Well here is a new game to play, see what ads a Google search leads your name to.

This all came about since a colleague mentioned that the prolific and generous linking Stephen Downes had posted something on his “home page” about me. An…. ahem… full URL is always better, but just being curious, I used the search box on Stephen’s site which uses Google search. I lost interest in combing the results, but got curious about all the AdWord references to me.

And curiosity got the better of me so a clicking I went ….

My own vanity Google ego surf hits well voer a million pages, but hey, they are not all about me…. there are lawyers, mathematicians, art traders, knife retailers, a whole unruly mob. But over on the sidebar are my related adlinks:

which I explored one by one and perhaps sent a trickle of micro cents to each company. So here are the results (numbers referring to the image above).

1. My eBay Store turned out not to be me, purhaps long lost cousin “Michael” who appears to be an author of non fiction books. Hurry now, as you can pick up a copy of Triangle of Death (1997) for $1.99 and Deep Cover (1990) can be had for only $0.92!



2. “Find This Person” ends up being a bit more than phone numbers and addresses.. after a few web re-directs, a click leads you to a search form at Find People Today, with my name already in the form. And how many Alan Levines are there! 79 of ‘em from Arkansas to California, and more. The “details” link does not give you all of our personal details, no that will set you back another $39.95. You get “age, possible current address, up to 20 year history, phone numbers, tax liens, bankruptcies, property ownership, possible relatives, possible romm-mates, aliases/maiden names, marriages/divorces, DEA registration, and web site ownership”
   
   
   

   (Yikes! Holy… er “Whole-y” privacy!). I was a bit tempted to pay just to see what they really sell out there.

3. My Amazon ads featured even more of my vast array of publishing prowess! I’ve written from Mathematics to “Sensual Philosophy”:

   Discovering Higher Mathematics : Four Habits of Highly Effective Mathematicians — by Alan Levine; Hardcover (Rate it) Buy new: $94.95 — Used & new from: $21.95

   Sensual Philosophy by Alan Levine (Paperback – August 30, 2001)

4. Even more of “my” writing is listed at BestPrices where apparently I write about war topics under the pen name of “Alan J. Levine” including some pricey titles:
   • From the Normandy Beaches to the Baltic Sea Hardcover Book $111.95 By Alan J. Levine
     A brief, yet complete history of the Allied campaign for the liberation of Europe from the Normandy invasion to the surrender of Germany, this study describes not only what happened, but why it happened.
   • Stalins Last War Paperback Book $44.74 By Alan J. Levine
   • The Missile and Space Race Hardcover Book $108.59 By Alan J. Levine
     Here is a history of the development of military missiles and space travel from World War II to the American visits to the Moon in 1969-1972.
   • The Pacific War Hardcover Book $95.20 By Alan J. Levine
5. Lastly Media/Q’s listing of me possible as one of “25,000 journalists was a database bug dump:

   Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e57' 
   
   [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server] String or binary data would be truncated. 
   
   /adwordentry.asp, line 23
   

   Bummer.

So what do your ads say?