I don’t know where to begin with this one. It was not that long ago, earlier this year, when Cuil was touted as the Google killer. This search engine was to massacre all known search engines known to man, a powerhouse of innovation and usability. There was a lot of hype, some amazing PR, and the world anticipated this amazing release. Sure many of us had out doubts, Google was just so dominant, how could this awkwardly named search engine be anything better. Then again, Google was an odd word some years ago prior to it making its debut.
So just happend with Cuil, and where is it today? Well aside from the fact that the search engine was a miserable failure. Aside from the fact that the search engine was actually crashing sites. And aside from the fact that there were entire sites, highly trafficked sites, that just did not make the listings. Cuil really tried to succeed, but alas, it was a marketing disaster, a sinking ship, a search engine site that just could not search.
The backlash was expected and even became the root of several jokes in the tech community. I personally remember looking for stories on Cuil so that I could laugh. Critics did not hold back anything with their analysis of the search engine, and almost immediately the wind left its sails.
Today those using Cuil are very very very few and far between. With the number of users practically hitting rock bottom, I almost wonder who is actually using this search engine for anything other than research. I’m convinced that only people using Cuil for research on how not to build a search engine are the numbers that are being recorded. I can’t imagine anyone seriously using it for any practical purposes. Perhaps the developers left their computers on a an infinite search loop to give it some traction, but I doubt it.
Alas Cuil, as we wrap up 2008, you will not be missed, but gosh you provided us with laughs. Thank-you!
Google seems to be making a lot of updates recently in a variety of areas. Last week Google Reader received an update, as well as YouTube videos getting a search tool, but today the change can only be seen when you log in to your Google Account. The change is a basic layout update for everyone’s Google Account.
As you can see from the new design it is a lot cleaner and easier to navigate. Previously, all the items were lined up in a single column down the page, and I for one are really happy they changed it, considering the amount of Google products I use.
Google Reader has for a long time been my RSS reader of choice. The design has been simple, easy to use, lots of customisation options, ability to group and more.
Last week Google released a new version of Google Reader and I thought I would take a little time and review it for everyone.
(old)
(new)
Key changes include collapsible navigation, updated look and feel, friends get promoted and more bundle feeds.
Friends get promoted
Shared items have grown up and gotten their own section in the navigation pane. You can collapse this entire section and use the title to see everything your friends have shared, or leave it open to track friends with shared items. (Don’t forget that you can add new friends in “Sharing settings“.)
More bundled feeds!
Previously Google has some default bundles that you could subscribe too, in a variety of areas. Previously this was very limited and there were only about 10 areas. Now they have added huge amounts of bundle feeds for pretty much every major niche. If you go to “Browse for stuff” then you can see bundles.
Collapsible Navigation
Each section of the navigation pane now has its own options menu and minimize/maximize controls. You can collapse each major section of navigation down to one line and focus on only the things you choose to use.
Updated look and feel
The look and feel has changed a lot in this new version of Google Reader. I personally would have liked it if there was an option to return to the old version or at least have a variety of versions. The new version is very neutral, with white and a very light blue being the main colours. However, I find post a lot harder to read in this new version. Recently Gmail received a variety of themes in which users could choose from, I really hope this isn’t too long in coming to Google Reader. Overall
Overall the changes to Google Reader were needed, except in the case of changing the colour scheme. I think the colour scheme changes are definitely a step backwards, but this can be changed when hopefully they release a themes range to choose from.
Youtube seems to have added a very interesting feature to their off site video players. I’m really not too sure if anyone has already reported about this, but Youtube video players which are hosted off the Youtube site now have their own drop down search tool. I have added the video below so you can have a look:
This is a great idea! Now any Youtube off site video player is pretty much as useful as being on the Youtube site itself. Any video can be played in the one player. I admit because the player can be quite small at times, the search results don’t show too many results at once, so you have to be pretty specific to find the exact video you want. However this is a great addition from Youtube!
Additionally, when searching for an image to use I came across this,
When using Google image search instead of searching then finding an image then if that isn’t the right image, then you have to go back and keep doing the same process. Thus getting a little annoying. However, now you can search straight in Google image search while still looking at a page. I know, not big news but just thought someone actually might be interested in this.
Technorati Media has finally launched their Engage (advertising marketplace product) live. Previously this new tool was in Alpha stage and only certain people could use the product. This all happened because Technorati purchased AdEngage.
Since purchasing AdEngage and launching Technorati Media I think Technorati has really lost sight of what their core business model is!
