out in search queries like “MY NAME IS JAYMIS AND I DON’T LIKE MY WIFE SO MUCH ANY MORE“.