Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
Google’s latest rival appeared yesterday to great hype and fanfare. Cuil.com was founded by a handful of former Google heavyweights who are getting everyone worked up at the possibility of a “next Google”.
But instead of a roar, Cuil.com got off with something more like a FFFRRRAAPFT! (although any one of Don Martin’s sound effects would apply).
Cuil (pronounced “cool”) dismisses Google’s search methodology as nothing more than a “superficial popularity metric”. They also claim to have an index three times larger than Google’s. Search 121,617,892,992 Web pages, boasts the homepage – a number that hasn’t changed a day later. They also claim that their mission is to index the entire Internet, not just bits and pieces.
Starting with the name, there are a lot of red flags in the previous paragraph.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
As I’ve noticed the large amount of news stories focused on the acquisition of Double-Click by Google, I’d guess that you’re not reading upon this entry with a large amount of surprise. However, something as monumental as the world’s largest search giant acquiring, arguably, the world’s largest online-display giant, is something to take some note of. Not only will the combination of a powerful Search and Display team add to the staggering portfolio that is Google, this acquisition could do much more than simply transform Google into a very powerful online-advertising platform.
It might be just the spark Microsoft needed to make their offer to acquire Yahoo all the more inviting. After all, Yahoo’s always had the edge that they held both a recognized and trusted Search brand along with a strong Display platform and while their market-share in the Search market is second by a large margin to Google, they held a powerful combination for those interested in a one-stop platform for both Search and Display advertising. With someone with the momentum and steam such as Google now fighting in both rings, I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo’s stance on Microsoft’s subtle wooing quickly became much more welcoming.
Saturday, March 1st, 2008
Now this may be something everyone is using and heard of but me, but I just came across this a few weeks ago and figured I would share.
Google has a great feature where you can get info just by sending a text message. So I’ve used this a few times lately and it is great. You can get an answer to most questions by sending Google a text message (sms). To do it, simply send a message to 466453 (G-O-O-G-L-E).
Here are some example of what you can do:
- definition zenith (returns the definition of zenith)
- weather 80202 (returns the weather conditions for the zip code 80202)
- score Colorado Rockies (returns the score for the Colorado Rockies game)
- movies 80005 (returns list of movies playing, you choose the movie and it returns movie times)
- translate hello in german (returns the word hello in german, ‘hallo’)
- stock goog (returns stock quote for ‘GOOG’)
- 5 gallons in liters (returns conversion results)
There are a lot of other cool things that you can do with it. For more information, and an interactive demo check out Google’s web page on the subject here.
Now some really cool ones:
- pizza 80202 (returns pizza parlors in/near zip 80202)
- aa 2111 (returns flight status for American Airlines flight 2111)
- price ipod player 40gb (returns product pricing for an ipod 40gb nan0 of $124.50 and where product can be purchased)
- Madonna birthday (returns date of Madonna birthday 8/16/1958)
Now remember, text message rates apply – so if you are charged per text or your plan is limited be careful.
And why not just use my mobile browser? I hate to say it, but this is 1,000 times quicker. Thanks Google.
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
I’m kicking it old school for my first blog post. Also, I’m kicking butt…Ben’s butt…on Googlefight. That’s right, supposedly the domain was registered way back in 2002, but according to Google Trends, the site hit the general public in 2005. So I’m reminding us all of a simple time, when all one could do for entertainment was to watch two stick figures battle for a taller bar on a two bar graph. Googlefight just Googles two keywords and gives you the number of search results for each word. The one with the most hits is the winner. In the case below, Keyword #1 and still champion is myself, Dana Costello and keyword #2, less cool, is Ben Kaely. But back to butt-kicking. This is my version of the fight…or a 5-year-old’s, as we have the same level of drawing skill. (click the picture to go to the real fight) 
To make your own fights for hilariousness and bragging rights go to GoogleFight. You know if you’ve never heard of it…or if you were too young to hear about it the first time or if you forgot about it.
Monday, January 14th, 2008
I dare anyone to google “died in a blogging accident.” Based upon the current google trends, blogging is one of the most dangerous actions a person can participate.
In all seriousness, the current google trends have been completely skewed by one comic posted on the hilarious, geeky comic strip XKCD.
This comic and it’s implications upon the google and their results for search terms illustrates just how shifty the internet and the google can be. As of the posting of this comic on Friday January 11, 2007 there were only 2 matching results for the search term ‘died in a blogging accident’. And as of the posting of this entry there are over 17,600 results for died in a blogging accident.
This just goes to show how quickly the internet and the google can shift. One day a completely random and inconsequential search term has only 2 results. The next it is one of the hottest search terms on the internet.
