In a Generator Land first, we’re releasing a “beta” version of a generator for semi-public consumption. By this, we mean it’s only available via this blog. The generator in question is “The Summer Olympic Event Generator,” which is about as current eventy as you can get, don’t you think?

We want to get it out there for everyone ASAP, but we also wanted to give regular Generator Land visitors a chance to comment and make suggestions first as well. You’ll find it here in its unfinished state:

http://www.generatorland.com/generators/summer_olympics_event_generator_gl.php

Let us know what you think and please make any suggestions for “events.” The idea here was to play on the fact that the Olympics, as much as we love them, has become a bit bloated with events including things like Trampoline, Rythmic Gymnastics, Synchronized Diving, etc. and perhaps it’s time to trim some fat.

Use the comments area or email us at mike (at) generatorland (dot) com.

Peace.

Celebrities must love their children to give them such laughable names. Because celebrities are smart and they know that after years of ridicule and titty twisters from classmates their children will grow up to be tough, independent, adults who would probably grow rich and powerful even without their guaranteed celebrity trust funds.

It’s with this notion that we created The Celebrity Baby Name Generator. Now you too can give your baby-to-be a name that any celebrity would be jealous of. And you’ll have a name that ensures your child will grow up to be a tough, independent adult. Or perhaps a psychopath. You never can tell.

Since we last spoke, we’ve released two new generators into the wild. The Mob Name Generator and the Character Name Generator were both in reaction to user requests and search traffic. Nate in Marketing is a huge Sopranos fan and says the results sound genuine in an off-kilter way. We think Nate’s a bit off-kilter (Orange Crocs, Nate? Seriously?) so we consider that high praise.

The Character Name Generator is sort of a cousin to the “TV Show Pitch Generator” as they are both fun tools for treating writer’s block. We went a little crazy building lists of first and last names to feed this beast. So much so that it’s extremely unlikely that a room full of chimpanzees, given an infinite amount of time to repeatedly click the “Create” button, would come up with the same name twice. Also that room would likely smell terrible.

Finally, happy props to user “Brian Wolfe” who has been submitting gems throughout the Hall of Fame, especially in the TV Show Mash Up generator. Go Brian go.

Speaking of streaming music, we love Deezer, especially the fact that you can embed songs from Deezer in blog posts. And now something from the National.

We have a very hard and fast policy about streaming music here in the Generator Land offices. The rule is that you must be streaming music and wearing headphones at all times. We don’t care if you’re listening to music, news, or bird calls–you’d just better be listening to something. We discovered that our people are much more productive when they are distracted from each other.

For instance, one of our developers, we’ll call him “Alex” has an incredibly annoying habit of clearing his throat in a guttural and disturbing way every five minutes. Before we made everyone start listening to streaming music you could see the rage building up in the people around Wayne, er we mean “Alex.” Now he could cough up a kidney and no one would even notice.

We have special bandwidth dedicated to music streaming in fact, so it has no impact on our normal traffic activities. However, as open as we are to streaming music, we are Hitleresque about gaming. That stuff doesn’t fly here. Our people talk enough about gaming already, so we’re not going to let them start playing in the office. Besides, you can work while you stream music but I’ve yet to see anyone multi-task effectively while playing World of Warcraft. We only make an exception for Second Life because we’re trying to figure out if we should maintain a presence there if for no other reason than to build a giant, obnoxious purple building guarded by robo-sharks.

So roll out Rhapsody and listen in to Last.FM. It’s how your boss knows your working hard!

Today we released our newest generator, “The Bar Drink Generator.” There was quite a bit of discussion about whether this should be a ridiculous or useful generator. Most of our generators are, indeed, fairly ridiculous after all. As it turns out there’s a fair amount of usefulness in the Bar Drink Generator along with some of the requisite silliness.

We had an intern try a few of the randomly generated drinks and we can honestly say that you should never have interns try randomly generated drinks unless you cover most of your office in plastic first.

Enjoy, and don’t forget to tip your bartender.

After much employee persuasion we decided to have Bring Your Dog to Work Thursdays. All sorts of cool, Valley start ups have “perks” like this and while we’re neither cool nor in the Valley we figured we could improve employee satisfaction a bit by letting our people bring in their beloved pooches one day a week.

So now that’s been canceled. Here’s a diary of how Bring Your Dog to Work Day turned into Dog Day Afternoon:

8am The first few people arrive at the office with their dogs. Apart from a few back-and-forth snarls and a lot of butt sniffing (between the dogs), things are going well. The first few dogs seem to acclimate quickly to the office environment. Some go to sleep at their owners’ feet almost immediately.  We’re feeling good about things.

