Richard went ego-surfing today. (That is, he searched the Internet for his own name.) He’ll tell you that he was looking for namesakes, but I’m sure he just wanted to see how many times he was mentioned in Google. 
I’ve just done the same thing, and unlike Richard who found lots of interesting and worthy namesakes I found just one. And he’s dead. It’s quite odd to read “In loving memory of Howard Durdle“. I’m pretty sure you’re never meant to read a sentence like that containing your own name.
ANYway, out of 269 results in Google, I found just one Howard Durdle that wasn’t me. So rather than an exercise in finding namesakes, this becomes an example of what you can discover about someone via Google - especially if they’ve “lived” on the Internet for more than a few years.
The first hit was for my site, which is good. After that though you start to delve into my digital past. My comments about Windows Update on the NTBugtraq mailing list, my TivoStatus development, a post to Dave Farber’s IP list about eBay and Phishing scams, another IP post this time about “copy protection” being defeated with the shift-key, a link to my CV as a PDF, and a list of the music I listen to as provided by Last.fm.
You can discover that I posted on a Lotus Notes developer’s forum and that I once maintained a website detailing my inability to get broadband in Basingstoke. You can see that I liked the BitTorrent client Azureus enough to donate to it, and that my Blog is listed on BlogShares. You can see when I first started researching my family tree and my comments to Phil Farrand about nit-picking StarTrek.
There’s my participation in a mashup/bootleg forum after I created Renegade Clocks, and more recent evidence of my geek nature in the Geek Dinner attendees list. You can see that I used to sell copies of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue on eBay, that I was against Verisign’s abuse of DNS and that I play Unreal Tournament with modded skins.
You can see that I didn’t like a particular book enough that I felt compelled to write a review on Amazon, and that my mashup tune got airplay on Chris Moyles on Radio 1. You can see references to me in my previous company’s press release and to my debugging efforts on the SlimServer lists.
And of course, you can find out that I’m friends with people like Phil, Tom, Chris, Richard and everyone else who links to my name.
Hey, it’s a new sport: Google Stalking!
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