Search: “cuil”

It wasn’t so long ago that Cuil launched and I offered a pretty cold appraisal. Of course, I wasn’t the only one to be underwhelmed after they under-delivered on their pre-launch hype. You’d think start-ups would have figured out by now how to better manage expectations. After playing with the site for a couple of […]

Today’s big tech news is the launch of Cuil, the latest challenger to Google’s hegemony in Web search. Given the impressive team of Xooglers that put it together, I had high expectations for the launch. My overall reaction: not bad, but not good enough to take seriously as a challenge to Google. They may be […]

I’ve been exchanging emails with Dhiti co-founder Bharath Mohan about Nuggetize, an intriguing interface that surfaces “nuggets” from a site to reduce the user’s cost of exploring a document collection. Specifically Nuggetize targets research scenarios where users are likely to assemble a substantial reading list before diving into it. You can try Nuggetize on the […]

One of the many things I’ve enjoyed in my first few weeks of working at Google is the opportunity to talk with many people who care about user interfaces and think about HCIR. Indeed, some of the folks working on “more and better search refinements” are just steps away from my desk. Very cool! But […]

As some of you may know, I have a muti-faceted identity: I have an awesome day job; I’m a prolific blogger (really?), I’m writing a book; and I have a wonderful family. Of course, it’s easy to forget that all of these facets co-exist, and that not everything stays put within its original context. Well, […]

The blogosphere is a buzz with hype about Wolfram Alpha. Stephen Wolfram writes: It’s going to be a website: http://www.wolframalpha.com. With one simple input field that gives access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms. We’re all working very hard right now to get Wolfram|Alpha […]

I was reading Techmeme today, and I noticed an LA Times article about RushmoreDrive, described on its About Us page as “a first-of-its-kind search engine for the Black community.” My first reaction, blogged by others already, was that this idea was dumb and racist. In fact, it took some work to find positive commentary about […]