(empo-tuulwey) Testing tools in an amiable way

Online services are constantly adding new features, and when they are added, there is a subset of new people who like to try them out.

Perhaps you've seen a number of people taking generic Google searches and subsequently asking their Google+ friends about the topic used in their generic Google search. I first heard about the "Ask on Google+" feature via Danny Sullivan. To use the feature, (1) make sure you're logged into Google, and (2) be sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom of your Google search results. For some reason (Aunty Trust?), Google has chosen not to blatantly emphasize this capability.

And of course, I had to try it.

Hi there! I have a question about so why did this ask on google+ tip that danny sullivan talked about appear on the bottom of the page?...

I continued to experiment.

Hi there! I have a question about buying organic remote controls...

And it wasn't too long until this showed up:

Hi there! I have a question about enrage my ocelot...

The phrase, sort of an antagonist to Joker, the Amiable Ocelot, is one that I've been using for some time, in various forms. It may have first been used in this May 12, 2011 tweet:

Well enrage my ocelot! Boards of Canada ain't Canadian. They're like Scots and stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boards_of_Canada

A couple of months later, I was using the phrase on Google+ to see how long it took a Google+ phrase to propagate to Google's main search results. (This was before the tighter integration of Google+ and Google.)

Enrage my ocelot Captain Smirk! This is a test. I want to see how long it takes for a public post on Google+ to show up in Google's realtime search results.

I've used the phrase on occasion since. as this FriendFeed search indicates. Once, in a private FriendFeed comment, I even managed to work the word "vibrant" into the phrase (you'll recall that "vibrant" is one of the favorite words of movie/cigarette marketer Ludo Cremers).

But I hadn't used the phrase lately - that is, until I found myself reading up on Bill Griffith, most famous as the creator of Zippy the Pinhead. Apparently that reading session triggered the "enrage my ocelot" portion of my brain.

Now I can use various tools to find instances of this phrase. In addition to the aforementioned FriendFeed search http://friendfeed.com/search?q=enrage+my+ocelot, I can also search Google+ via https://plus.google.com/s/enrage%20my%20ocelot, and Google's regular search via https://www.google.com/search?&q=enrage+my+ocelot. I can also search Twitter via https://twitter.com/#!/search/enrage%20my%20ocelot, but that search (at least presently) has limited historical data and is therefore pretty much useless.

As time passes, my "standard" version of the phrase evolves. As of this morning, my current version of the phrase reads

Well enrage my amiable ocelot, Captain Smirk! A tool is not a way of life.

If I keep on expanding it, perhaps it will eventually become a NaNoWriMo project.

But then Disney may find the link between the phrase and its 1960s "Joker" character, and would probably sue me for copyright infringement.