Two Slashes

(That’s ‘cuil’ pronounced cool…bah, you’ll read why in a second, so screw the explanation.)

It’s no mistake that I’ve been a longtime fan of Google…well, everything.  Just about all of my e-mail is handled through them (including through Apps for Domains), I pay $20 a year for extra space on Picasa because I find it so much more usable than Flickr, and I’ve at least tried just about every other service they’ve offered.  I’m also the person who needs to try “the next big thing” much in the same way I have with Twitter and a whole dictionary of other sites that I’ve tried, put to use, retired, or whatever.

With all the buzz surrounding Cuil, I decided to divert my first few searches of the day (and a few vanity/test queries for comparison) to them to see how much more benefiting the results they deliver were to me.  And sadly, Cuil is about as “cuil” (it’s pronounced cool, if you missed that aside) as a sackful of cucumbers in this warmish Chicago summer.  In other words, their current setup renders it useless for me.  (Screenshots have been used throughout this post because at the time of writing, Cuil was bouncing in and out of service.)

Taking a look at their homepage, it’s no doubt that there’s a touch of Google in the air.  It’s simple, with only a few links to their policy and about pages, and the text box.  (Wait a minute…that sounds oddly like a page I see every hour.)  In fact, I think the only differences I can point out between the two are the off-center alignment, the color scheme, and the logos.  Hardly anything unexpected.  But looks don’t change how it works, so I might as well explain what I think of it after using it for a few minutes.

Being one of the founding members of TechCentric, it’s obviously no surprise that I would compare our rank on Cuil with how we’re doing everywhere else (which isn’t too hot given our hiatus, but that’s another story).  On Google and Yahoo, for example, TechCentric ranks right on top as the first result, while we place third on MSN (behind our own Wikipedia entry, for crying out loud).  With Cuil, there’s no “ranking” so much as there is a menagerie of results thrown at you in a somewhat-cool, somewhat-overloading multicolumn layout, with what I assume are supposed to be related images thrown in.  Picture a random page from the classifieds, replace all the advertisements with the typical excerpt from that result, and dot in a few random graphics for spice.  That’s the idea I get from Cuil’s results page.

Now, when I say they add random pictures, I pretty much mean it.  Aside from similar occurances noted by my friends, one of the images suggested by Cuil for my TechCentric search was that thumbnail of the three girls right there next to the link to the Crew listings.  I’ve included myself, Steve, and Will next to the image for comparison, but I don’t think any of those (four if you count the half-head to the right) girls look a thing like us, and they don’t appear anywhere on the TechCentric site.  I do believe they’re trying to suggest I’m something I’m not (namely, female).  They also seem to believe we’re related to The Who, as they have a poster thumbnail next to the suggested result on Wikipedia.

While the lack of relevance towards TechCentric could have been because of our lack of production, I found it quite awkward that searching for ‘justincox’ (you should know him by now) turned up only his Twitter account and some stuff which he claims isn’t him.  And not a sign of his site in sight on the first page of the results, either.  At least Rachelskirts can’t complain about her placement.  Searching for myself by name was a complete bust, as it turned up more results from other users’ Twitter pages than it did anything remotely relevant to me.  (Though there are a few underlaying things I noticed that I’m not willing to discuss just yet.)  Searching for ‘two slashes’ was also an exercise in patience, though removing the space found this site instantly (along with another random image alongside the TechCentric crew page).

One idea I liked, though it wasn’t exactly useful to me in its current state, was the category box on the right side, which suggests people and things relevant to what you might be searching for.  TechCentric comes up with some IPTV-related stuff, as it should, and some of my other searches were categorized correctly, but the suggested additions to your query might not be as helpful.  For example, searching for Darren Kitchen (from Hak.5) offered the expected categories for podcasting and vidcasts, but some of the suggested keywords (like Leo Laporte) just turned what could have been a helpful search into a useless waste of Intertubes, combined by the fact that they’re mashed with your original query.  (I think I finally stopped myself after ‘Darren Kitchen Leo Laporte Patrick Norton FLOSS Weekly‘ turned up as much whitespace as it did content.)

Cuil also seems to be having a problem with staying usable at the moment, partially thanks to repeated waves of news flooding Twitter, and its placement on Digg’s front page at the moment.  Considering Google’s tried-and-true methods and the fact that they handle plenty more traffic in any given hour than Cuil will probably see in the next day or two, perhaps the Google-alum masterminds behind the site could have brought a little more to the table in terms of reliability.  (Though I guess a similar suggestion could be made to Twitter about now.  Failwhale anyone?)

The concept of a competitor to Google with the brains to suggest relevant content is hard to believe, considering Google does a decent job of filtering out the garbage already (in my experience), and it’s even easier to limit the junk when you search for something with at least a respectable idea of what you’re aiming for.  But as long as the results turn up to be this jumbled and unrelated, I see no reason to deviate from my zealous (over)use of Google.

Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of geekdom’s most famous titles.  If you don’t already know where I’m going with this either by the date (and time) or the title quote, I’m referring to the original Wargames.  (Notice I say ‘original,’ as Hollywood saw fit to retrofit a sequel this year as well.  Perhaps in celebration, perhaps simply because they’re running out of material and saw a chance to recycle.  Any guess at the reason is as good as mine.)

