Two Slashes

It doesn’t take a meteorologist to predict the tsunami that a preview of Google’s new Wave platform would cause.  I can’t click one link without seeing three different remarks referencing the hot new app, though I can’t seem to understand why people are so excited about it.

In case you’ve got a bad memory or hearing loss, I’ll quickly give an overview of Wave to save the sanity of my remaining readers before delving into just what about the platform I don’t like.  For the uninitiated, Wave is a platform Google announced this summer that combines document editing, an e-mail-like environment, live collaborative capabilities, and enhancements provided by “robots” (as opposed to the generally used “bot”) into a single unified experience.  Everything is done in real-time, so modifications you’re in the middle of can be observed by anyone else in that particular thread (referred to as a wave).  It’s an open platform, so anybody can write a “robot” or extend the API, but so far I haven’t seen anything remotely productive beyond a Twitter bot or various games.  (Maybe I’m just ignorant.)

Along with Google’s original announcement, they offered developers early access as they tweaked a few things so that when preview time came about (now, in other words), there would be plenty of examples and enough bragging rights to go around.  It was also a great way to acquaint people with an enhanced interest in the product (like myself), and I was one of the lucky people selected to get in on the sandbox.

I never developed anything for Wave, let alone used it for anything productive, but I did spend a few minutes chatting with a few friends who also found themselves with sandbox access and a little too much boredom in their lives.  I also watched as several people immediately decided to turn their sights towards robots geared to spam ads and utter nonsense (including one bugger that kept embedding YouTube videos of Rick Astley’s hit song…yeah, that one).  All the same, with just a handful of friends and a low signal-to-noise ratio, I really didn’t see a point in regularly checking the site.

When Google finally announced their semi-public preview (read:  everybody sends invitations everywhere), I was unsure of whether I even wanted to bother with it.  It’s not to say that I don’t like Google (I have several domains running Google Apps, a few Gmail accounts, a Google Voice account or three, and some extra paid storage to boot), but the nasty taste from the developer’s preview combined with the fact that I didn’t think too many friends would bother with it left me undecided but leaning towards not bothering to move my account into the preview.

It goes without saying that I got bored and ported the account anyway, and I’ve asked myself why I bothered ever since.

The way I see it, Wave is something of a novelty at this point in time and in its current state.  It’s not useful to anybody (at least, anybody I know), and it doesn’t do anything I find worthwhile that I can’t already implement or find support for, either in another Google app (think Docs and Gmail in particular) or elsewhere.  And the fact that it isn’t integrated with Gmail is a disappointment, as I feel that they could have turned Gmail into a legitimate killer app by adding Wave as a Gmail Labs option (which keeps the opt-in approach for people who decide they want to “catch the Wave”).

In fact, I’m wondering why Google didn’t opt for the b@$*@&d-child approach in the first place, because as-is Gmail just isn’t the innovative utility it was when it first launched.  Yahoo! offers more space (namely, as much as you want for free), and there’s really nothing of note at this point that the Google/Gmail experience offers that can’t be found elsewhere.  Being a plugin for a service that a good number of people use, though, offers a much wider userbase and might pull in some people who otherwise might not even be aware of Wave’s existence.  Google’s always touted Gmail as the “revolutionary” e-mail platform, but there’s nothing revolutionary about being second fiddle overall.  (A free Exchange server?  Seriously, this is the best they can offer?)

And, rather than forcing the user to keep two tabs or windows open so they can monitor both their incoming messages and Wave updates, the integration would be a step in the right direction.  (I really think they should look into developing Google Insight, the Google-powered, web-based alternative to Outlook with one-click access to everything.  Outlook…Insight…get it?  Bah!)

And I know I’m not the only person thinking that Wave is really over-hyped.  I’ve talked with several friends who were excited to get their invites, only to have their hopes and dreams wipe out, and the people who start threads with me seem to abandon them after just a few minutes.

Like the beach, Wave is just one more thing I don’t see myself visiting regularly.  It’s not to say that I won’t try to check it (on occasion), but there’s really no compelling reason for me to do so.  If I really had a need for a collaborative environment where the features Google provides are exactly what I’m looking for, maybe I’d feel differently.  But, as of now, I can’t see this taking off until someone finds a better use for it.  I’d sooner pay for an Evernote subscription than have to deal with any more water metaphors.

