Don't tell her. Just go to work as normal and surf. Otherwise, you'll be decorating four bedrooms, fixing that dripping tap and building a conservatory. - Andy C
what do you mean by sick days? is this a US phenomenon? - Jamie
Enjoy the time with the family. Those first weeks are so import to not only bond with the baby but also to support your wife. When we had Annie I put off my paternity leave a little in order to take up the slack when the grandparents had left and Rachel was getting ready to go back to work. Looking back, I wish I had spent more time with her right after the birth. This next time I'm probably going to take ~7-10 weeks. - Joe Beda
Jamie, some companies pay you on days you missed work because you are sick. It isn't a universal phenomenon. For example, my wife's job doesn't pay you until your 3rd consecutive day of being sick. So if she misses 2 days of work due to the flu, she doesn't get paid for those days. On the other hand, I would. - Dare Obasanjo
oh I get you now..didn't quite understand at first. I work for MS too in the UK and it's the same here. - Jamie
Same post,different titles. I usually start a post with some ideas and a title then go from there. The title usually dictates the direction I end up going in. - Dare Obasanjo
While I obviously think "open" is a good meme in general, my concern is that the word today can mean anything or nothing at all. I've seen too many self-issued press releases, duly picked up on and echoed by the media, claiming that some technology or platform is open. To me, "open" requires a minimum bar of licensing (supporting derivative works, free use, etc.), a demonstration of a sustainable ecosystem of diverse contributors, and an equally accessible participation model. It's good to push back about things that pay lip service to "open" but don't do anything to back it up. - DeWitt Clinton
Today? "Open" has been a popular but meaningless buzzword since forever. Remember the Open Software Foundation, OpenVMS, OpenLook, Open Inventor? Dare's complaint is approximately 20 years stale. But regardless, mock it if you will, interoperability indeed seems to be a major part of what makes "Silly Valley" go. - ⓞnor
ⓞnor, I realize people have been taking "Open" in vain for a while but there seems to have been a resurgence of Open in technology spec names in the past year or two Open Document Format, Office Open XML, OAuth, OpenID, OpenSocial, etc. - Dare Obasanjo
Fortunately, in at least some of those cases they were intended to really be open, at least according to the criteria I mentioned above. OpenSocial, OpenID, and OAuth all are shooting for that standard, anyway. I can't really speak for ODF or OOXML. (Good marketing strategy is another question altogether.) And since we're on the topic, the OWF is intended to put some teeth behind it in the form of an ip license and incubation process that goes a lot further than "press release open". - DeWitt Clinton
I still think you'd actually like the OWF ideas if you gave them a fair shake, Dare. : ) - DeWitt Clinton
Dare, I'll take "open" over "simple" - Bill de hÓra
Linguistic precision has definitely been degrading. I was disturbed to see both CNET and ZDNet confusing BOSS with Open Source [0]. And then Hugh MacLeod just quoted JP Rangaswamy's call for "open standards" and concluded that "open source" will save the cloud [1] (umm, that's not what JP said or meant). Aral Balkan [2] made the same n00b error talking about GAE. [0] http://visitmix.com/blogs/Josh... [1] http://www.gapingvoid.com/Move... [2] http://aralbalkan.com/1426 - Joshua Allen
Joshua, actually the parts about GAE are accurate. "This is why having the Google App Engine SDK be open source is of utmost importance and, I believe, a spark of genius on Google's part." We released the App Engine SDK under the Apache license on purpose -- I don't believe people should be locked into Google's implementation if they want to find alternatives. Granted that's just a first step, but it's more than a token effort, it's a philosophy about how this stuff should work. - DeWitt Clinton
Wake me up when Google has Open Sourced BigTable and all the bits underlying GAE. Providing the source code to an SDK is the least you can do. Even proprietary platform vendors like MSFT and Sun provide source code for .NET and Java, let alone GOOG whose GAE SDK source isn't particularly interesting without the entire platform stack. - Dare Obasanjo
That un-interesting bit of code was ported to run on Amazon's EC2 just 7 days after launch, partly thanks to the open source SDK, but mostly due to EC2 and some great engineering. We were cheering, though. (http://waxy.org/2008/04/exclus...) And BigTable has two great open source impementations (HBase and HyperTable) already. And .NET isn't open source in the least bit, unless you count Miguel's Mono project, which Microsoft has nothing to do with. - DeWitt Clinton
If you want to attack Google for not being open enough there are plenty of vectors. I know, it's part of my job to do it. But this isn't one of them. - DeWitt Clinton
Oh, but that aside, you do raise an interesting point, Dare. I personally don't think Amazon or Google or Salesforce or Microsoft (when it launches a hosted environment) should be expected to open source the underlying bits. What's important is making the external interfaces (the SDKs, the protocols, the formats) licensed such that they can be cloned, and the data made available for migration. That's all -- the implementation details are the way the hosts can compete and add value. - DeWitt Clinton
Open-sourcing GAE SDK was laudable and necessary, but is apples-and-oranges comparison to EC2/S3. I felt it was a dishonest (or confused) cheap shot to smear Amazon by saying "Google open sourced their SDK, unlike Amazon". And it places the emphasis more on "open source", when open standards and open protocols are even more important. - Joshua Allen
Joshua, agreed. You're right. That's apple and oranges. See my comment just above this though, that I think it is critical that companies make the interfaces and protocols freely implementable -- the infrastructure that powers them not necessarily so. - DeWitt Clinton
