You know the way Rob Walker always tells you what he’s listening to?  When he sends you his "Murketing Journal" I mean. (Add yourself to his mailing list here.)

This is the kind of thing he gives you: 

"Acid Raindrops," People Under the Stairs

"Hurricane," Dave "Baby" Cortez

"Leila au pays du carrousel, var," Anouar Brahem

"I’m Shakin’," Little Willie John

"(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea,"Elvis Costello & the Attractions

Music is good.  I’m glad to know what Rob is listening to.

But what is he looking at?

I have a variation on the theme: letting people know your key word in Flickr Nugget, and the images streaming on your home page. 

Now this presupposes you use iGoogle as your home page.  If you don’t, it worth trying.  (Go here.) 

Once you get this installed, you can add the Flickr nugget.  I put mine in the upper right hand corner of iGoogle, and it brings a stream of photos, one at a time, changing as often as you want.

Right now, my key word is "lodz" so I am getting images from this Polish city, and they are astonishingly good. The one above will serve as a case in point. 

I’ve been using Flickr nugget for some time now.  I started using Kalamalka as my key word.  This is the name of the lake my family used to visit for vacation when I was a kid.  I don’t have any pictures of this time, but it turns out that someone else’s photos do just as well.  It’s a bit odd, a little Bladerunnerish, but, anyone’s memories of Kalamalka are better than none.

But it doesn’t seem to matter what you choose.  The city and neighborhood you grew up in, your favorite vacation spot, someone else’s favorite vacation spot, ancestral cities, your favorite sport, your favorite type of pet (try "Siamese").   I haven’t tried "16th century," but there’s a good chance that’ll work.

But step 2 is then to share these key words when you are communicated with friends and strangers.  There are particularly precious, indeed, magical key words out there, and we need to find them out.

Good hunting.