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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> spike@rainier66.com <spike@rainier66.com> <br><br><o:p></o:p></p></div></div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal>>…BillW of course if you shop online for anything, you will be pummeled mercilessly for weeks by purveyors of that product. Nothing particularly creepy about that: the reason the WWW grew and prospered is that there are skerjillions of ways to hawk one’s wares there. So there was a lotta lotta money behind its explosive growth. Cool! <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>>…What I want to know now is if one enters the name of a product into the Google line without hitting Return, will it figure out what I was looking to buy? I have a Google window open right now. I enter “Wool sweater for sale” but I did not hit Enter. I will leave it there for a few minutes, then delete it without ever entering any site or search list. Then I will see if I get wool sweater spam. spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>OK cool, it’s what I already knew: if you Google on something you want to buy, your ad-driven sites will send you ads for that. No mystery, that’s how they make their living and why they give you free information on stuff you care about, no problem. I entered wool sweater for sale, a few minutes later accidentally hit return, OK we know what happens. Then I entered Pickup truck tires for sale, didn’t hit return, didn’t get ads (so far.)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>OK no surprises.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Now I want to find out how much the great internet marketplace can learn from my Google searches and my clickstreams, and I want to repeat the phone hotspot experiment, see if I can replicate what happened before. It might have been a coincidence, or the phone might have figured out my location (near one of the biggest wind generation areas) and sent me ads based on that, guessing that I went there to see the turbines. I might even be able to explain the hoodie ads that way too: I was near-ish to some textile mills. Shrugs.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Here’s what we should do: design some experiments find out what the market can find out about us.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Ideas?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></body></html>