To add to Joshua's point, my point is that if you are going to brag about giving away source code to prevent lock-in then you should be Open Sourcing the entire stack not just the thin layer of SDK at the top of the stack. Joshua is right though, on the Web it is most important that the protocols and data exchange formats are Open. As Tim O'Reilly said, data is the new Intel Inside. - Dare Obasanjo
I disagree with the part about open sourcing the SDK to be unimportant entirely, citing the example that the SDK alone was sufficient to build a application-compatible layer on top of EC2. But Joshua really nailed it -- in the cloud, it is the protocols and formats that are more important than the even the source code. (The source code simply stands in as good reference material, and a convenient proxy to issue a license against.) - DeWitt Clinton
Heh, you added to your comment. I think we're in violent agreement about that, then. - DeWitt Clinton
When I picked up my iPhone this morning, the salesman was trying fairly hard to get me to sign up for MobileMe but I kept on pushing him off, saying that I wanted to mess with the trial a little more before I committed. Very, very glad I did that. - Akiva Moskovitz
I use MobileMe and so far, no issues. knock-on-wood - Rom Feria
Been using MobileMe since it was called iTools and free with very few issues ever. It keeps my contacts and my calendars and my mail settings synced between 3 Macs. - Adam Turetzky
Is there a known set of circumstances in which this occurs, or are the circumstances fairly random? - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
No reason, no idea why it happened? I understand it's bad news for you, and could be for others, but couldn't this be a random incident? Isn't it a little hasty to go telling everyone MobileMe is a disaster? - Tim Hoeck via NoiseRiver
Thanks Robert. Signed up for MobileMe, but have yet to investigate. Looks like you saved me the trouble! - Bill Sanders
Tim: lots of other people I trust are having troubles with it too. It could be a random incident, but I'd rather have my readers be very careful with this. I've never seen this behavior before. No idea why it happened and since it's taken me more than two hours of resynching with Google Calendar to try to get it back I'm not very likely to try it again. Uninstall. - Robert Scoble
I gave MobileMe a rather rigorous testing for a week, and found it to be just one aggravating issue after the next. http://tinyurl.com/6lnzg6 if you care to read. - Evan Sims
Is this just an Outlook problem? Or can it affect iCal too? - John
John: I don't know. I'm using Mobile Me on a Windows Vista computer with Outlook 2007. - Robert Scoble
Thanks. I just backed up my iCal just in case. Apple needs to get their sh!t together. First iPhone 2.0 and then of course the MobileMe disaster. - John
Thank god, this is one of the few mishaps of MobileMe that didn't happen to me, yet. Woke up to deleted contacts on my iPhone one morning. Thank god, they were "only" deleted on the phone, so nothing was lost. But it just makes you remember: "When was the last backup?" - Holger Eilhard
I don't like to rant about Apple, but don't they test this stuff. what about 2.0 firmware for iPod touch and iPhones that is really unstable with the appstore? I know they can't test every config, but atleast try to work out the bugs. Everyday I here of another mobileMe disasters.. I'm happy I still have old treo, which is buggy too, but at least it won't automatically delete my contacts and appointments for me... - Sebastiaan van den Akker
I don't have my calendar on MobileMe, but I know it screwed up my address book. - Francine Hardaway
While there's probably a unique circumstance in which this happens, the fact it is possible at all is scary to say the least. - Sam Law
I have found that redundacy is a good thing. Which is why I keep more then one calendar. - Paul via twhirl
Are there any free and/or open source products which fulfill the same features as MobileMe? Preferably open source so anyone can just up and install as required. - Scott Jarkoff
Before making such proclamations, you might want to do a little homework. Did you even talk to MobileMe tech support? http://www.apple.com/support/m.... There might have been a simple fix had you checked. I've been using MobileMe since July 18th; I sync three Macs and my iPhone and haven't had any major issues. I'm adding an XP laptop next; I don't expect any problems with that either. - Albert Willis
Albert: a simple fix? Google Calendar has been going for six hours recreating my calendar so far. This was a problem with Outlook. I have 8,400+ calendar entries. It's only recreated 2,400 of them so far. Sigh. Macs don't even have Outlook so, of course you haven't had problems yet. Hope nothing bad happens on your XP machine. I'd back up just in case. At least my calendar will be back tomorrow cause I had a backup. - Robert Scoble
That is, there could have been something Apple could have done to restore your calendar entries, assuming you synced your calendars to MobileMe. That would have been worth a shot. Again, we don't know the culprit here, between Outlook, Vista, MobileMe and whatever else is installed on your machine. I've done enough tech support to know we don't have the complete story here. - Albert Willis
Albert: no, once the calendar entries were deleted, you needed to move them over from somewhere else. There was no way in hell I was going to let it touch my calendars anymore after that. I know Google Calendar will work. My trust in this is shot. - Robert Scoble
I know it's not as critical a failure as calendar but you should try the gallery...I struggled with using it and sharing it for a week before giving up and going back to flickr... - Kamath
I didn't have any problems with calendars on MobileMe, but it decided one morning to delete all of my contacts bar three. That was the point at which I decided I'd move back to using Exchange, which Just Works on the iPhone, and (via Entourage) on my Mac. And amazingly, I had people trying to tell me it wasn't Apple's fault, despite it being Apple technology, running Apple software, on an Apple machine! - Ian Betteridge