Technorati was a blog search engine that doesnt currently have really market share and presence and their product offering seems to be going down hill by the day. To compensate for this they purchased AdEngage and launched Technorati Media, which is just an ad network.
Looking at the current results from this ad network which has been in operation for several months, seem to be very poor. They are selling advertising for blogs such as The Inquisitr and Profy. The results seem to be as follows, for CPM advertising they are offering a decent CPM rate in between $1.00 – $2.00, but ads are currently only for the USA market and even then their fill rates arent 100%. For all other countries they suggest to use Google Adsense, which is fine, but unless you have a huge amount of USA traffic then this isnt really worth the effort, because what you make on USA revenues you lose on Google revenues elsewhere. In terms of selling sponsorships they also seem to be terrible, with The Inquisitr having 2 125×125 ad slots in the sidebar in which they havent even been able to sell 1 for a few months.
This is all about Technorati realising they dont have a search engine product that is any good, so they are looking for additional revenues streams which will help them eventually sell the company. Is that the way it is or am I wrong?
With so many Internet Browsers currently on the market I wanted to pose a question, which Internet Browser do you use and why?
Currently, the readers of Crenk have so many different browsers and operating systems in use it is simply crazy. The majority of our readers either use the traditional Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Internet Explorer
IE is the automatic defualt browser for any computer running Microsoft Windows. Internet Explorer 7 was a huge step forward for the Microsoft Internet browser. IE 7 was light, faster and a lot safer than ever before. The new IE8 has just come out in beta and we are in the process of testing, in which we plan to write a review in the coming weeks. You can download the new IE 8 here.
Firefox 3
Firefox has always been a tech geeks favourite browser. The new version of Firefox is Firefox 3 in which has more theme, add-ons and features than ever before. The main reason why Firefox 3 is a browser that is favoured by geeks, is that it is so fast and light. Web pages are normally a lot faster to load in Firefox 3 because they have a much quicker javascript engine than IE, thus making web pages load in your browser quicker.
Safari
Safari is the traditional browser from Apple. Safari can be found on all Apple macbooks and mac computers as its default browser. Safari is a very light browser with very limited add-on capabilities and themes. Safari also has a PC version that can be found here. Apple claim that Safari is fastest browser on the market for both HTML and Javascript.
Chrome
Chrome is the new browser by Google. Chrome is a very light browser with currently no add-ons or themes available. Chrome runs on a very fast javascript engine so you can expect your websites will be in front of you in a flash. Due to Chrome being so new it tends to currently freeze on occassion, which can get annoying after a while.
Overall
After quickly running through those browsers Im keen to find out what our readers are using and more importantly why they are actually using that browser. Just post a comment below and let us know!
My start page of choice is iGoogle, which was reviewed here earlier in the year. I’ve been using iGoogle since it was released and didn’t even have a real name, and loved it. My love changed about 10 minutes ago when Google did an update to the page, changing the pleasing top navigation for tabbed pages to left sidebar navigation with a + / – button to see the site feeds in text format, but not recent articles. Take a look:
That’s how my iGoogle page looks currently. Sadly, the tabbed names are now cut-off, the last one should read Photography / Art, it doesn’t. Furthermore, this new sidebar eats up 128 pixels of space. Reading article titles when the + is expanded is a joke and it’s now wasted space. I’m angry, real angry. This sucks. Google, give me my horizontal tab navigation back!
The only attractive thing to the new update is the rounded edges, which is so 2006 already.
Update: It seems the real purpose for this update is to integrate Google Reader with iGoogle and, possibly, become your bookmarks portion instead of storing them in your browser. Seems if you click the blog name from the left side, the content from the RSS feed loads, as seen here:
Here’s the other really crappy part, Google has added in content to my tabs that I didn’t have there before! I never had moviesor The New York Times in my iGoogle, now I have to go through and edit their crap out, Google, I hope you are listening because I’m loosing my trust.
From a user perspective, it’s not terrible I suppose, but I still would much rather read an article on the original website than a stand alone reader which is why I never used Google Reader. From a blogger’s perspective, this is horrible. If you choose to publish your whole RSS feed, you have now have potentially lost unique visitors to your site, they can read it all right here in iGoogle. Additionally, .htaccess pages used to help prevent people from hotlinking graphics means that your article that has photos in it won’t display properly, as is the case now with my blog.
As a blogger, I need to seriously consider if I want to continue to publish full articles via my RSS feed or just snippets and have the reader come to my site to read it all. What’s more fair? What serves the reader the best? As a reader, what’s better for you?
