Google Hacks, 2nd Edition

Browse the World Wide Photo Album

Take a random stroll through the world’s photo album using some clever Google Image searches (and, optionally, a smidge of programming know-how).

The proliferation of digital cameras and growing popularity of camera phones are turning the Web into a worldwide photo album. It’s not only the holiday snaps of your Aunt Minnie or minutiae of your moblogging friend’s day that are available to you. You can actually take a stroll through the publicly accessible albums of perfect strangers if you know where to look. Happily, Google has copies, and a couple of hacks know just where to look.

Random Personal Picture Finder

Digital photo files have relatively standard filenames (e.g., DSC01018.JPG) by default and are usually uploaded to the Web without being renamed. The Random Personal Picture Finder (http://www.diddly.com/random) sports a clever little snippet of JavaScript code that simply generates one of these filenames at random and queries Google Images for it.

The result, shown in Figure 3-3, is something like looking through the world’s photo album: people eating, working, posing, and snapping photos of their cats, furniture, or toes. And since it’s a normal Google Images search, you can click on any photo to see the story behind it, and the other photos nearby.

Neat, huh?

Figure 3-3. The Random Personal Picture Finder

Warning

Note that people snap pictures ...