people love to piss on apple these days, ain't that right? Exchange deletes calendars as well as google calendar. It just happens. Ask an exchange admin how much fun it is to run that b*tch ;) - muzo
muzo: I dare you to come up with any Fortune 1,000 CTO who says that Exchange deleted a calendar like this with a recent version of Exchange. - Robert Scoble
yeah, but from the user end it WORKS. get it? Exchange == most worthwhile product MS produces. Period. I'm going to bed. - Andrew Feinberg
Andrew: right. And anyway, Apple is the beneficiary of more free good PR than any other tech company around. - Robert Scoble
It's a version 1 Apple product - that means "early beta" in anyone else's language. - Andrew Garrett
With every post I get happier that I did not waste my $100 on mobile fail. - Bob Blunk
I'm incredibly sad to hear that this implementation is failing so badly. It's a utopian feature we all benefit from. If Robert ditches this and convinces other to, Apple will really miss out of good feedback from the community. Anyone found out if Apple responded to this major setback? - Mark Aitken
Not worth the very limited utility given the fact that it won't sync up with Google Calendar, either. I got MobileMe through my brother's family plan, and still had to buy Spanning Sync to do that. And I have to keep the intermediary computer on (my home iMac) because it doesn't sync OTA. There's got to be something better than this... - Jason Menayan
Had the initial trouble with MobleMe during the .Mac switch and have stopped using it - even though I paid good money for the service. On the flip side, I'm finding Live Mesh to be surprisingly more useful and it's a free "Tech Preview." Go figure. - Paul Dain
"This fictional counterterrorism agent—a man never at a loss for something to do with an electrode—has his fingerprints all over U.S. interrogation policy. As Sands and Mayer tell it, the lawyers designing interrogation techniques cited Bauer more frequently than the Constitution.
According to British lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early "brainstorming meetings" of military officials at Guantanamo in September of 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial new interrogation techniques including water-boarding, sexual humiliation, and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas." Michael Chertoff, the homeland-security chief, once gushed in a panel discussion on 24 organized by the Heritage Foundation that the show "reflects real life."" - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet
If we have to put up with this stuff, the least the government could do is emulate the other aspects of 24 and actually develop some cutting edge technology for communications, transport, etc. Then it could all trickle into the private sector and improve the lives of the general public, rather than the current state of affairs where intelligence services are still waiting for the right procurement forms to be approved so they can upgrade from IE 3.0 - Sacca
The pro-torture propagandizing of 24 was a component of the overall neoconservative campaign, financed by MSM oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch, to destroy basic American democratic values and to support the drive for World War IV. (24, like Fox News and The Weekly Standard, is a Murdoch property.) Many high-level members of the American military establishment have strongly opposed the neocons on this and many other policies (most recently, for instance, neocon agitation to attack Iran). It's going to take much effort to undo all the damage done. - Sean McBride
Rupert Murdoch isn't a neocon, he just supported their agenda in 2000 and 2004. He likes Barack Obama, believe it or not. - Kevin Fischer
We are running out of time. We are ALL running out of time. - Akiva Moskovitz
Kevin - Murdoch has heavily promoted the neoconservative agenda for several decades -- he appears to be a true believer. One comes to this conclusion by content analyzing his media properties, especially Fox News, the New York Post and the Weekly Standard, and his pattern of hires. In fact, Murdoch is probably the most important neocon billionaire of them all. He has made some efforts to draw Hillary Clinton and Obama into the neocon fold. - Sean McBride
Rupert Murdoch: pro-torture, pro-Iraq War, pro-Iran War, pro-World War IV, pro-neoconservatives, pro-neoconservative police state, pro-Likud, pro-Greater Israel, etc. The TV show 24 is one small piece of his overall propaganda efforts. He has written paychecks for dozens of leading neoconservatives over decades. - Sean McBride
ba wah ha ha ha ha ha.... Kiefer Sutherland the Neo Con? come now. his dad would flip out if he heard you say that - Noah David Simon
Noah -- a major breakdown in logic here. No one accused Kiefer Sutherland of being a neoconservative. Sutherland is an actor who is being payed to play a role. Think about it. - Sean McBride
my family runs an acting studio. I am thinking about it. Kiefer picks his roles carefully. Acting is more then a mechanical craft. http://newsbusters.org/node/10... Donald Sutherland was a well known radical leftist. - Noah David Simon
I love this show and will continue loving this show, no matter how political people try to make it. - Shawn Farner
24 is my favourite tv show I watch it because it is entertaining and at the same time very exciting. They may fail to show that torture is not a very useful instrument in extracting information, but hey, it is just a tv show. - Baard Overgaard Hansen
The main creator of 24, Joel Surnow, has close ties to Rush Limbaugh and the neoconservative political network. Surnow deliberately used an entertaining show to promote propaganda themes that have been destructive for American interests, according to American military leaders who know that torture doesn't work and puts American troops at risk. Rupert Murdoch funded the entire project. There are important issues here that go well beyond entertainment. - Sean McBride
We need an advisory rating system based not on age, but on how grounded you are in reality. - Bruce Lewis via fftogo
Does '24' encourage US interrogators to 'torture' detainees? http://tinyurl.com/5gwev8 QUOTE This week's New Yorker features a story about Joel Surnow, the show's creator and a self-described "right-wing nut," and includes the information that last November Mr. Surnow and the story's creative staff were visited by a brigadier general and three top military and FBI interrogators, as well as human rights groups, who told them that the show's graphic depictions of the torture of suspects was "hurting efforts to train recruits in effective interrogation techniques and is damaging the image of the US around the world." - Sean McBride
QUOTE (from CSM): This past November, US Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind "24." Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and FBI interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming. At first, Finnegan – wearing an immaculate Army uniform, his chest covered in ribbons and medals – aroused confusion: he was taken for an actor and was asked by someone what time his "call" was. In fact, Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show's central political premise – that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country's security – was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. "I'd like them to stop," Finnegan said of the show's producers. - Sean McBride
I think the point of this isn't how good or bad "24" is as a TV show, but the fact that policymakers apparently have a hard time distinguishing between fictional entertainment and reality. - Nathan Rein
Shawn Farner: what do you know about this topic that US Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, doesn't? - Sean McBride
Great Jane Mayer video on the New Yorker site discussing the destructive effects of Joel Surnow's 24 in promoting torture: http://tinyurl.com/2ptfvz "In her article “Whatever It Takes,” Jane Mayer writes about the use of torture in the televison show “24,” and the politics of the show’s executive producer, Joel Surnow. Here Mayer talks about torture and television, with clips from "24."" [Keep in mind that while these pro-torture shows were being aired, the Bush 43 administration was actually practicing torture, in violation of longstanding American values and practices.] - Sean McBride
Nathan: in support of your point, from the post by Paul Buchheit at the head of this conversation: "Michael Chertoff, the homeland-security chief, once gushed in a panel discussion on 24 organized by the Heritage Foundation that the show "reflects real life."" Really disturbing stuff. (I'm guessing that Shawn Farner might be in his early teens.) - Sean McBride
Nathan: it seems to me a key point here is that the entertainment side of the Rupert Murdoch empire is promoting the same pro-torture themes as the neoconservative policy wonks at Fox News, The Weekly Standard and The New York Post. This is a unified propaganda machine that has launched a devastating attack on traditional American values and done enormous damage to the image of the U.S. around the world. Some of 24's heroes used to be portrayed as sinister Nazi villains in American popular culture - "Ve vill make you talk." - Sean McBride
It's interesting that all the leftist propaganda shows on FOX and other networks don't raise this much comment. - Robert Hafer
I have half a dozen friends who are or were Army interrogators, and none of them are trained to torture anyone. There IS a psychological component, of course, but BS like waterboarding is nowhere in any manual or course other than as examples of what NOT to EVER do. It's a shame all interrogators are now seen as torturers and depraved sadists, imo. - abacab via fftogo
abacab - you are expressing the views on torture of most of the American military establishment vs. the views of Hollywood neocons, chickenhawks and fantasists like Joel Surnow. It is quite likely that high-level members of the Bush 43 administration who are responsible for torture will be facing war crimes trials down the line. - Sean McBride
Has anyone considered the fact that this isn't happening nearly as much as is being reported, and that the government *wants* the world to think we're barbaric to terrorists? Israel's Mossad can often extract information based on their barbaric reputation alone. As abacab says, no one most people know who are interrogators do this stuff. It's always odd media stories from "well placed sources" as well as governmental sources talking about this. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
@rizzn care to elaborate, better with proof? - silpol
There is overwhelming evidence to support the belief that torture committed by the Bush 43 administration, as at Abu Ghraib, has been real. There is absolutely no evidence to support the speculation that stories of torture are merely a form of psychological warfare. It's interesting, by the way, that nearly all the pro-torture ringleaders among the Bush 43 neoconservatives are closely allied with Israel's Likud Party and rely heavily on Israeli policies on these matters as an inspiration for their own policies. They have completely forgotten about the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. - Sean McBride
I'm by no means a Bush fan, but Sean, it's clear you have an agenda here and being so obvious about it doesn't make for a very convincing argument. - Shawn Farner
Abu Gharaib was not committed by the Bush administration... it was committed by a bunch of kids without higher approval. It was wrong, no on condones it. The people that did it are being punished and frankly those people that committed the acts were reacting badly to being put in a war situation without adequate moral support of our citizens. - Noah David Simon
you give me any war.... any riotous and necessary war in history and the most pacifist views will come from the soldiers that had to fight it. This is nothing new, but neither is the concept that there are some things that a nation must fight for. - Noah David Simon
