Google alum Anna Patterson, who wrote an index of 30 billion web pages that became a template for Google and after which she spent 4 years there, rolled out a new search engine no Monday called Cuil (pronounced "Cool" or "Kewl" if you prefer) with a team of former Googlers. The New York Times offered some information about it, then subsequently editorialized it as "building a car company to show off a new transmission" on the Bits blog.
I've taken a spin around Cuil, and my initial reaction is that it looks very Facebook-y, and it's result lists are much more media intensive than a Google search, showing little photos with a paragraphy blurb of text for each result. Given that, it would seem to me that perhaps Cuil wants to establish a foothold in the web space for younger users where more refinement of specified topics seems to be the trend. If so, though, why are they indexing the whole web? Will they roll out new media specific festures to try and nicheify? Or are they just hoping to dump the company to a larger player because they built this search engine so cheaply? Perhaps that is the likliest outcome and objective here.
I liked the search engine well enough, and certainly think because of the uniqueness of its layout, it could serve as a better second option to Google than any of the would be competitiors like ask and yahoo. I might use it a bit - guess it depends how much time I spend on the 'net.
LOLawesum.
So sayeth the gray lady. It's easy to just drink drink drink in NYC, largely because everyone seems to do it, and we live in small spaces and tend to socialize in bars. I guess when that spills over into our fair city's communal spaces during the fairer weather, we just take the booze with us!
Ah, the Heat, the Crowd, the Park and the Booze
Awesum!!!! Feels so good woo hoo yeah alright!!!
Great little project here, based around the concept of those sweet mixtapes your flames from youth made for you when they loved you so much they just had to spell it out with other people's lyrics.
Another wknd has come to a close, which is a weekly tragedy that we all must face. There there now. It was a pretty nice summer one in NYC though, I caught a couple of hours of a hip hop festival in Brooklyn Bridge park on Saturday, which was cool, but the most funnest portion of the weekend went down Sunday afternoon. The good boys from Sunday Best brought Detroit techno legend Kevin Saunderson out to The Yard for an afternoon session of wicked old school house music. It was the kind of uplifting, pretense free music & crowd that reminded me of what it was I first loved about dance music. RAWK!
Check out some of the Sunday Best music downloads. Justin Carter assured us Kevin's set would be available this week.
Apple dropped its 3G, second generation iPhone, today. I know most of you eschew modern technology and live in cavelike enclosures and are thus unaware of this, so I'm glad to inform you of this news. I've heard from a friend on the talk threads over at yelp that she wasn't able to procure a phone at the Bklyn Heights AT&T store where I got my vintage, chrome bac iPhone so many moons ago. The geeks over at engadget claim the stock is sufficient at the NYC apple stores, though.
I've installed the 2.0 firmware and am loving it, have already popped applications from Facebook, Twitter, and Google onto my iPhone desktop via the new app store. Basically it's pretty f'in sweet! Much awesum.
The good folks over at The Smoking Gun report on Bruno's doings in Arkansas, and oh is the news good. Bruno, the flamboyantly gay Austrian Fashionista alter ego of Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen (whom we, and by we I mean I, cover a lot because he is categorically awesum), is touring the US, and apparently sitcking to really remots spot as Baron Cohen's characters are so exposed in the mainstream media now. In TexArKana, he lured 1500 dudes with the promise of $1 beers to a "cage fighting" match, during which the two men in the ring apparently stripped each other and began kissing one another about the face chest breast neck & head.
The movie is reportedly entitled "Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt."
Here's the poster for the event. LOL Factor = HIGH!
I mentioned Ana in my first Wimbledon post, and we were all sad to see her get upset in the tournament for obvious reasons. Fear not, for the fine folk at FHM have filled the void.
