Cuil: Claiming to be the coolest search engine

The list of search engines is growing and the latest addition is Cuil, pronounced as cool. The first and foremost thing I want to tell about Cuil is that it is founded by a team of ex Google alumni, including Anna Patterson chief architect of the company’s Tera Google search index. So its comparison with Google is inevitable.

Layout is simple and effective

The homepage of Cuil search engine is quite simple. It has a black background, the Cuil's logo, and the search box. The search form return typing suggestions. The search result display of Cuil is quite different and unique compared to other search engines. Instead of displaying the searches in a list, it displays in three columns. It also includes related images along with the searches. Cuil shows the related searches in the box on the top right, and also in a bar right underneath the search box. However unlike Google and others, Cuil neither check your spelling nor suggest you the correct search terms.

Comparison with Google

People have started considering Cuil as the biggest threat to Google. But it is just the starting time for Cuil and it would be foolish to compare it with Google. According to the Cuil VP of communications, Vince Sollitto, "We are trying to give people different results. Cuil is pitched as an alternative to traditional search engines, and users should not expect the results to be the same”.

Google is far ahead of its peers, Yahoo and Microsoft, in terms of paid search business. In 2007, Google’s paid search business made up 40% of all online search dollars. Yahoo and Microsoft have tried and tested a lot of measures and spent billions trying to figure out how to narrow the gap on Google in the lucrative paid search market.

It will not be an easy way for Cuil to make a mark in the search engines market and that too in near future. Only time will tell that how far it goes in this race.

What are the new features in WordPress 2.6

Blogging has provided an efficient and magnificent tool to publicize info about any company on the net. We have got so many blogging platforms and WordPress is one of them. WordPress has released its new version 2.6. WordPress 2.6 has got a no. of features for content creation and improvements. We will just take a look at the major and minor features of the newer version.

Here are the major important features of WordPress's newer version:

Edit-Tracking: The new edit-tracking system will be quite handy for multi-author blogs. It allows you to see the changes made to a post and enable you to see who made what changes to a post and when. It also provides the option to revert back to the older version of a post, in case you make a mistake.

Press This: “Press This” is like a bookmark you can add to your toolbar. It offers a fast and smart popup to do postings to your WordPress blog. Suppose you are viewing a Youtube video and finds it relevant for your blog and want to post it on your blog, then what you have to do is to just click “Press this” button. It will automatically extract the embedded code and post it on your blog. In the same way you can post to your blog from anywhere on the net.

Google Gears Support: The most exciting feature of WordPress version 2.6 is support for Google Gears. Gears is an open source browser extension project provided by Google. You can cache the most important files of the WordPress management console to your local hard drive, by clicking the "Turbo" button in the upper right-hand corner of the WordPress administrative interface. It will allow the authors to keep blogging even if the network connectivity is temporarily lost.

Theme Previews: Theme Preview support permits the admin to preview how their site will look with a new user interface before making it live. As soon as you select a theme, it pops up a window that shows the theme live with all your content. It will be great for just test driving the themes prior to publishing. It will also be helpful for the persons developing a theme and need to test it without allowing anybody to see your ongoing mistakes development.


Following are the smaller features and improvements in 2.6:

• Word count: It does the counting of number of words in your post.
• Image captions: Now you can add sweet image captions at your will.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.

Apart from these there are a number of small changes and new features. Only time will tell that how much these new features help the bloggers.

Be ready for the new gaming experiences

Holiday season is approaching fast and so is the gaming season. Considering the right time to turn consoles and games into commercial market, the biggest companies in the video game console business, Microsoft Corp., Sony Corp., and Nintendo corp., have come up with new games and services at the same time, targeting mainstream users like never before.

Earlier most video game consoles were aimed at serious players who spent the most money and time on games but now the companies are aiming at players who purchase game machines when their costs are reduced and when better arrays of titles become available.

So what are the offers?

Microsoft has clinched a deal with Netflix Inc., an online rental service, to stream movies over the Internet to Xbox 360 game machines. The announcement came on the eve of the Electronic Entertainment Expo Media and Business Summit, a major video game industry trade show in Los Angeles. The Xbox owners will now be able to watch movies streamed through game consoles to their TVs.

Sony is also expected to demonstrate its own service for downloading movies and television shows from the Internet to PlayStation 3s. According to Sony, this summer, its store for buying and renting movies and other video content on the PlayStation 3 should go online.

The credit of all these current moves, by Sony and Microsoft, goes to the sensational commercial success of rival Nintendo Co. Nintendo turned industry rules by going after casual game players with its Wii gaming system right from the day the console went on sale.

Nintendo stressed on fun intuitive Wii games. Instead of the costly and hyper-realistic graphics favored by hard-core players, it has been using the console's motion-sensing controller. In the U.S., Microsoft and Nintendo are neck-to-neck in selling their latest generation of consoles.

It is slated to release a new video game accessory for its Wii game system, Wii Motion Plus. It will help improve responsiveness and precision in tracking the hand movements of players. The new accessory will attach to the existing motion-sensing controller. The device will enable even slight flicks of the wrist and arm to be rendered on screens.

Isn't it looks exciting for the video game lovers?