Shawn: I couldn't be more explicit about my agenda: I am strongly opposed to the mainstreaming of torture as acceptable practice by neoconservative media outlets like Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, Weekly Standard and 24. Do you have any factual information to add to the discussion? You didn't respond to any of the content in the Christian Science Monitor and New Yorker articles, which reported that the American military itself has been gravely concerned about the content of 24. Torture is an anti-American policy: we fought the Nazis in WW2 over such policies. We used to be the good guys. - Sean McBride
Torture is not a core American value http://tinyurl.com/6xn5go "Apparently, fans of the Fox TV show 24 have forgotten just exactly what America's honor is really about. Up until the administration of fear and deceit, America was the world's leader in justice and integrity. We are signatories to the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1994). Waterboarding has for centuries been a tool of brutal regimes and only rarely produces anything but superficial knowledge and often misleading, false information. The Bush/Cheney administration has managed to reverse the respect of the world that we have always enjoyed and valued by abusing detainees, ignoring America's treaties and declaring executive privilege over our Constitution." - Sean McBride
An excellent David Letterman interview with Jane Mayer on Youtube: "The Dark Side" 7/23/08 http://tinyurl.com/6pj4pr And a pointer to Jane Mayer's book on Amazon: "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals" http://tinyurl.com/6f69v7 The subject of potential war crimes trials with regard to Bush 43 administration torture policies emerges in the interview. - Sean McBride
I've always been skeptical about claims that violence on television leads to violence in the real world, but this is pretty clearly a real phenomenon here. - Paul Haahr
This seems more like an easy way to intimidate others... Propaganda, really, for the bad guys: "Ever see 24 and all that asskicking? Yeah, we're just like THAT." while balancing the "No, we're not REALLY like that" angle here at home. Propaganda/disinformation campaigns really suffer from everyone being able to know everything everywhere these days. - abacab
Well right now - "Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity." FAIL - Atul Arora
Matt - Following numerous threads since the launch. Almost all so far 'not even close to Google' - Charlie Anzman
Got the "We'll be back soon" message. +1 @ Atul - BeeLing
How does Cuil compare to Microsoft's search engine? - Adewale Oshineye
On the other end of the spectrum, do site:http://www.cuil.com/ in Google. It has crawled the new cuil pages and they appear in the index and search results (including the unvailable page. - Atul Arora
it doesn't seem very relevant. My blog is not indexed yet :( Is the database exhaustive enough to be meaninngfull? - Jnuk: acidweb.fr via twhirl
try searching for your name on Cuil. Charlie Anzman has a great photo up for that - Sidharth Dassani
Charlie/Sidharth, I don't know why some images don't match the search results. - Matt Cutts
Nice to see you on FF! I promise not to Ban/Block/Delete you! Enjoy! lmao - Igor The Troll
I actually quite like it, it sorts out stuff on the page in a more readable form than Google and quickly found stuff on other Sally Church's I didn't find in Google. Medical terms need writing out in full though, eg it returns zero for CML but useful stuff on Leukemia. I like the UI, it will get better with time. - Sally Church
Seems pretty crappy to me. My search returned results for sites that have not been in existence for a year (an old index maybe?), and one of the top two results on Google search for the same term wasn't even on the first page of results for Cuil. - Matt Devost
I really like the UI, the diversity of results, and the categories features. I think that I'll like the pictures as soon as they reliably match up to the correct search results. (I am not Kevin Scott Collins, for example.) Looks like they're having some issues crawling wikipedia given the number of broken wikipedia results I've seen. Overall relevance doesn't seem as good as Google. I'm guessing that will get better soon now that they've launched and are able to gather data from real users. My $0.02. - Kevin Scott
It's nice to see an alternative to the usual list of results. It's clean and easy to use. The relevancy of results however isn't very good compared to Google, and in fact it's also dished up some rubbish as well. The service has been down as well today. It feels like a beta to me. Mind you, maybe it's unfair to compare to Google results really, because this is us assuming only Google can deliver the right answer. - Ceejay
The interface is brilliant and truly fills a gap left wide open by Google (design can move beyond minimalism), Duplicate links need to be lumped together, this should improve the relevance of the searches dramatically. - Jamie Ginsberg
Most searches I did returned a bunch of porn despite beign in safe mode. When I turned off safe mode, the adult stuff went away. - Mike Seidle
My blog wasn't in it but fortunately a chinese spammer's copy of it is. - Sam Pullara
Matt - At this point, I'm just suckin' up all the different takes. It's already gone from interesting to just fun ?! :) - Charlie Anzman
The results are bizarre, even humorous at times, but we need to remember what yardstick we're using to measure the results. If it gives the exact same search results at Google, some will deem it a failure because it's unnecessary. If it gives different search results from Google, some will deem it a failure because they're "not standard." My only quibble is that in my vanity search, items in my blog seem to be drawn from last year. Perhaps a database refresh is all that is needed. - Ontario Emperor
Not impressed with cuil. Did some searches of my company keywords, results were not as smart/relevant as what I find with a google search. Also, I am not thrilled with the 3 column format, especially when the 3 columns are not aligned, which makes it hard to scan and find relevant links quickly. - Greg Bogdan