This really sums it up.

Caution:  This post includes gratuitous amounts of speculation about web services and the Internet in general.  If you prefer to deal in the world of concretes, I suggest you read yesterday’s newspaper instead.  Or send me a cement mixer.

Almost a year ago, we had Cuil.  Claiming to be an instant success over Google, and even grabbing up some of the behemoth’s staff, Cuil ultimately did exactly what most people expected to happen:  it flopped.  Earlier this year, Wolfram released Alpha and came to the realization that, while people are looking for the facts, their approach isn’t one that applies universally.  And at the beginning of June, Microsoft decided that they wanted to “Bing it on” and found that renaming your search engine might earn them a place above Yahoo!, but it doesn’t really get anywhere near the top, especially when marketed as a “decision engine.”  And now, I think someone’s going to try again.

To be honest, none of the major tech outlets have anything to say about them (yet), and the only reason I know of their plan is through their increasingly-common spidering of this blog.  Bear with me a moment, because I’m sure you’re just as confused as I was.

A quick glance at Apnoti’s home page doesn’t tell you much about their intentions.  In fact, all you really find out is that they seem to have been playing a variation of the product search game for more than a year, and they’ve differentiated themselves by offering the ability to watch prices on Amazon for the things you want.  To the best of my knowledge and examination, there’s no explanation for or mention of any other projects they’re working on available for consumption.

Beneath the shopping lies hopes and dreams of being something more, though.  The page hosted on the subdomain that keeps showing up in my statistics (smart.apnoti.com) is simple enough, bearing only a countdown to August and the suggestion that real-time search is coming.  But what’s left to search in real time?  My guess:  blogs and other sites refreshed with new content at semi-regular rates.  Think about it.  Google Blog Search might exist, but it’s far from showing you what’s happening in real time (unless you enjoy hitting refresh repeatedly, that is), and scraping Twitter only gets you so far, especially when there are already so many variants.

If what I envision is true, imagine being able to type in a recent event, like Michael Jackson’s death, and watch as the blogosphere fills up with reports and commentaries about the event.  Not trivial-length blurbs and “I can’t believe this happened!”-type posts, but posts of a reasonable length and with some backing to them.  It’s a niche that I have yet to see filled, and I think it has the potential to be a great service, provided the sites they index maintain some level of credibility.  (If you need a description, imagine something along the lines of Twitter Search, Facebook’s timeline, or Profilactic as your search results page, sorted with the newest posts first, and the ability to click a link and have any new results that have shown up populate into your present view.

Whether there’s a market for this sort of thing is another question altogether.  There’s no doubt that everyone and everything is moving toward real-time information sharing, so it makes sense to me that this is a logical step along that route.  On the other hand, such a move is a costly risk; one false move, one mistake, and all that hard work becomes a black hole for money.  There’s also the massive resource requirement to consider, as it’s no easy task to index the countless blogs available online and come away with even a decent index of all the content they offer.  Add to that the load required to keep their results fresh and relevant, and the requirement shoots up even further.

Of course, I’ve proven that I have a mediocre track record when it comes to predictions, so I might just be further cementing myself as a crackpot when Apnoti decides to open up the site as some sort of gadget guide.  However, even if I’m far off, I would still like to see this idea.  One day.

I was talking on IRC with a friend a few weeks back when he asked me to remind him of the URL to this blog, as he was having fun looking up the Google PageRanks for various websites.  Considering the length of time since I last checked (as I don’t really care), I checked myself and was surprised to find that I’ve managed to reach a 4 (yes, I double-checked that).  In the past, this blog has typically hovered between 2 and 3, so this was unexpected for both of us.

I have no idea how this happened...

Immediately after this magic number was revealed, the topic quickly turned from PageRanks into how I could be making money from my blogging thanks to said PageRank.