I came across an amazing post over the weekend, in which showcased Google and their series of acquisition since 2001. Google has just turned 10 years old and it simply amazing to have a look back and see what they have achieved from certain acquisitions.
Acquisitions listed range from Deja.com to Android to Adsense. Some products I thought were actually made internally by Google, but to my surprise they just came from acquisitions then built up features around the core code.
Zoho has always been and will continue to be the aggressive competitor for both Microsoft and Google. Zoho offers an online version of everything Word offers, and extends a wider variety of applications than online competitor Google Documents. Zoho has created a huge fan following of over 1 million users and established itself as the online Office Suite of choice.
With its already growing reputation, Zoho can now boast its new service, Marketplace. Marketplace offers a venue for developers to enhance, develop, and rebuild applications with Zoho’s Creator’s platform. As of this article, Zoho claims that there are over 100,000 offerings by independent developers who have found a way to build applications to further extend Zoho’s popularity and usefulness. What’s even more amazing is that Zoho is directing all “fees” affiliated with the cost of some applications directly to the developers.
Major companies are already on board with what Zoho offers which is sure to dramatically increase user figures over the next couple of months. By offering more in it’s office suite, Google Documents and Microsoft will have to pay close attention to what is happening before they are left behind!
Here at Crenk we really like talking about Firefox and extensions, as you can see from previousposts, but this time I wanted combined Firefox with the feed reader I use Google Reader. There are so many Google Reader Firefox extensions out there, but here are the top five I think are worth using.
As with any list of Firefox tools, please do not install all of these at once unless you’d like to slow down your browser. And, honestly, how many notifications do you need to show you that you have unread items in Reader?
AideRSS – Brings AideRSS to your Google Reader, allowing you to see ranks directly in your reader, as well as letting you group feeds by rank. Also allows you to add your own thoughts on each feed.
Better GReader – Combines several Greasemonkey scripts in one extension. Includes things such as skipping the iGoogle choice page, the ability to preview the item as it appears on the actual Web page, shows the favicon for each feed, and several other choices.
Google Reader Notifier – Shows you how many unread items there are, provides an itemized list, lets you customize where the information appears in your browser, different icon sets, and more.
Google Reader Watcher – Based on a Greasemonkey script by the same author, Google Reader Watcher will check your account at an interval you set and will show you how many unread items you have. It can show this broken down by feed and more.
IntenseDebate in Google Reader – This plugin will add a link to each item in your Google Reader to allow you to post comments directly to IntenseDebate.
The new web browser that everyone is talking about and not using, Chrome, just got an update to it. This update is kind of unusual though in the fact that you now have a choice of how beta and unstable you want it to be. If you are into trying out new things, reporting bugs and getting fresh updates daily or every few days, this is for you. If you use Chrome on a regular basis though, the update is kind of mandatory as it
fixes bugs with areas including Microsoft’s Silverlight software, tab behavior, video playback with YouTube and other Flash players, and scalable vector graphics, and it suppresses full-text indexing of sites accessed with encrypted Web connections
Cnet News has all the information on how to do the update, to me the killer is you can’t even update from the software itself, you need to go to another website. Then you have to choose which updates you want to receive, Beta or Dev, and then watch as it updates. I have no problem with software being released and not being finished, it happens all the time, but with Google’s track record of keeping apps in beta for years and years, why put so many users through the growing pains of both Dev and Beta versions? Me thinks Chrome should have been a private invite only release like Gmail was originally to get most of the issues flushed out in the first place.
Chrome is nice, it has a lot of cool features and has everyone who uses the internet interested, but as reported earlier, no one is really using it and no one on a Mac can even start to use it. It pains me when major companies rely on the free labor of their own users to finish building and fixing software that shouldn’t be released yet, much less make them jump through hoops to get the update.
Just announced today, the new Android phone is set to release on Monday, October 20th. This much anticipated release is expected to change the face of mobile phones, similar to the expectations prior to the release of the first iPhone.
Expected specs for the phone were released back in August and can been seen on the TechCrunch website here. Currently this full featured phone is set to be released on the T-Mobile network, similar to Apple’s partnership with AT&T. This exclusivity is sure to give T-Mobile a significant boost to their market share, and their profits will be sitting pretty too if this phone delivers all that is expected.
iPhone users are might be sitting pretty right now, but soon Android might be the next “in” phone to have. Is Apple worried? Only time will tell once this phone hits the market. Already tech pundits and gadget fans are preparing their long stay on the streets over that weekend. I’m interested to see just how much more powerful this Android phone will be, with the support of Google, there’s no telling!
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