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John, Joe, Ben at Google Dance 2008

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John, Joe, Ben at Google Dance 2008

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

4th Google Dance, this time with Ben!

BBQ was great and I finally bumped into some of the Google search team and had a nice discussion about whether more transparency would improve results rather than leading to more spam. They are gradually opening up with webmaster tools and such, though I think guidelines should be more explicit with respect to many things – most importantly the gray areas of linking which confound everybody and lead to link practices that don’t serve users well. e.g. Nofollow affects the millions of blog comments that *should* be followed where opportunistic blog references are followed when in some cases they are effectively a paid link … and Matt has not even convinced me that what seems like a scorched earth policy on sites with paid followed linking is always in the users interest. Seems to me the issue for Google should be whether to pass along authority or not rather than downrank for bad behavior.

But hey, in any case thanks to Google for another great Party!

Me and Mao, Forbidden City, Beijing China

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Me and Mao, Forbidden City, Beijing China

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

This is in front of the Meridian Gate, through which is the Forbidden City.

Across the street is the world’s largest and in many ways most significant and controversial square – Tiananmen Square.

The Beijing Olympics have had surprisingly few protests so far and I’m wondering if this has been due to a lack of interest in protesting or
just careful management by the government. I think a combination of these factors is in play.

Contrary to what I had expected, police security in China was not conspicuous at all. I don’t think this is from secrecy, rather in Chinese culture people simply do not challenge authority the way people here in the USA are used to taking on “the man”. Also I think in China it is considered more acceptable for the government to crack down severely when they are challenged.

For this reason I think many Americans may wrongly think that there is a large desire for major democratic reforms in China. I think there is a *very* powerful desire in China to continue with the laissez faire business reforms that have brought prosperity to a much greater number of people than ever before, but I don’t think “democracy” is high on the personal agenda for most of the Chines on the street.

Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California, USA

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Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California, USA

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

I was reviewing Yosemite pictures from five years ago and this one really stood out of my son Ben at Glacier Point, with Half Dome in the background.

We camped a week at Yosemite with friends and it was a really great trip. I hiked Half Dome, something I’d wanted to do since I had moved to California in the 1980s.

It’s been five years so we are definitely due for a trip back to Yosemite.

Cuil Search “Ah Ha! NOW I GET IT!”

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OK, I have a mild conspiracy hypothesis about Cuil that helps explain what I see as the glaring problems with this new entrant into the search landscape.   I should say that I don’t know any of the founders so it’s presumptuous to suggest their motivations are not purely to create a great search engine.   All I can assert reasonably is that even if great search is their prime goal, they have a wonderful fallback in terms of getting bought out by Google to protect their secrets or another big player who wants to get at Google secrets indirectly.

Here is the evidence for the buyout hypothesis:

1)  Cuil results are formatted in a crappy way.    It’s hard to scan and review results.  Dramatically inferior to other search engines in my view.

2) Results are not very relevant.    Searching for “computers” yields….nothing.    Cuil cannot even find  “Cuil Search Engine”.   Sure, building a huge search index is very difficult, but Cuil had time, expertise, and resources.  So why such a lackluster relevance debut?

3) No revenue model except the ubiquitous and vague suggestion of monetizing through “advertising”.  Given 1 and 2 it’s going to be hard for Cuil to turn a buck in current form, especially because after all the initial buzz dies they’ll be left with …. very little traffic.

Given this and Glenn’s earlier comment about great new technology at Cuil suddenly it hit me.   BAM! Cuil probably has little or no intention of existing in current form for more than a year or so.    Like Powerset, Cuil secretly planned and plotted in stealth mode, suggesting to insiders they were the next big thing.  Then, when  they had something that basically worked (or in the case of Powerset worked on a limited basis), they launched to great fanfare.    They have improvements on Google’s dated hardware framework and probably have included many of the same features in the Cuil algorithm, coded differently enough to elude legal entanglements.

Now it’s time to shop yourself out to the highest bidder, and in this respect  Cuil is looking at some very, very high bids even though they don’t seem to be a very good search engine. Why the big bids?    Cuil’s team was from Google and no doubt has a lot of specialized, inside information about how Google works.    Due to disclosure and other legal issues I’d guess the Cuil team has been very careful to create something that is new and unique yet includes enough Googley technology to be of concern to Google and of great interest to Microsoft or Yahoo or AOL or Fox or …. ?

The stakes in search are extremely high, and these Google insiders saw a super opportunity to do one of two things:   Improve on Google and be the richest people in history OR   build a modest quality search engine with some Google technology, hype it, and become super rich.     Based on early tests and reviews the first option is out, but the second one is looming large for the lucky Cuil winners.     Powerset sold for $100,000,000 and only managed to index Wikipedia (and not very well at that).    With Cuil I’m guessing the bidding’s going to start quite a bit above that.    Hmmmm – let’s see what Cuil turns up on a search for …

$$$ Cha Ching $$$

Cuil search engine fails to find itself

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Cuil search (pronounced “Cool” if rumors are right) is out today, boasting the largest search index on the web with 120,000,000,000 pages indexed.  Unfortunately Cuil seems to struggle with the following search, which you’d think they’d…ummm….get right:

Searching   Cuil Search Engine leads to this incomprehensible listing:

searchengine.com – Sligo

The Ordnance Survey letters of 1836 state that “cart loads of shells were found underground in many places within the town where houses now stand”. At that time shells were constantly being dug up during the construction of foundations for buildings. This whole area, from the river estuary at Sligo, around the coast to the river at Ballysadare Bay, was…

searchengine.com/Tag/Sligo/

Google, I think you can relax.

Shanghai Pork Ball Makers

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Shanghai Pork Ball Makers 542

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

In Shanghai near the Bund we had fried pork balls in dough as a tasty treat at a small place on the street that seemed to be very popular with local folks.

The pork was wrapped in dough and then fried on one side and served – if I’m remembering right – with soy sauce and maybe some other choices. At about .75 for 6 they were a tasty bargain as well.

Camden Yards – Baltimore Orioles

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Camden Yards – Baltimore Orioles 310

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles play baseball here at Camden Yards which is near the downtown “Inner Harbor” area of Baltimore.

I was really impressed with Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area, which I’d visited only once before. The area used to be the active working port but the ship traffic was moved to the area just south of the Inner Harbor which has evolved as a major tourist destination.