<Number_5> dude you could be making 7500-12000 a month
<Limp_Trizkit> who, me?
<Number_5> yeah you…
<Number_5> with the right SEO and good keywords
<Number_5> you could make a great full time income
<Limp_Trizkit> lol
<Number_5> you laugh i’m not joking

I have plenty of respect for the people who can successfully make a living off of their blogging, but blogging has never been something I’ve been able to see myself doing for money, even if it came from advertisements or endorsements.  I write because I enjoy writing, and while some money would be awesome (*cough* college student *cough*) to keep things running (like the server), I would feel rotten trying to make money off of something I tend to put onto the back burner quite frequently.  (Yes, I’m thinking of the entire lifespan of this blog, with the exception of February.)

I can think of and sympathize with the few instances where ads might be worthwhile or useful, but for the most part, I find them annoying.  I guess you can say that I see peoples’ contributions as payment for all of the things they get out of this vast intercontinental library, in a way.  Collecting $12,000 every month would be alright phenomenal, but I can’t justify “whoring” my personal projects out in any way that would feel “right” or reasonable to me.

Of course, none of this stops people from calling me out for keeping AdBlock running.  Besides using it as a useful toolkit for hiding parts of websites I just don’t want to see, I will admit that I take advantage of the Firefox plugin as it was intended to be used.  (Didn’t I just say that I find ads to be mildly annoying?)  But, is it really that big a deal that I don’t want to see ads for male enhancement just because you used the p-word word once?  I get enough of that every time I check my e-mail, thank you very much.

Late last night, I heard about a new product from Google called Latitude, designed in the intent of keeping you updated with the locations of your friends and allowing you to let them know where you are.  Despite a rather busy day today, I ended up spending a few minutes playing with it.

This isn’t the first time somebody’s suggested that your friends are interested in more than just answering what you’re doing, but the fact that this service comes with your Google account means that there’s already a huge potential userbase compared with the limited registration at services like Brightkite.

The idea itself comes in two parts, one for your iGoogle homepage, and one for your mobile phone of choice (though better iPhone support is still in the works).  Sadly, this isn’t integrated directly into Google Maps (yet), so anybody who doesn’t use the customized homepage is going to be left out in the cold…or at least a portion of the service.

Essentially, the mobile phone software is an update to Google Maps which allows you to post your GPS information automatically to Latitude and display pushpins for your friends.  This is where I believe Latitude where be most useful, as you’re likely to be doing something other than stalking out a good time while you’re at home.

The pushpins representing your friends show you not only their location, but allow you to get in touch with them with a phone call, IM, or text message, or find cool venues you both could meet up at.

If you don’t want to automatically update your location, you can manually set a pushpin to represent it using your phone or the web interface.  Of course, this isn’t as fun unless you’re claiming to be swimming across the Atlantic or something.  (Oh wait, I’m getting ideas…this could be bad.)

Google seems to have looked to Brightkite for their privacy settings, allowing you to not only declare which friends you want to see, but how accurately you want your location displayed on a per-friend basis.  However, you don’t have to make a distinction about which contacts are “trusted”, which means that you won’t have to worry about any moral dilemmas over labeling some people as such but excluding others.  (Hey, it’s a legitimate benefit.)

Of course, it’s not difficult to imagine Latitude being used in a less-than-stellar manner.  ABC’s already touting the service as a way to micromanage your kids, and it’s only a matter of time before someone repurposes their old phone as a tracking device for their stalking toolkit.  And I’m wondering how this will do for trying to blame traffic on being late…or whether Google might be looking at a few more subpoenas.

The social concept behind Latitude is cool, and makes for a neat tie-in to other Google features that can’t be matched by some of the competing rivals, but at the same time it makes me wonder if Google really is planning on world domination.  Think about it:  Google probably already handles your e-mail, calendar, contact list, word-processing, number-crunching, trip planning, and Internet searching/browsing needs.  Add where you are in real time to that list, and Google perhaps knows more about you than you know yourself.

I don’t think I’ll be participating (for the moment), except in a humorous capacity, so if you’re thinking of following me around, I apologize.  (I require all stalkers to be physically present and wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses at all times.)  If you don’t have the stringent requirements I do, you might find this worth poking around at, though.  It definitely shows that there’s still plenty of space left in redefining social networking.

Disclaimer:  I am not actually writing this post from Wrigley Field.  However, I wish it were a few months from now and that that pushpin was accurate.  Oh well.

I posted two weeks ago about some of the biggest failures I could think of involving technology.  While the responses to the poll I issued with the post were generally more than I was expecting, it wasn’t until Wednesday that I realized I had forgotten one of my ongoing projects.