Very long way to go. There is no real regional specific search results. The world is a bigger place than just the US. To say that they have indexed 10 times the amount of pages is also silly. The good search engines will find the good/popular sites. If a site has not been found its fair to say that it just not that good (excluding brand new sites of course) More pages will not equal better results. - Shane Osborne
First take of cuil.com: they are not nearly prepared as they should have been at launch. It is irrelevant how many web pages they've indexed... if you can't respond to a user search query with relevant, useful results. In reality live.com does a better job than cuil.com. And we all know where live search stands. - Pre Priyadarshane
Results didn't match my expectation (which isn't neccessarily a bad thing), but the main gripe is the layout and point size of the results page. That blocky texty boxy results style isn't easy to scan and I think the point size is too small. Speed etc is something that can be fixed with hardware so just a temporary issue I'd say. - johan
I like the layout personally, and the categories on the right, except that the results are mostly rubbish and the categories don't actually work sometimes (links point to an error page saying there's no results). They say they're using contextual search...really? I'm not seeing it. For "Australian visas" the government website doesn't even show. The images are all mixed up, displaying logos from the wrong companies against the wrong result. Oh dear...what a catastrophe! - Ceejay
I tried searching for diggnation and the only result on the first page actually linking to diggnation webcast was a link to episode 57. The first 2 results were wikipedia. I think they have a lot to do as far as results are concerned. Maybe this is the next big failed launch after Wikia Search - Sidharth Dassani
The quality and depth of results seems thin and the images are just wrong. Now, if they can fix that then there are a few interesting issues, particularly from an SEO perspective. A left to right format may change the click yield for different positions. Is it as imperative to get to the first position, particularly with an F pattern eye-tracking standard. Conversely, the weight of the first page of results (text and images) makes me believe few would go deeper than page 1, increasing desire for page 1. - AJ Kohn
Atul, good link. In my opinion, Bindu's absolutely correct that the "Explore by Category" entries are entirely from string matches with Wikipedia category pages. - Matt Cutts
In particular I found the description/page summary text poor. Google appears to have refined that well over the years. Cuil concentrates way too much on including the search term in the results as many times as it finds it, which makes the results look like scraped pages (even if they arean't). Truncating the titles and URLs also makes a difference to understanding what the page is about. The layout would work better if each result was the same height, with each horizontal result starting on the same baseline. And how about numbering them 1 to 10? All that said, I do like the more modern feel to it. I wish Google, etc. would mix it up a little more. - Richard Crocker
The only thing i like is their presentation of search results. The relevance goes for a toss most of the time. Its interesting if you try searching for "cuil" ...check the results http://www.cuil.com/search?q=c... - James Ramya Rajan J
I love the way you always assume malicious intent behind everything. - Adewale Oshineye
Cool. Whether it is deliberate or not, it is lame. Hopefully Google fixes this before more attention is called to it, for Google's sake. - Dare Obasanjo
So if the rankings are normal, they should manipulate the results to artificially lower Knol results just because it's a Google property? Knol got a huge amount of press and links, and has very few actual pages (about 1330, it appears), so it's not surprising that those pages rank high (a lot of pagerank spread among a small number of pages means each page has high-PR). For what it's worth, Wikipedia currently ranks above Knol itself for a search on "knol": http://www.google.com/search?q... - Paul Buchheit
If the rankings are normal, then there is no cause for concern.So I'll wait to see what Matt Cutts or the Google blog has to say on this. - Dare Obasanjo
Yes, because waiting more than 24 hours to get enough data points before insinuating that Google lied is just so last century? - Daniel Dulitz
Daniel, I need to wait 24 hours before writing a blog post or a tweet about weird results myself and others are seeing from a search engine? Since when? - Dare Obasanjo
Dare, Yahoo ranks a knol page at #2 for the query [Music in Capoeira]. Do you think that Yahoo is pumping up knol rankings too? I left a comment on your blog with more info. - Matt Cutts
Matt, at the very least it seems like being on the front page of Knol passes massive PageRank (or something) to these entries. I assumed that this must at least be a bug, if it is not intentional (and thus "shady") but from your comments on my post you seem to consider this natural. - Dare Obasanjo
"Actually most people aren't smart enough to ignore the results in the funny colored boxes. If they did then Google wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar company. The post at http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog... and the first comment point out exactly how differently regular users view search engine results when compared to Web savvy geeks." - Dare Obasanjo
Dare, the conversation on the Open Web Discussion group is that this is not intended to be a standards group. Now, these guys have swallowed the standards are too heavyweight pill (just as developers have their favorite software-engineering-is-bad-waterfall meme). - Dennis E. Hamilton via twhirl
