Cuil ready for the Google Kill.

Everyone knows about Google, it is synonymous to search, and to Internet for many. Every week we techies hear about new ventures and acquisitions by Google, and the horizon is ever increasing. But, a husband-wife team from Stanford is trying to dent the giant’s domination, and that too aiming at the bull’s eye. Searching, which is the heart of Google's business.
Cuil is the new search engine which was unveiled earlier today (28th july), and unlike many other failed attempts by smaller and bigger companies to take down Google, Cuil looks fresh, genuine and original.
Cuil, (pronounced as cool), is fundamentally different from Google, be it the way it indexes results, shows results or navigates. Which is better is another question, that only time would answer. Initially when we hit the Cuil home page, you have a calm feeling with a black page and a very prominent search bar inviting you. But, as soon as you start typing you know Cuil is indeed very different. You get a drop down will autofill suggestions as you type a search string.
The Results page is the most innovative part, its built up into 3 parts, the bottom bar which has the Google like search page numbers, the top bar having the search box and category tabs (another innovation which we will explore more) and the content area, which unlike other search engines, shows the results in multiple columns, with images added wherever relevant. It gives the immediate feel of the each result. Also it has tabbed suggestion boxes,showing you related terms. All done in a neat Web 2.0 model, with limited loading time.
The key word for Cuil is categorizing, in the top bar, it shows various categories for results. when I searched for “Michael”, I got many tabbed categories like Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, George Michael, More..., helping me to close in onto what I am looking for. The results, by default show the All results tab, with entries from all categories. Along with the results we have a box of tabs called “Explore by category” which further categorizes the content. It is more easy and fun searching in Cuil rather than Google’s all in a bucket way of searching.
Cuil's About page says it indexes over 140 Million pages (Google’s index comes to around 40 million) and they are the world’s biggest search engine. And, they do not use the Google’s page rank kind of indexing, where popularity (in terms of clicks and links) is the earning points. Instead, Cuil goes by content of each page and categorizes it. But, how far this fetches us realistic results is a question in hand. For example searching “Codevalley” returned one of the popular articles from my site, indexed by some other RSS site, and my profile from various blog directories. But, it did not show the website www.thecodevalley.com in the top five search pages. Also the image shown along with the search results were sometimes totally unrelated to the actual result. Also, the search engine refused to show any results at all many times, even though second try yielded thousands of results for the same query. Still, the most severe drawback with Cuil is that there is no image search, or any other type of search for that mattter, other than the normal search.
The conclusion is that Cuil beats Google by a very big margin in terms of Presentation of the results, but the actual searching technique of Cuil is to be tested. But, Cuil is worth trying, as it makes searching more interesting and interactive.
Start Cuiling here
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Post Yahoo!, Cashback challenge from Live.

Post Yahoo! debacle ( I don't consider it a debacle though), Microsoft is working hard, it seems. Their creative brains are being squeezed to get innovative and useful ideas for the net. This time around I would try to cover some of the new innovations and improvisations by Microsoft.
Live Search Cashback
How did Google own the web? Search engine and ads related to that. Yes, and this is what Microsoft tried to rip apart with a Yahoo! takeover. But when Balmer said, we have different strategies, he was not bluffing.
The mastercard ad says "there are somethings money can't buy, for everything else, there is mastercard" The same will apply for Live search cashback. The basic idea is, you search for the goodies you want to buy online using live search. You get the list of shoppers' who sell the item and the price each of them offer. And once you choose a shopper and go forward for the deal, Microsoft will pay you a bonus, for using their search system. Yes, they are sharing the revenue directly with the consumer. Nice idea. And they are not keeping anything back. They are sharing the FULL profit to the customer. That is indeed a bold decision. No, that is not the only reason why you should opt for Live cashback. It offers innovative features like bottomline price, where you get the actual price you will have to pay, after tax, shipping etc. So you won't be fooled to go all the way to the merchant site, add to cart etc and at the end find a different price.
Also, enrolling is a breeze, just submit your mail id and go ahead with your purchase, you get the incentive and in the subsequent purchases, the cashback account accumulates the money. Once it reaches 5$ you can request payout.
I tried with searching for "windows vista ultimate" and I got a couple of hundred deals, it was easy to choose one from the list, as each search entry had details of base price, product details etc. I went ahead with my choice, and enrolled to Live search cashback. The price of the product was 180$ and I got a cashbak of 10$. Yeah! it is that huge!! I would whole heartedly recommend this, not just because of the cashback, but the genuineness of the idea. (Don't get baffled by the low price, I bought an OEM version).

Community Clips
You already have your Youtube for videos, but Microsoft is bringing up this new portal for people to post help videos on Microsoft Products like Word, Excel, powerpoint etc. You can join the community, post your videos, share information, rate videos, etc. Looks nice. It is still in the Officelabs, waiting for it to come public.

TaskMarket
Again another labs product. Not much of a breakthrough idea in this, there are many sites like Rentacoder, getafreelancer, etc doing the same. The basic idea is, you post a job; logo design, article proofing, small webdesign project etc. And coders bid for it, you choose your coder and get the job done. Nothing new, except that it is a Microsoft's!

Live Search Cashback
TaskMarket
Community Clips

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