It’s become habit for me to catalog all of the various mistakes and mess-ups I encounter in a visual manner, with the occasional flaw submitted by others for the sake of some variety.  This includes things both on- and off-line, as there’s no easy way to escape the clutches of human error and poor workmanship.  I think the old This Is Broken (the one I stole the name of my Picasa album from) and the Error’d section of TDWTF and the countless hours I’ve spent perusing both are partially to blame for my habit obsession, but I can’t be entirely sure.

Wednesday, when I had an issue with my (admittedly cheap) watch which caused it to somehow forget the rules to the Gregorian calendar (while still keeping accurate time, no less; yes, I took that picture at nearly 2a), it reminded me of some of my favorite entries in my album.  Considering I had already shared some other favorite failures, I figure that one more list won’t hurt.

• Far and away, my personal favorite is the picture I took in the produce department at a Meijer near my college campus.  There’s just something about going through a stack of nice-looking oranges and turning up the one that got past quality control that makes you not want to eat oranges again.  Or at least oranges from that store.
• Another mishap I take particular interest in is this product listing on Amazon, which appears to be a particularly gruesome mashup between at least three different products (price, product image, and title).  Either that, or floppy drives had changed their appearance considerably at the time I took this.  It’s a shame I never got around to actually ordering, as I would have loved to see what came in the box.  That original price tag certainly wouldn’t have been worth it, though.  (And speaking of sales on Amazon…)
• Speaking of mixed-up images, here’s a screenshot from Google’s Picasa web frontend while I was uploading photos and testing the (then-)new face-detection and tagging functionality.  Dear lord Google, that doesn’t quite seem to be a face to me!  And his head isn’t up his #*(, so there’s no other reason I can think of to tag the train platform between his legs.  I’m confused!
• I may alter some of my images to take into account things like order numbers or potentially revealing personal information (and this is a prime example), butI couldn’t make this up if I tried.  It seems that DHL has found the secret to speedy deliveries:  top-secret package locations.  Be it wormholes, subspace, or some other as-of-yet “undiscovered” transportation method, leave it to DHL to be the ones who milk it for all its worth.  As I recall, I got this package in record time, too.
• Being a big company like Microsoft, there are often little pet projects that get developed to test new strategies, ideas, or demonstrate components of their existing products.  Of course, these demos work better when they don’t make elementary school spelling mistakes (look at the document headers and you’ll spot it quickly), as the writer of one of their demonstration documents for Office Online has done.  And given that this image is still available from one of their press releases, I wonder just how much embarrassment they need before they can correct something like that.  I know I won’t be using Office Online until they have working spell-check, at least.
• Like the previous example, this one is also an issue of language.  However, I don’t think anyone reading this post will fail to notice what two staff writers and two editors from Reuters did, especially as I’ve outlined it for you in the image.  If I had the money, I would be mailing all four of those people fresh copies of Strunk & White in boxes complete with mechanisms that beat them over the head with the style guide when they first open it.

There you have it.  I’m sure you’ll find some favorites of your own, and I encourage you to keep track of some of the interesting mistakes you encounter in your own life.  If you have anything broken of your own to share in the comments, I’m also all for it.

I figured I’d try a different approach for once and see where that got me.

Given the sheer number of products and services we hear about on a daily basis, it’s easy enough to forget the ones that couldn’t quite reach out and make themselves a universally-known (in some cases, literally) entity.  But that doesn’t mean they are any less deserving of our attention.  For your enjoyment, here are some of what I believe to be the most amusing failures I can recall throughout the history of technology.

• (Swatch) Internet Time – If there’s one thing we definitely have enough of here on Earth, it’s time zones and ways to tell time.  Time zones, 12- and 24-hour time, daylight savings time…  Alright, listing that is boring, and having to take all of that into account while talking with people on the other side of the world is like taking a needle to your eye.  Swatch, being the omniscient corporate entity they obviously were, decided that all of this could be resolved with the introduction of an arbitrary standard called Internet Time.  Internet Time divided the day into 1000 equal parts of about a minute and a half apiece and was designed to be consistent across the globe to eliminate the need for time zones.  However, when you take into the account the fact that this was introduced just as the Internet was becoming mainstream, the issue with scheduling things in “blips” with people who have no idea what you’re talking about makes you look like a fool to the majority of the world, there’s no standard for writing the day (just the time), and the fact that ‘@’ was (and still is) most often recognized as part of an e-mail address, it’s not hard to see why Internet Time never made it to the big time.  (Sorry, pun intended.)
• Cuil – I wrote about Cuil once already, and I got quite a bit of feedback both here and on Twitter about it.  But for those who aren’t in the know, or haven’t seen my previous post about it, Cuil was touted at one point as the Google-killer, the end-all-be-all to searching.  Backed by some venture capital and a few of the genius minds who helped shape Google, Cuil was supposed to redefine what a search engine was.  Instead, it ended up showing just how pointless it was to try and humiliate Google right out of the starting gate.
• Microsoft’s Seinfeld Ad Campaign – Microsoft insists that the ads were intentionally about nothing (after saying that they were supposed to be a longer marketing campaign), but if that were the case, why were they produced in the first place?  I’m sure Jerry Seinfeld has plenty enough to do without helping Bill Gates try on shoes.  The only reason I can think of for this travesty even ever being unveiled was because Bill had some random “Things To Do Before I Leave Microsoft” list which was topped by making a pointless ad campaign with Jerry Seinfeld.  Well, Bill, now that you’ve got your wish, “What pointless thing would you like to do today?”
• Online Currency – Just as with Swatch’s idea of converting everyone to a unified time platform, several companies thought the way of the future was to develop “online currency” that could be used as an alternative to the real thing.  Get some credits for visiting a website?  No problem.  Viewing an ad?  Why not?  Want to buy something or send some money to that far-off relative?  Why not send them some e-money rather than worry about things like exchange rates, especially since retailers accept this mock currency as a legitimate form of payment.  It sounds like it might have been a good idea, had they put some thought into why they sounded just like they were illegally printing their own money and then corrected it.  I think I’ll stick with Paypal, as at least they keep my currency in US dollars.
• Lively – It’s curious enough that I should have something from Google on this list, but Google never expected to be knocked onto their backside when they launched their answer to Second Life with little fanfare and little reason for anyone using Second Life (especially those investing in the game) to make the jump.  Lively shuts its doors at the end of the year (so it’s not dead yet), but being the top performer in one area doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be the greatest elsewhere.
• The Phantom – An apt name for this ghost of a console, The Phantom is perhaps the precursor to the downloadable content now available from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft.  In short, The Phantom was designed to be a console that acquired games over the web, eliminating the need for pressed disks, cartridges, and whatever other physical delivery method you can think of.  Unfortunately, the product never reached fruition, and the only part of their work to make it to market was their excuse for a keyboard.
• Windows ME – Alright, so it’s probably unfair to have two items by the same company on this list, but I really think that Microsoft managed to outdo themselves by even bothering to ship Windows ME.  Having spent several years living having to deal with this monstrosity, I can tell you that Microsoft should have thought ahead and given everyone prescriptions for headache medication with every license.  Between ME and Vista, I’m beginning to believe that Microsoft’s business model is to release a stable, usable operating system as a quick follow-up to versions that create plenty of uproar.  (See ME v. XP, Vista v. Windows 7.)
• Disposable (“Rental”) DVDs – What does fruit have in common with a DVD?  If you said that they both can rot, you’re not far off.  Who would have thought that people didn’t like the idea of paying for movies that expired like produce?  (I’d like to add that this idea seems to come up quite often; while The Register reports that the idea was spawned earlier this year, I distinctly recall Disney running a pilot program a few years ago.)

Do you have any other failures you’d like to bring into the limelight?  Is there something I’m forgetting, or do you think one of these is more worthy than the others?  Or, alternatively, is there something you believe to be one of the greatest developments since sliced bread?  Leave a shout in the comments and vote for your favorite.

(Also, I do believe I owe some thanks to The_Ugster for a suggestion or two.)

