The Unintentional Self-Googler

Urbandictionary.com defines “self-googling” as the “act of using the Google search engine to look yourself up.”

Now, I imagine that just about every living soul who has ever used Google for research has engaged in self-googling. I’ve treated myself to the indulgence many times over the years. But until recently, I have never experienced it in such an…unexpected way.

You see, I’m a big fan of Google and all the various Cloud-based and other apps that the company produces: Google Mail, SketchUp, Google Sites, the list goes on. Last year, in a frenzied fit of programming, I decided to tackle Twitter development by creating a custom Windows WPF application that periodically posted online article URL’s (of interest to parents and families) from a database on my PC to my Twitter account, every five minutes. Well, naturally, if you’re going to tweet content at that volume and that frequently, you will most definitely need to populate your database with an abundance of said URL’s.

There was no way that I was going to waste my time trolling the interweb for articles, copying and pasting URL’s into my database. And I had not yet discovered the secret of employing low-wage Filipina Virtual Personal Assistants (and especially since I’m of Filipino descent, it almost seems a bit unethical somehow...something akin to using your kids for forced child labor...). I determined to leverage existing services in the Cloud to find fresh sources of news, and made the joyful discovery that I could transform my Google searches into automated Google Alerts that would pop up obediently in my inbox literally within hours of being published to the web. Since I was using OutLook at the time, I could write custom code to strip the URL’s out of the incoming emails and push them into my database. From there, my custom app would post random article URL’s to Twitter. Voila! Instant news service! In fact, I wrote a little article about the app on codeproject.com.

What I soon realized was that, even though I was saving a gazillion man-hours in searching the web for content by having Google do it for me, I still had to do a ton of manual analysis and editing of the data that I scraped from the alert emails. It just became too time-consuming to read through hundreds of links each day, and I eventually abandoned the project.

Fast forward to the present: I’m currently working on a writing project that chronicles how some professionals have improved their quality of life by “workshifting”, telecommuting or working remotely. I decided to monitor online news sources for stories or developments, and, of course, set up some Google alerts. Among the twenty-something search key words that I configured was “workshifting”.

In the meantime, I had joined http://www.workfromhomeboard.com, a site for remote workers (or those who want to become such), in hopes of finding more subjects to interview. I even created the following thread to solicit stories from the forum members:

Calling All Workshifters (telecommuters): I'd Like To Hear From You!

Are you one of the thousands of people who use their PC and the web to work from home (among other places), either part- or full-time?

I’d like to hear from other folks out there who, like me, are “workshifting” (the new replacement buzzword for “telecommuting” – no kidding).

Writers, bloggers, web designers, engineers, developers, affiliate marketers, graphic designers, consultants, sales, customer service, doesn’t matter.
If your job is location independent, using technology that allows you to work from home, the internet cafe, on the beach, or even from the other side of the world, please take a moment to email me with your answers to the following:

In a sentence, describe your work: self-employed, or working for a company?

Do you spend part of your time in a traditional office space?

Are you single or married?

Are you a work-at-home Mom?

Are you a parent of a baby, pre-school/school-age children, or teens?

Are you taking care of aged parents?

Are you disabled?

Does workshifting allow you to volunteer for a good cause?

How did you find your current workshifting employment, and how long did you search?

How has workshifting maintained or improved your quality of life?

Feel free to forward this survey to other workshifters that you know.
Thanks in advance.

- Dwayne

I check my Google mail account several times a day, and last Friday, I got this startling alert in my Google Mail inbox: