New Google Competitor - Cuil Search Engine

Cuil Screen

It is not a first time since era of Google domination begins, when new rivals are trying to challenge the “Big One” leadership. This list might include startups like Teoma (whose technology became the backbone of Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. this month.

However, even after investing heavily on search, both Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. been gradually losing ground to Google. Through May, Google held a 62% share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 21% and Microsoft at 8.5%, according to comScore Inc.

What makes Cuil different from his predecessors? May be, it is the fact that, for the first time, the competitor’s product is compiled by the former Google employees. May be, it is the overconfident claims that the search engine will ultimately challenge Google market share?

Rather than trying to repeat Google’s approach on ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Cuil’s technology drills into the actual content of a page, according to the company’s president Anna Patterson. Also, Cuil’s results will be presented in a more magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links. Cuil’s results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.

While I tested the new search engine today, the results were quite mixed, with bringing more quality content from Google than from Cuil. Also, Google interface and approach is so familiar through the years together, that it is not easy to be non-judgmental testing another interface approach. Observers also note that some of the well-known pages seem to be not index at Cuil (such as Wikipedia, for example). However, if you take in an account that the site was released just yesterday, the results are quite good. Work is still needed, but it looks promising. Google, beware!

Access main page: http://www.cuil.com/

Additional Reading:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/28/technology/cuil.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cuil_good_but_not_good_enough.php

Walt Disney presents PixieHollow.com

Pixie Hollow is Walt Disney’s creation of MMOG, based on their Fairies Franchise. For those who are new for the World of online gaming, the MMOG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Users play the game on the Web and compete against other online players.

The software for the game is available for free but users can buy items to receive extra credits in the game. Players can bring a fairy and her surroundings to life simply by clapping in Disney Fairies’ Pixie Hollow Home Tree Playset. Adorned by swings, furniture and a flower picnic table, a beautiful 3.5" fairy and her fairytale surroundings await the sound of claps to spring to life.

There is a Disney description for the theme:

Imagine the most beautiful, yet tiny world you have ever seen - with startlingly rich colors and breathtaking scenery. Add an infinite number of pocket size fairies clad in clothing made from colorful flower petals and shimmering spiderwebs. Sprinkle the scene with the illuminating sparkles of Pixie Dust.

That is the world of Disney Fairies - a world that you can share with your child using a little imagination and these great ideas.

At PixieHollow.com, there are games and activities, books, and movies. One of the main reasons for the site development is also promoting Disney’s new movie Tinkerbell to be released in October 2008. You can even see the Tinkerbell Movie preview on site:

Tinkerbell Movie preview

Note that this business model is mostly focused on girls’s ages 8 to 12 years. This fact highlights the fact that the internet is increasingly becoming an engaging medium for practically all age groups.

Additional Reading:

http://www.techbanyan.com/618/disney-pixiehollowcom/

http://glambamm.com/49/pixie-hollow/

Free the Internet - July 25, 2008 - 1st Ed.

Welcome to the First, July 25, 2008 edition of the Free the Internet Blog Carnival. Some statistics: Submitted Articles - 22. Published Articles - 14. I want to thank all the authors contributing to the issue. Some articles were excluded from the review, since their topic of discussion did not match the main target of the carnival. I am sorry, that not all submissions were accepted, as some of the excluded articles carried a significant value.

General

Sally Thompson presents 100 Free Online Alternatives to Popular Office Apps posted at Internet Service Deals.

Sagar Satapathy presents 100 Cool Things You Can Do With RSS posted at Accredited Degrees.

Fiona King presents By the Numbers: 100 Online Calculators for Everything posted at Best Colleges Online.

Fiona King presents 50 Useful Blogging Tools for Teachers posted at Teaching Tips.

Sally Thompson presents 50 Awesome Search Engines Every Librarian Should Know About posted at Best Colleges Online.

Kelly Sonora presents 100 Web Tools for Learning with a Disability - College Degree.com posted at college degree.

Amy S Quinn presents 50 Firefox Add-Ons to Achieve Private and Secure Web Surfing posted at Internet Service Deals.

Free Information Services

Brian Terry presents 6 Hot Tips For Successful Split Testing posted at Big Selling Website Design.