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Over the past few days, some of the more popular postings that seem to appear on Digg end up having to do with Google’s search suggestion feature.  While the intentions of these suggestions are entirely noble, they can also be used both to prove the skewed nature of today’s society and the inherent “security” that people seem to derive from their use of the Internet nowadays.  Interested, I decided to do a few queries of my own and see what they resulted in (images linked so you can peruse them at your own leisure and discretion; they’re screen captures directly from Google):

• “Why shouldn’t…”
• “Is it possible for…”
• “Where in the world…” *
• “Who can…”
• “Is this a…” and “Is this an…”

I suppose, in a sense, this is a reasonable way to gauge the intimate levels with which we as a culture seem to have lifted from the Internet.  Some of the types of search queries that are suggested are of the same caliber as those one might ask privately to someone such as a counselor, and many are quite surprising.  Other queries also suggest what some of the common thoughts and concerns of the public are; given that the U.S. presidential elections have just ended, it’s not surprising to see that a few of my images mention the candidates, voting, or the current economic instability.

The mere fact that people are willing to accept the advice of complete strangers, without qualification or question and as found by a search engine with little more intelligence than a walnut, and trusting enough to ask these questions of a headless, emotionless entity in the first place suggests both that people are too insecure with themselves and their peers to confide their deepest secrets in other human beings and that they believe that the research they glean for their issue from the Internet is the best help they can get given this insecurity.

With all of this in mind, it’s not hard to connect that this blind trust, if you will, is perhaps one of the reasons such problems as spyware and phishing even exist.  If people were trained not to have this trust, but instead more of a distrust for machine and what comes out of it (and as a result of this training, develop an attraction to the warmth and individual attention that defines humanity), we would be able to eliminate a vast majority of the “evils” afoot.  Such training might even teach people enough about their privacy that they won’t turn their social networking profiles into flagrant and public advertisements of their misdeeds.  (If such training were to include the repeated usage of my favorite quote (“Trust is a weakness.”), I would be impressed.)

As kids, there’s no doubt that one of your mother/stepmother/grandmother/guardian’s favorite things to say was, “Don’t talk to strangers.”  The computer, although at this point a staple of nearly every technologically advanced household, may not be an intelligent and sentient being to talk to, but people forget that their computer has conversations of its own.  And, based on some of those Google suggestions, it’s telling everyone some of the things you might not want publicized at any cost.

* Alright, I added this one mostly as a joke.  Interestingly enough though, the top result is NOT what I was expecting.

Through some useless late-night meandering, I managed to come across this snarky blog post from AOL mocking Gmail’s latest addition to their popular e-mail/instant messaging platform, the ability to send SMS messages to cell phones (which has since been redacted so they can fix a few lingering bugs).  While it’s not ordinarily a big deal, some people without the appropriate plan and/or equipment might find it useful, as might someone overseas who doesn’t want to pay the “long distance text messaging” fees some wireless carriers seem to find all too important nowadays.

I find it interesting that AOL would attempt to play a humor card while they tout their own rusty horn, especially when you consider this is the same AOL that uses Google to power their search engine. Excuse me a second while I point out that this makes everyone at AOL look like a pack of three-year-olds without a babysitter and add myself to the numerous people who agree.

As someone who’s had rather interesting personal experiences with AOL over the past decade or so, I find their behavior here fairly lame.  Given those same experiences, though, I guess I can’t be too surprised.

I do have some words of advice for AOL, though (and I can think of a few others who can take something away from this as well, in a more generalized form, of course):

• When you’re trying to mock a company who may be trailing you in one area, it might be wise to consider whether you’re partners with them or not in another.  Nobody wants to do business when the only words you can say are, “I’m better than you,” especially when you seem to have forgotten that you’re not.
• Just because you’ve managed to beat someone to market with something as silly as an IM to SMS bridge doesn’t make you better.  I can’t exactly call most of Google’s offerings bloated, but I do suggest you go take a look at the whale you call your Internet portal and see how much fat you can trim out.  If it can’t function, I don’t care that it looks all glossy and shiny and can make little noises to notify me that somebody’s picking their nose.
• Perhaps there’s more to the Google branding than meets the eye, especially in professional terms.  Before you make a snide comment about Google only allowing users a Gmail domain, perhaps consider that nobody is going to use an address such as nicktabick@crazyforemail.com to conduct professional business.  (I find that address too stupid for personal use, either.  I also believe I’ve seen that address in my Spam folder before, but I digress…)
• If Halloween is a grand occasion to make fun of one of your partner/competitors, I wonder what Christmas is going to be like at the AOL offices this year.  However, for everyone’s sake, it might be better to ensure that the liquor, sugar, caffeine, and everything else that might get one of the press writers giddy is safely locked up lest someone posts a follow-up entry making fun of Time Warner.

