Category: Internet

cuil.com a new search engine

Thursday, 31 July 2008 12:53 Written by Mike 1 Comment

Not sure if you have heard but there is a new search engine in town.  It is called cool but is spelled cuil.  Visit cuil.com and you will see a very simple interface.  Nothing cluttered like yahoo or msn.  Simple is the new beautiful :) .  Cuil claims to have 121,617,892,992 site indexed at the time of this writing.  That is at least 10 times more than Google.

The other cool (pun intended) thing is cuil presents it’s results in column format, just like a magazine or newspaper.  You can select if you want the results in 2 or 3 columns.

In my playing over the past couple of days I have found it to be very fast in finding results.  Now, remember this is a new search engine so as more people start using cuil it may get slower.  Hopefully the folks at cuil will keep an eye on performance and do upgrades as needed.

Unlike most other search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) Cuil does not keep any information on you, what you search for, etc.  They focus more on the sites and the site content.

Cuil was created by some former Google engineers who recreated the search algorithms from scratch to better index sites by content.

Cuil presents the search results in a very easy to use format and even categorizes with a tool bar for larger categories that it finds.

I am not sure of the business model for cuil but at least for now there is no advertising that I have seen.  I guess it remains to be seen if that continues or if they have a different business model than other search engines.  Up to this point though I am not sure how they are going to make money.

Give it a try.   www.cuil.com.  It might just become your new favorite search engine.

Adobe AIR

Monday, 28 July 2008 14:59 Written by Mike 0 Comments

Have you heard about Adove AIR?  Sounds like some new oxygen bar Fad right?  Well, it is a fairly new technology from Adobe that brings the rich content of web 3.0 content to the desktop without a web browser.

Adobe AIR installs a small client application that is basically the framework for the AIR application to run in.  You then download these AIR applications which are typically designed in the Service Oriented Archtecture design with XML data transfers, etc.

Anyways there are some very cool applications that are available for Adobe AIR.  My favorites are the Ebay Desktop and Twhirl (a Twitter Client).  Also following closely behind is the Google Analytics client.  It is way cool and much easier than having to login to google to look at the reports.

There are so many cool apps for Adobe Air that I am going to create a category for Adobe Air and review some apps that are available.  As new ones come out I will keep reviewing and make recomendations.

If you know of some new site, software or technology drop me a line so I can check it out too.

Acrobat.com

Monday, 28 July 2008 14:50 Written by Mike 0 Comments

Ok, just about everyone has heard of Acrobat.  No, not the bendy twisty guys and gals that fly around on poles, parallel bars, etc.  Think more geeky than that.  How about Adobe Acrobat?

Well, Adobe has a new site out now called acrobat.com that is aiming to replace some of your desktop applications.  acrobat.com has built in a feature rich word processor called BuzzWord.  It is not as full featured as Microsoft Word but hey it is free and it has one other very cool feature which I will describe in a little bit.

Acrobat.com is aiming at the collaboration market.  That is where it really shines.  In addition to BuzzWord the site has ConnectNow which is Adobe’s competitive entry into the market for screen sharing and web presentations.  Kind of like Webex.  I personally like the user interface for ConnectNow better, but that is just me.

The site also lets you share documents and create PDF files.  Remember that cool feature about buzzword I mentioned before?  Buzzword allows 2 people to edit the same document simultaneously.  Talk about collaboration…..

I will do a more in depth review of BuzzWord soon so I will skip all of the cool details in this review.

Go checkout acrobat.com.  There is no cost to sign up and use it.  You can login from anywhere on the internet to access your files, your documents, etc.

I am still trying to get more info on the roadmap for acrobat.com but the initial offering that is out there now is a good strong start.  I would think a good spreadsheet application is also required for the site to become highly successful.

Final Thought on Twitter

Saturday, 21 June 2008 11:58 Written by Mike 0 Comments

ok, for more than a month now I have been using Twitter. At first, the awe of the new shiny toy had my attention. As time has gone by, it has lost it’s luster. I have found the most useful thing is tracking subjects. For example, I am tracking Frederick, MD and a few other items. When news comes out from the local paper, etc. I can get those tweets. I have been tracking a few people, some of the people I was tracking became very annoying. Like a look into their weird world.

There are still some good people I am tracking but I was tracking some tech celebrity type of people and was surprised by what they were twittering.

My favorite was to use twitter is on my iPhone. It is like an Twittering machine. I have a firefox plugin for Twitter which is ok but my favorite thing on a computer to use is Twhirl. It is an Adobe Air based Twitter client. It runs on both Mac and PC. I generally keep this client up all of the time.

One thing I wish Twitter would do is allow you to track subjects without having to do it with a text message format. I do not understand why that would only be available with text messages and not through the web.

However, with Twhirl you can search through all tweets for a subject. That is a help but still not exactly the same as it being pushed to you.

One of my other complaints is the stability of the Twitter site.

It has been a good experience and I like twitter but I have not yet made it a habit to update on a regular basis what I am doing.

Twitter Update…

Thursday, 29 May 2008 12:23 Written by Mike 0 Comments

Ok, I have been trying to use twitter on a regular basis for about 2 weeks now.  It is actually becoming a bit addictive but I think it is affecting my blogging.  So my MicroBlogging (Twitter) is affecting my MacroBlogging (this blog).

I need to try to focus on the blogging a little more and catch up on some other blogs I want to write.

Now, besides the impact on my blog writing, how has it been going?  Well, great actually.  I am surprised that the texting interface is more robust than the web interface though.

I use an iPhone so I have unlimited text so I setup my phone to work with Twitter.  The text interface has many more options like Track <subject> that allow you to track a subject.  Anytime a tweet is entered that has that word in it you get a copy.

That does not yet exist in the web interface.  You also get almost instant notification when someone you are following posts a tweet.

I find myself using that interface more than anything.

Now, I have found a great twitter client called twhirl that runs on Adobe AIR.  So it runs on both Mac and PCs.  It is a sweet interface, better than using the web interface.  It also has the ability built in to create short URLs without have to go out to a web page like tinyurl, etc.

twhirl also has some search features that allow you to search through all tweets.  Great for finding tweets on a particular subject.

I have added a twitter status box to my personal home page at http://www.myershomesite.com that keeps my latest twitter on the front page.

My month of trial is only halfway over but so far, I think this is pretty cool.  I have met some interesting people now through twitter as well.  I am looking forward to my next 2 weeks :)

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