I'm confused as to how they can claim to be about incubating and ipr of technology specifications for the Web but aren't a "standards" group. Technically the W3C isn't a standards group either, nor is the IETF. That doesn't change the fact that their specifications are intended to be standards, otherwise what is the point? - Dare Obasanjo
... the IETF has to accept and charter the work, and there is work that is out of scope for them. WebDAV is the borderline example that has always had them nervous. In any case, my sense of OpenWeb is creating guidance for managing IP issues in development of community specifications of any sort, and also incubating some specification efforts. The idea is that movement to someone's standard track is later. There may be some naivety, and there are people attracted to this who have different desires for it, but I think the basic activity can be useful. We'll see how well they can stick to it as they work through the additional formation work. - Dennis E. Hamilton via twhirl
[PS: Couldn't see any comment form on the blog page, so here I am.] - Dennis E. Hamilton via twhirl
Dare: I think they mean formally-established standards organizations. Let's back up and agree that a specification is not a standard, the IETF definition of a standard is far better. But this is for forming open, community-developed specifications that are safe for people to implement in terms of any IP of the contributors in the specification. They mean not standard in the way NTFS is not a standard, but what it would be like if the NTFS spec were under the Open Specification Promise. OK? - Dennis E. Hamilton via twhirl
Before you argue that NTFS is a kind of standard (and I agree), it is not because of its specification. A better example would be something like FrontPage Extensions. - Dennis E. Hamilton via twhirl
There is a comment icon on the top right of each post. I can see how it is easy to miss. :) - Dare Obasanjo
But more than process-adverse, they are concerned about each one of these efforts having to go through all the process-creation activities in order to get past the five buddies with an idea about a protocol stage. We'll see how well that dance goes. - Dennis E. Hamilton via twhirl
Nothing you've said explains why the IETF is not a good fit and it already has done all the hard work with regards to figuring out IPR policy, etc. - Dare Obasanjo
separate subject ... what will ipr be in five years? - Gregory Lent
The question is whether or not the IETF accepts a project. It is more than submitting an IETF draft and having a mailing list. Check with the Atom folk on what they needed to do before they were an IETF project. And the IETF process structure is fairly rigorous for standards-track work. Now, the IETF process is my favorite, especially with regard to the open-ness and availability to public participation, transparency, etc. (I lobbied for Atom to go there, for example.) But back up to the stage when there was only Atom 0.3. I think the Open Web Foundation is interested in smoothing that stage, not the next one. Maybe it will be mini-IETF in form. That's my take on what they are after. Let's see if it works out the way the convenors envision it. - Dennis E. Hamilton
Gregory: I don't understand the question. And you probably need to be specific about the IPR you have in mind. - Dennis E. Hamilton
From where I sit the process for getting acceptance into the IETF seems to be more objective than the "if you're David Recordon's homeboy" policy that seems to be getting applied at http://groups.google.com/group... . I'm perplexed by the notion that these people want to define technology specifications that everyone from small Web shops to multibillion dollar companies should implement but going through some project justification is too much work so they created OWF - Dare Obasanjo
The web is layered. It may be that each layer needs a standardization process that is optimized for the type of technologies, usage patterns, developers, etc. prevalent in that layer. - scott anderson
Heh. Many people involved with the OWF are also happy IETF supporters and contributors, and I definitely don't expect that to change! Worth noting though that the IETF also sets standards for their standards, which is a *great thing*, but many works weren't written according to those standards, yet they still need IPR frameworks and an incubation process. - DeWitt Clinton
The OWF is intended to catch the specs that *don't* go to standards bodies, at least not yet. For whatever reason many specs are slipping through the cracks, and we're wasting tremendous time and energy creating one-off foundations to (partly) catch them. Don't overlook, Dare, that some of your colleagues are also supporting this, because you guys are also downsteam of those specs. : ) - DeWitt Clinton
Love to see you get involved with this, Dare. I'd especially love to see you get involved and start participating *before* writing vitriolic posts skewering the intent. If you gave it a chance you might even agree that it is useful. : ) - DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt states it right. There's no reason a group of people who wish to write a spec should submit to a "goodness review" or pay money before they can work within the confines of a well understood, well documented IPR policy and process. One of the main reasons these one-foundations are being started is because of IPR concerns. Standards bodies like the IETF are way too slow for the interested parties at the stage they are at (usually very early on), and OASIS's (very low) fees are still too much friction. - Gabe Wachob
I don't understand the "standards body" distinction. IETF and W3C aren't standards bodies, like say ISO. They provide a home for authoring technical specs and dealing with IPR issues. It seems OWF wants to do the same thing and is somehow trying to pretend it is a different class of organization. Sounds like FUD to me. It seems dumb to create yet another standards organization but if the technical specs are good, what do I care? - Dare Obasanjo
