How does Squidoodlr work?

This is one of the outputs I wish Squidoodlr would give.

Squidoodlr is a page that generates possible topics for Squidoo new lenses. But these ideas are too specific, too useful to be randomly generated. For example:

  • If beauty is based on bilateral symmetry, why are most hairstyles asymetrical?
  • Places to cowork in NYC
  • Mean tricks to play on your kids
  • How to dry cotton T-shirts without wrinkling!
  • Custom wheelchairs
  • Geeks you love to hate
  • When are you at your most beautiful?
  • Is there a better alternative to Adobe reader?
  • How to be a good grandparent
  • … etc. etc. etc.

So my first question was: how does Squidoodlr actually work? It’s obviously not generating topic ideas with a randomization algorithm.

I thought it might be browsing the titles of top-rated web pages. So I searched for one of the topics it spit out, and I found this thread at Squidu. Squidoodlr doesn’t actually generate ideas. The ideas were submitted by users at the Squidu forum. Squidoodlr just selects a random one each time to call it.

Uh… That actually gives me an idea. The Quirkerator (fictional character idea generator), which I could seed with character traits from 1001 Character Quirks. What do you think? Any potential?