* Erik’s Favorite Random URL Generators

Oh, the links you can think!

Simon Chester writes (http://www.slaw.ca/2006/02/11/words-words-words-a-skyscrimble-for-slaw/):

“Erik Heels told me ten years ago about a website that took one at random to unexpected destinations on Mr. Gore’s Information Superhighway. I’ve lost the link, of course, but each week I try and stop by a wonderfully quirky collection of links at Web Zen.”

I keep all of the files from my weblog as records in FileMaker Pro database, which is linked into my Movable Type weblog. So if my website implodes, I can easily rebuild all of its content. This also allows me to search my archives quickly, and so I found the article Simon references. I believe it was a 1997 article that I wrote for the ABA (https://www.giantpeople.com/46.html), in which I mention Yahoo’s random URL link (http://random.yahoo.com/bin/ryl/). That link had been broken for a long time (several years) but now appears to be working again. Is it my imagination, or is Yahoo becoming more cool every day, way cooler than Google?

In any event, here are some random URL generators to bookmark or to set as your homepage. Be aware, however, that not all of the pages they return are work-safe or kid-safe.