Neelakantha presents The Ultimate Guide to Internet Law: 100 Guides and Resources OEDb posted at OEDb: Online Education Database.

Free Multimedia Services

Tahsin Kocaman presents How To Watch Populer Shows Online Outside Of USA posted at EZ Hacks.

Neelakantha presents 100 Online Sources for Good, Free-As-In-Beer, Feature-Length Films posted at Internet Service Deals.

Other Free Services

Fiona King presents 50 Fun Things You Can Do With Google Gears posted at Distance Degrees.com.

Raymond presents Best Locations To Blog With Free WiFi Internet Access posted at Money Blue Book.

Kelly Sonora presents Are You Getting What You?re Paying For? 25 Online Tools to Test Your Internet Service posted at Internet Service Deals.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of free the internet using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Time-restricted Access to Windows XP

One of the readers of this blog asked if there is an opportunity in Windows XP to restrict computer use time for one of the PC users (I bet it is his poor kid is going to be abused) without any additional software installation. Following a brief investigation, I have found a partial solution for this inquiry.

If there is no way to operate computer remotely and computer is not on the network to be accessed from other point, the access to the computer might be restricted to the particular user in terms of the time of the day or days of the week when user can log on to the system. On a stand alone computer, there is no way, to force or encourage computer user to log off when the permitted hours expired. To enforce computer log off, when not in use, it could be setup that the PC idling for more than 10 minutes, for example, will result in going to screensaver mode, and return to operation is accompanying with the re-login request enable. Just check the box “On resume, password protect” in the Display Properties window (screen saver tab).

The following step-by-step instructions will help you to setup the time restricted user account on your PC:

1. Click on the Start button in the bottom left corner and choose Help and Support from the opened menu.

2. Type "logon hours" (without the quotes) in the search box located in the top left corner of the screen.

3. Review Full-text Search Matches below, locate record “net user”, and click on it.

4. Look at the help article, clarifying the user account syntax, and check some examples for setting a user’s logon hours.

Examples

· To display a list of all user accounts for the local computer, type: net user

· To view information about the user account jimmyh, type: net user jimmyh

· To add a user account for Jay Jamison, with logon rights from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., Monday through Friday (no spaces in time designations), a mandatory password (jayj), and the user’s full name, type:

net user jayj /add /passwordreq:yes /times:monday-friday,8am-5pm/fullname:"Jay Jamison"

· To set johnsw’s logon time (8 A.M. to 5 P.M.) using 24-hour notation, type:

net user johnsw /time:M-F,08:00-17:00

· To set johnsw’s logon time (8 A.M. to 5 P.M.) using 12-hour notation, type:

net user johnsw /time:M-F,8am-5pm

· To specify logon hours of 4 A.M. until 5 P.M. on Monday, 1 P.M. until 3 P.M. on Tuesday, and 8 A.M. until 5 P.M. Wednesday through Friday for marysl, type:

net user marysl /time:M,4am-5pm;T,1pm-3pm;W-F,8:00-17:00

5. Open Command Prompt Window (Start ’ Programs ’ Accessories ’ Command prompt).

6. Enter the appropriate "net user" command for the user(s) you wish to restrict access for, based on the syntax examples provided above.

7. Reboot the computer and check performance.

20 Free Short URL Redirection Services

The Short URL redirection services are ideal if you want to replace your long website address (or even particular URL to the certain post) with an address that is short and easy to remember. You can create such a short and easy to remember website address (URL) and afterwards use it to browse to your website. In practice, this means that you choose a new sub-domain and thereby create a new website address. When your visitors click on your new Short URL they will automatically be redirected to the website addressed by your original URL.

There are several additional advantages of having short URL:

• Some long and complicated addresses might break up in the email text, and therefore become unclickable. User has to copy and past the URL to the browser to make it work.
• If you want to hide your referral ID in the address to avoid reader’s perception that you might benefit from his click on the link, this is a good solution.
• If you need to give the address by phone or SMS and do not want to mess up with long strings.
• If you want to check the profitability and effectiveness of different marketing channels, you can, among other methods, assign different short URLs to each channel to evaluate.
• Not that I am fan of the “black hat” sites promotion techniques, but having multiple redirection URLs for your site might be handy.