Perhaps someone at AOL had a few too many candy bars before they came in for work (or, from the look of the timestamp on their post, on their lunch break).  Nice try, but next time around, use the sugar rush on something more productive – like decent software.

(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.

To start, I’d just like to point out that it’s almost guaranteed that I’m not alone in writing an opinionated piece on the new Plurk service, but I figured it was at least worth commenting about, especially when you take into account the contents of my previous post on Twitter.  Even more interesting is that a great majority of the discussion on Twitter in the past day or so is “Plurk is good/bad/in need of help/”.

I decided to give Plurk a try for myself and see what, if anything, set it apart from my now-established Twitter account, or similar alternatives like Pownce or Jaiku.  And to be frank, I don’t think there’s too much going for it; just about everything Plurk has developed concept-wise can be replicated with the Twitter API and a few lines of code.

Your “home” page is taken up mostly by a large horizontal timeline showing recent ‘plurks’ (even more obnoxious than ‘tweets,’ I realize) made by anyone you’re following updates from.  Unlike Twitter, there are two stages of followers, fans and friends.  Fans get the updates posted by that other person, but without the harassment of a ‘Can I be your friend?’ e-mail.  Friends, of course, is self-explanatory.  The timeline is supposed to be ‘realtime’ in that you can click a plurk and see all of the responses…but for all that effort, Plurk pops up a small notification box that there are new replies and plurks for you to look at rather than just adding them.  (Why not just add them and color-code them according to freshness from the last page reload?)  The timeline is also poorly-responsive; it takes a few seconds to scroll over on my machine, and no doubt it will be even slower as people and plurks add up.

One of Plurk’s minor benefits is that they follow the unwritten “microblogger” rule – that is, 140 words maximum – but you can use one of their ‘predefined’ verbs to save a few characters and make sure the verb gets a colorful highlight.  Of course, this only helps if you find yourself constantly nearing the edge and looking for any way to get your character count down, or if you can be bothered to navigate the menu with your mouse.  Plurk’s commenting system threads the responses together, at least, to make for some slight semblance of organization without all the click-throughs (Twitterers, meet Quotably), which makes it a tiny bit more organized.  But this also means you fall out of the conversation entirely if you aren’t following the initial poster.

Plurk also finds a major shortcoming in the way some of the site features (well, not even features, just extra smiley faces and the like) are locked until you establish your presence on Plurk by way of the Plurk Karma system.  Essentially, Plurk will analyze your participation once a day, and assign you a value from 0 to 100 based upon your interactions with the site and other users.  Making new friends or posts, or even uploading a profile picture all affect your Karma score.  Now, it’s an interesting way of getting people involved, but when it requires you to post nearly constantly to change the Plurk logo (yes, logo), I think it’s safe to say that there’s too little thought put into it.  Emoticons aren’t a big reason people are going to stick around…

Plurk also lacks an API and any semblance of SMS support (for the moment, at least), which means that you have to keep the page open or sign up your IM account (thankfully, they at least offer more than Google Talk).  And speaking of IMs, any updates to the timeline also get IMed to you, including responses from people you’ve never met, so if you’re following anyone who gets a lot of attention, your IM client will be getting a bit of attention too.  You can turn them off with off and on commands, post plurks, and respond to the nine or ten most recent comments on other plurks, but there’s really no use otherwise.

I’m sorry, but a headless dog does not a microblogging site make.  Plurk, it’s a great shot…but you’re going to need to offer something that can’t be replicated in thirty seconds on Twitter.  Oh, and lose the comment about emo-ness on your homepage.  Emos never share their emoness.

In the meantime, you’re welcome to befriend me on Plurk, but don’t expect any activity until (updated as of June 3) as Plurk has joined Twitter and Pownce at Ping.fm or some other multi-updater.

Alright, the emo joke might be a bit over the top, but I’m not the only one.  There are plenty of tweets about it, if only I hadn’t lost the URLs.