8:30am Lisa in accounting shows up with her very feisty German Shepherd puppy named Jake who gets the attention of several of the formerly sleeping dogs. A shiatsu puppy comes over to introduce himself and soon the office is filled with the sounds of dogs fighting. Not playful let’s-learn-how-to-be-big-dogs fighting, but real canine on canine action. Lisa and Jake eventually end up retreating to the lobby where she decides to simply take him back home. The shiatsu stays but continues barking at the office door, apparently expecting Jake to come back for more.

9:15am We have about eight dogs total in the office now. Some of them pace their owners cubes, nose through garbage cans, scratch and lick themselves, but otherwise remain peaceful. A few others bark randomly at other passing staff or wander around the office. A golden retriever finds her way into the break room and gets her head caught in the vending machine return chute.

11:00am A dog has relieved him/herself in the copier room. No one will accept responsibility.

11:45am The pizza delivery guy is attacked by two dogs in the waiting area and chased down the hall. To prevent being cornered in the elevator he throws the his pizza carrier into the lobby as the doors close behind him. Soon pizza is everywhere.

1:30pm Three more dogfights and two unsanitary incidents later we send everyone with a dog home. The office is a mess and little work has been done. We decide that this will be the one and only Bring Your Dog to Work Thursday.

By Mike R at Generatorland.com

This has just a little to do with Generator Land, but we want to put it out there. We are adding large thumbnails (if that’s not a paradox) to our generator description pages and our effort is being greatly helped by a Firefox extension developed by Evgeny Suslikov called “Fireshot” and the brilliant new online photo editor Picnik.

Fireshot lets you take a snapshot of whatever page you’re browsing, including areas that are “below the fold.” With a click the screenshot is transferred to a very capable image editing program where you can finesse it and annotate it then save it to your hard drive.

Picnik is a web-based photo editor that has a few killer features, not the least of which is the ability to right-click on any web image and whosh it off to Picnik for instant editing. It must be seen to be appreciated.

Thanks to all the geniuses behind these two top-notch web tools.

Results of our “What should our next Generator be?” Poll

Thanks to everyone who voted and now our legal team can get to work on figuring out if we can actually use the Ben and Jerry’s name in a generator. Good luck team!

By MikeR, Generatorland.com

Marketing departments get a lot of grief. Often among the first to be laid off, they are the least understood and least respected department in your company (behind HR). They’re typically at the mercy of sales and despite their best efforts have a difficult time getting credit for anything they do outside of someone saying “Hey, did you guys create that nifty logo? I like it. Except I don’t like green. Try purple instead.”

Why do marketing people get so little respect? Let’s explore.

1. They are exceedingly aggressive with other peoples’ time.
   If you’ve ever been asked to do something for a marketing person you’ve probably experienced the “Marketing Full Court Press.” Basically you’re asked to do something and then somehow coerced into an aggressive deadline. A few minutes later you get a call saying they actually needed it sooner because of some campaign that starts in an hour or so. A few minutes later, as you’re scrambling to pull everything together, they call and say never mind, they got someone else to do it “but thanks, you’re the best.”
2. They spend a lot of time proving how important they are to the company.
   I’m not saying marketing isn’t important to a company. It is. However, because no one outside of Marketing seems to know what Marketing is doing all day and what effect it’s having on the company, Marketing people feel like they need to let everyone know how busy they are and all the activities they’re involved in. You realize this about 37 slides into their company meeting presentation.
3. They have extreme ADD.
   Marketing people are about ideas. Often they develop numerous ideas just on their way back from the printer—where they probably picked up a print-out of their latest list of ideas. They are passionate about everyone of these ideas for about a week. During that week they will discuss the idea loudly and rally people behind it, declaring it “the idea that will change everything” and “the thing we must do as soon as we’re done hearing the idea Brad just had on his way back from Starbuck’s.”
4. They breathe buzz words.
   Marketing people who don’t pepper their speech with the latest buzz words don’t last in Marketing. Because most marketing people, especially in meetings, have a little machine in their head that ticks off the number of buzz words another marketing person uses and automatically assigns a marketing prowess rating based on the number of ticks. Some marketing people have even stopped using articles like “the” and “a” to ensure maximum buzzwords per sentence. Yesterday I heard a marketing person burp the phrase “lead-gen.”
5. They are overtly enthusiastic.
   It’s great to have a positive attitude at work. It’s something else altogether to force yourself to be so enthusiastic and positive that your attitude shrieks “Everyone! Look how incredibly enthusiastic I am!” Whether it’s the clam dip at the office party or latest quarterly sales numbers, “IT’S ALL FANTASTIC! MY GOD IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER?”