Always Get Better

Jumped on the bandwagon and tried out Cuil today.  The verdict - more development time needed.

1. Result counts are wrong
I searched for the (rare) name of a friend and found 3 results.  The search engine counter said 4 results were found.

2. Duplicate content
I searched for the bizarre phrase ‘fell in outhouse’.  The first 3 pages were nearly identical results.  For a time I wasn’t certain I was really changing pages.

3. Named after a Salmon
Apparantly ‘Cuil’ is a gaelic word referring to knowledge and hazel - they talk about a salmon of wisdom.  I’m not sure how that sits with me…

I chalk up the high server load and weird results to the infancy of the product and expect that it will improve over time.  The column interface is sleek and attractive.  The results clustering appears to be advanced although similar to WebFountain.

Right now, though, I don’t understand why Cuil is being touted as the next generation search engine that will replace Google.  The press coverage and their own site confuse me as to whether the big deal is the size of the search catalogue (apparently 3x that of Google) or the fact that the company’s leaders are made up of former Google employees.

Time will tell, but as of launch today I don’t see Cuil becoming my default search provider any time soon.

Technorati Profile

As confident as we may be that we’re the only ones using our computers, the truth is we can’t ever be completely safe. For my own part, I was smug in the knowledge that because I ran an up-to-date antivirus program, didn’t hang around the web’s so-called “red light districts”, and didn’t download software I was unsure of, I had nothing to fear from those nasty virus things.

Wrong.

Just Being Careful Won’t Protect Your Computer From Attack

When NIMDA hit, I really felt violated. Even though I did nothing to cause my computer’s fall from glory, there it was. Where once I had the illusion of control over my space, all of a sudden it was shattered. It’s a brave new world.

Unless giving up the Internet is an acceptable alternative, we have to live with the risk of having our computers compromised at any moment. Apparently there are legions of “zombie networks” just waiting to be activated and used for evil – computers with hidden software controlled by enterprising criminals interested in nothing but a quick dollar.

Maybe it’s because I’m naive. Maybe it’s because I get paid by the hour so long virus-cleansing sessions don’t cut into my dinner plate. But I have to ask – how much of a problem is this? If my regular actions aren’t putting me at (extra) risk, what benefit will worrying bring?

Never Visit a Trojan Page Again

Fortunately Google exists to protect us from evil-doers by scanning the web for so-called “badware”. When performing Google searches and attempting to access one of these “bad” sites, Google presents us with a warning and gives us the option to bail or continue with the site.

Thank goodness for that! Let’s all uninstall our antivirus software now.

I noticed lately that I’ve been having issues accessing my GMail account.  These issues have come and gone in the past but in the last several days it’s turned into an occurrence every time I log into my account.

For anyone else sharing in this problem, here is my solution:

1. Try clearing the URL (e.g. if your address bar reads http://mail.google.com/mail/#, change it to simply http://mail.google.com).  Sometimes this will “trick” your browser into re-loading the page.
2. Go into your Internet Options and clear your browser’s cache.  On Firefox this works nearly 100% of the time; for Internet Explorer continue to step 3.
3. Close all running copies of your web browser (after clearing the cache) and then re-load and log in again.  This is normally my last step and hasn’t failed yet.