Regardless, Wargames still stands as one of the required movies on any techno-buff’s watchlist, and for good reason.  While we may not be headed into nuclear war anytime soon (Requisite “In Soviet Russia…” joke here), the movie packs several remnants of geek culture of the time up in a family-friendly (it’s not often I can genuinely use that) but reasonably accurate(-for-Hollywood) bundle.

I really don’t have too much to say at the moment, so I’ll make it brief.  Here’s to simulated nuclear holocaust.  And hoping that any of Joshua’s siblings don’t have that level of control over the United States.  Joshua – would you like to play a nice game of chess?

If you’ve ever been to or live in or near Chicago, you probably know all about “The Bean,” that shiny alien-looking thing in Millenium Park, known for being huge, metal, and, perhaps most importantly given those two qualities, seamless (at least to casual inspection).

A talk with a friend about developing technologies and upcoming expectations of what these technologies will bring led to our noticing how problematic today’s technology is, and why it won’t be getting better anytime soon.

What does this have to do with a notorious Chicago tourist trap?  General consensus today is that consumers want everything they own to work together, or at least appear that way.  They want a combination DVD-playing toaster oven/blender that can do laundry and sort recycling in tandem with a drink-cooling microwave, and they want it all to be done perfectly, with no hiccups.  Unfortunately, I have yet to see a DVD-playing toaster oven/blender that folds my laundry and sorts recyclables or a drink-cooling microwave, but that’s besides the point – the point is that they want things to work perfectly, much like the dozens of individual panels that make up “The Bean.”

As I told my friend, it’s unlikely that we’re going to be experiencing such a demonstration of perfection in any aspect of life (but most specifically technology-based endeavors) anytime soon.  There are two polar scenarios I foresee, and each comes with its own problems when it comes to development.

The first scenario is the “monopolistic scenario” in which one or two companies handle a whole industry of work.  While (seeing that this is the same company all around) the products work seamlessly, they also become rather stagnant and produce little to no improvement from version to version.  While this means that things work well, after a while people get tired of seeing the same old thing all the time and wish there was something else to go to (which in turn creates a market…blah, I’ll spare the economics class talk).

The other scenario is the “competitive scenario” – as you might have guessed, this scenario involves a large number of companies all producing similar products.  You get near-constant development and revolutionary ideas and designs, but at the same time these ideas pave the way for a plethora of different, unconnected tangents (which is, unfortunately to say, also expected when each one is determined to make a profit from their product).  This would be akin to why you can’t typically use parts from one car on another – sometimes they have a slight chance of working, but other times you’re likely to break even more.  The point here is that there’s so many things to choose from, so many choices/paths/whatever-you-call-them, that ultimately what develops is not one “right” path but a series of dead ends.

These dead ends actually crop up more than you think.  Look at the current generation of video hookups, for example:  DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort.  They all get video from point A to point B (and sometimes other things too), but each one has its own guise and is not directly compatible with one another.  DisplayPort, for example, supports daisy-chaining monitors through one cable; HDMI supports audio transmitted through the same cable.  While these are novel ideas…notice how they aren’t all that easily interoperable (well, HDMI and DVI are to an extent, but that’s not my point).  So, as consumers, we are left to either try and find what works best for our situation, and hope that everything we buy comes with support for that connection method, or sit and pray that one day someone will come along and magic everything into one “universal” connector, making themselves money, and consumers happy.

If you need a mixed example of standardization, just look on the back of your TV, computer, or home telephone.  Assuming the company that produced whatever you’re looking at isn’t an ***hat, you’re probably staring at the same menagerie of cables, ports, jacks, and plugs someone else is.  Thank standardization for that.  But at the same time, you can also note that while whatever’s plugged in there works with the setup you have now, you have the seed planted in the back of your mind worried about what happens when you need to bring in something new.  Is my mouse going to work?  Will my TV set play back the content from this Blu-ray player?  In these instances, your use isn’t seamless.  Instead, you find yourself driven by an inadvertant commitment to a specific set of technologies that may become outdated at any moment.

Another good example would be a digital camera (or more specifically the storage mediums for them).  Notice how Sony has their own “private” storage system with Memory Stick, something that Canon, Nikon, nor Kodak can or will use, and that this lock-in also means that without adapters, cables, or other fun things, the only way you can quickly show off those snapshots is by ramming them into a Sony television.  As far as seamlessly working, not bad for two things manufactured by a multimedia electronics corporation…but once you bring Toshiba or Panasonic into the mix, all bets are off.

Blame it on capitalism, blame it on everyone’s desire to keep secrets – whatever you blame, it’s probably at least a small part of why we’re in such a hole.  Unfortunately, the hole’s getting deeper by the day, and there’s no easy way to get back out.

So, I suppose you could say that “The Bean” represents not only Chicago’s continual placement of public art, but our desire for technologies and lives to work together in harmony – with no unsightly seams to tear at or detract from the beauty.  Unfortunately, “The Bean” is also the perfect metaphor for something we can’t have.  File it away with everlasting love, superpowers, and eternal life – because this is one thing that won’t be coming…at least, within our lifetimes, and I’d be pretty confident in placing bets on ‘never.’