Top 10 Tuesday: Google is crafty. I am not. Even so...

Search Engine. Analytics. Feed Reader. News. Images. Chat. VoIP. YouTube. Blogger. Is there anything Google doesn't do and doesn't do pretty well?

Sometimes (always) I'm pretty sure Google is (way) smarter than I am. For instance, you know when you accidentally misspell a search term:

How does it know that's what you meant? My old coworker Wes wrote about this phenomenon much more intelligently than I ever could here.

But Google doesn't just stop there. When Riley and I were in Cambridge last year, I was shooting off a quick email for school when Google gave me this error message:

If you can't read it, it says, "You wrote 'I've attached' in your message but there are no files attached. Send anyway?"

I forgot to attach the file and Google knew it. Besides the kind of creepy Big Brother undertones of a search engine reading my mail, how cool is that? I was totally blown away (ask Riley) and I didn't think I'd ever be more surprised by Google.

But I was wrong.

Maybe you've seen those Facebook statuses or blog posts going around saying something like this:

"I promise to send something hand-made to the first five people who leave a comment here. You must in turn post this on your blog and send something that YOU make to the first five people that comment on your blog! The rules are the item has to be HANDMADE by YOU and sent sometime in 2011! How fun it that!"

Well, you only need to look at my sad history of glue-smeared, paint-spattered, ink-stained, over-sized t shirts to know that crafty I am not.

However, Adriane posted one of these challenges, and she always makes the cutest things. So I had, had, had, to sign up. And now I have to pay it forward...

But, before I made the same offer, I decided to do a little research. So in preparation for this behemoth task, I sat down one Saturday morning to look for some crafty ideas. And what better place to look for a lot of ideas in one place than Etsy? So I typed the URL into my browser and this is what I got:

Just kidding.

But I kind of wish I weren't. Wouldn't it be great if Google warned you when you were about to do something crazy? Imagine:

• Google says, "If we send you to this shopping website, you will spend all of your discretionary income for the year in one fell swoop. Send anyway?"
• Google says, "If we send you to Facebook now, you will waste your entire lunch hour stalking your latest 24-hour crush only to find out he has a girlfriend and she's gorgeous. Send anyway?"
• Google says, "If we send you to this YouTube Video you'll end up staying up until 3 a.m. watching literal music videos and you'll wake up exhausted with really sore abs. Send anyway?"

I probably wouldn't listen, but forewarned is forearmed, right?

Anyway, it was in fact my first time ever logging onto Esty (I know, I'm totally nebbish.) And nearly two hours later it was one rabbit hole I'm still not sure I should have gone down...

However, I think I'm ready to get crafty. And I think it's time I go big or go home.

So I'm paying it forward on Top 10 Tuesday. This means that I'll make something for the first ten people who comment and I won't make you turn around and do the same (unless you want to).

So, enter at your own risk.

And incidentally, if you enter, can you please let me know if you have a favorite quote, poem, song, or book? Awesome.