Are we there yet?

I’m an avid participant in an email list that notionally discusses the works of Patrick O’Brian – especially the Aubrey & Maturin series of books. For those of you unfamiliar, the recentish movie ‘Master & Commander’ was based on these books. For those of you interested, you can find out more at www.hmssurprise.org – including the mailing list signup.

This list has an especially lively and erudite crowd from around the world (recent topics have ranged from moors of Northern England, Coin valuation and a rant about my ‘political’ photo for the Alameda on Camera competition).

So what has this got to do with our subject? Well, one of the list members who uses Gmail to read the list posts reported the list of Google ads displayed whilst reading the list yesterday – and it appealed to my warped sense of humor. The ads comprised ‘Ship Model for Master & Commander’, ‘Boccherini Music’ (his music is played by the protagonists in the book), AND last by no means least the book Walter The Farting Dog!

So Are We There Yet? At least as far as contextual ads go. Perhaps not, there has been much speculation about what was in context that triggered the ad, but we couldn’t work it out. My curiosity sparked (I’ll plead it’s because Barbara reads books and tells stories to 5-8 year olds in a school program here), I checkout out
Amazon. It turns out that there is a whole series of books on Walter. Who knew?
.


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