But I'm going to stop responding now. I'd like to have a meaningful dialog, but you keep trying to deliberately provoke by saying insulting things, like "FUD", "dumb", "trying to pretend." I'm sorry if you don't like it, Dare. But there are some decent people involved with the OWF, and we're trying to do a good thing here and solve some real problems -- we deserve better than to be insulted. - DeWitt Clinton
I guess I haven't kept up, there was a time the W3C was explicit about not being a standards body (hence their specs are called "recommendations"). Times change. Anyway, the original point still remains that there is already an organization that meets the needs of the folks who have created OWF. It seems unnecessary to create a dueling organization which takes resources from others. - Dare Obasanjo
Perhaps a more productive question to ask is: why didn't OAuth and OpenId (as specs that didn't come from big companies) go through the IETF process? The answer to that seems like rationale for the OWF. - Adewale Oshineye
Adewale, It doesn't seem like either spec intended to be a Standard with a capital S when it started. They were semi-proprietary technologies being used by a loose coalition of companies. However they both got to the point where grown up considerations came into play and they had to talk about IPR, spec quality, interoperability, etc. That would have been a good time to take them to IETF. - Dare Obasanjo
Dare, I'm disappointed that you think we're ignorant of the IETF or that OWF is based around my "homeboys". I'm happy to talk and in the video of the presentation at OSCON you'll see that I started out by saying this wasn't about me and wasn't just my presentation. - David Recordon
David, I'm just telling you what it looks like from the perspective of an outsider. From where I sit we already have too many standards bodies whose job is to define the "Open Web" including the OASIS, IETF and W3C. If you are going to get Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, etc to support a new standards body defining Web technologies, I personally would like to know that there was a good reason for it and so far I haven't heard one. Then again, it's not like my opinion matters, so godspeed. - Dare Obasanjo
David, will Facebook and SixApart be members of the Open Web Foundation? If so, you should either resign from SixApart or the board of the OpenID foundation. Can you explain why you're the "Open Platforms Tech Lead" at SixApart and still on OpenID's board but you are working to implement Facebook's proprietary platform? Maybe I'm wrong, but this Open Web Foundation looks like an end-run around existing projects and frameworks to give an air of legitimacy to certain companies' actions. Tell me why I'm wrong. - Andrew Feinberg
Andrew, like the Apache Software Foundation, individuals and not companies will be members of the Open Web Foundation. I certainly hope to see Facebook supporting OpenID in the future and wrote about why I think Facebook Connect helps make a case for OpenID: http://daveman692.livejournal.... - David Recordon
Gmail was better web mail, Maps was better web maps. Innovation is often making something a bit better :) - Dion Almaer
Dion, there was a time it seemed Google wouldn't enter a space unless the company figured it could change the game. These days it seems Google is just targetting successful companies and FUDing them with "openness" instead of bringing true innovation to the space. It is hard to knock a "me too" effort if it is as revolutionary as Gmail or Maps. Android and OpenSocial on the other hand? *sigh* - Dare Obasanjo
This is the first sign of organizational dumbing-down. - Paul Denlinger
Dare, whether or not I ever use an Android-based phone, I have to give them credit for thinking big here and trying to change the entire mobile game. I think it has already effected how Apple does things, and Nokia, and everyone else! Seeing Symbian opened up, and apps on the iPhone etc.... I have to believe has SOMETHING to do with Android. This is industry changing stuff.... and open sourcing it all matters. - Dion Almaer
I don't see how Android can take credit for apps on the iPhone. Or do you think Apple was telling the truth when "Web apps are all you need for the iPhone" was their original spin? That is the same line as "we'll never do video on the iPod". It really meant they weren't ready. I can buy that Android influenced the opening up of Symbian but it is too early to see if that will make a difference or not. - Dare Obasanjo
Apps on the iPhone has nothing to do with Android. It's a great marketing and money making scheme for Apple. I'm glad to see Google Android in the market, though, because otherwise we'd quickly have a monopoly in the handset space. iPhone FTW. - Jason Carreira
My Reader, Netvibes, Newsgator and Rojo numbers have been constant for the past couple of weeks, so I don't think it's just Reader that's affected. I'll ping someone on the FeedBurner team. - Mihai Parparita
Maybe it is a Reader bug. Either way, we're on it. - Mihai Parparita
This must have been fixed between Tuesday and Wednesday, as I saw a sizable jump. - Louis Gray
Aha, I saw the jump too and I was so confused: FB showed a 30% jump in subscribers but Google Analytics said none of my sub links had been clicked the day prior. This explains it! Thanks for the quick work Mihai. - Daniel Smith
Robert, I think Microsoft earnings missed the expectations of the street analists. If I understand correctly, what we announced was in line with our previous guidance. - Franci Penov
Robert, I believe there's a pretty decent analysis of how Microsoft missed the street's expectations at http://www.cnbc.com/id/2572513... . As for reflection on business skills, my comment is about how A-listers like you like to give "advice" to companies about how to run their business when it is clear that simple evaluations like "hmmmm, is it smart to bet on a content based startup in a world saturated with free content where the big players are AGGREGATORS of content not producers?" is something they get wrong. :) - Dare Obasanjo
Tell that to Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern. BTW PodTech never listened to my advice, either. My group was consistently one that brought in more revenues than we spent. - Robert Scoble