I am sure, that there are more reasons to have a free, nice, and easy solution of having an extra (new) site address. For your convenience, I have created rating list of the 20 top free services with brief description, rating, and access links at my favorite rating site RateItAll. To illustrate the concept, the main Rating List address is:

http://www.rateitall.com/t-26841-free-short-url-redirection-services.aspx

As you see, it is quite long. The following addresses would be much shorter:

http://linkslash.com/makeshortURL

http://tinyurl.com/makeshortURL

http://shurl.org/makeshortURL

Nice Name for your Blog with Domain TK

The most exciting feature of the user registration in the domain zone TK is in the fact that it is free for anybody. Until recently, the administration of the domain TK (Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand located in the South Pacific) in exchange for the free registration applied forced ads on your page.

Recently, the situation has changed for better. On the 32-nd International Conference ICANN, Dot TK administration announced that from now on the forced ads will be completely removed from the pages with registered free domains, and will not be placed on the newly registered sites as well. This positive marketing step attracted more users to choose the short name for their Web Site or blog to be forwarded to.

There are some limitations for the domain TK use:
1. Sites not visited at least 25 times in consecutive 90 day periods are automatically canceled to avoid the domains being unavailable to more active websites.
2. Internet service provider Road Runner on Time Warner Cable, continues to block sites with the .tk domain, in spite of the significant pressure from the Internet community.

Dot-TK recently provided .tk websites the option to join a network called TiKinet, a close-knit network that links sites to each other based on key words called TiKilinks. The network is expected to increase traffic to the websites, many of which are personal sites and blogs operated by individuals who otherwise would have no way to advertise their sites. You have the opportunity to check the traffic flow through your domain as well. Following test sign up for one of my blogs, I noticed immediate additional traffic through new doorway, not huge, but more than I expected.

The site has a virtual referral program, however, I am not quite sure what they are giving away for the new members sponsorship. If you are going to check the opportunity, use my referral link, please: http://freedomains.nesher.tk/

Three Music Search Engines

Sometimes, you need to check the particular song from the particular artist. How to do that fast? If you type the song name in the general Search Engine, it will give you many different references to the purchase source, history, notes, but none might be related to the music clip itself. If you try Torrents, most likely you do find what you want, but you can get a virus or Trojan as bonus as well. You have multiple online audio streaming collections or music focused social networks, but there is no guarantee that the song is already included in the database.

So… Try Songerize, a super simple Google-like search engine to locate popular audio tracks. Just type in the song name and the author and within seconds the built-in audio player starts playing right under the results. Songerize does not give any information where have been the tracks located, or where to buy them, but ease of use and very impressive coverage of the music world make this free service extremely handy for the music lovers.

If the interface is too simple to you try the parent site, which use the same search engine, but can be characterized by more complicated interface and set of features: SeeqPod. With this search engine, you get multiple hits on the song you search, including possible video clips and related publications. Actually, here you can choose what kind of media you are looking for. Leaving checked the audio check mark only you can limit your search results exclusively to the music tracks. And the big advantage is that you can download clips directly to your Hard Drive after you listened them and found interesting. This is my personal favorite among all there services.

Somewhat comparable to Songerize is Songza - another music search engine and online player. In terms of functionality, it is in the middle between Songerize and SeeqPod.

Please review screens to get a first impression:

All three reviewed services are free to use and do not require registration.

Find a Cheapest Shipping Rates with Shipgooder

Even the best general Search Engine cannot the best solution for each and every case. Sometimes, small and focused Web Sites can make our life easier. For example, how can you find fast, what is the cheapest way to ship 5.2- pounds package from Trimont, Minnesota to Reedsville, Ohio? Search for USPS, FedEx, UPS, and other shippers Web Sites, locate the appropriate information, and compare. How fast can you that, even you are an experienced searcher?

Let me show, how you can perform this kind of search and comparison in matter of seconds, in three steps:

1. Access the Web Site: http://www.shipgooder.com/

2. Enter your ZIP code, ZIP code of the destination, and package weight.

3. Click on the button to get the best rates.

4. In less than a fracture of a second your report is prepared.

As you see, the site is very handy, saving you a lot of time on the shipping prices comparison, and potentially money as you can find the best possible price instantly. You do not even have to register to obtain the information from Shipgooder.