Redswish - carefully crafted banter

Is Cuil all that cool?

Cuil is a new search engine service set to rival Google, ironically created by a group of previous Google employees. The search service, pronounced ‘cool’, claims to index over 120 billion pages (which if I may say so myself, is a staggering amount). Various sources reckon this is almost 3 times as much as Google, however Google state otherwise, although not revealing any actual statistics.

Cuil approaches search slightly differently from Google. Firstly, search results are displayed in a magazine format as opposed to a list. But their real USP is that they don’t collect user data as Google does. This could be a point that sways many people, especially in light of the recent focus on the amount and methods Google use to gather data on it’s users.

But do we need Cuil? Search results differ from Google’s, naturally, but Google has always been there to provide a service that works whilst giving even more in return. It has advanced far beyond it’s original purpose and is now an integral part of the internet. I can check my search history to remember how I reached a certain page or image, check my emails, see how many times I’ve visited a particular site through Google, webmaster and analyse my site’s stats and much more.

So how can Cuil even claim to rival Google? It can’t, it can only rival it’s search functionality, and as far as I knew there was nothing about Google’s search that required rivaling.

Personally I feel that Cuil… just isn’t. The search algorithms may blow a hole in the internet – yes the results returned are very concise. So are Google’s. That’s it. The user interface is ugly, I just feel the blue, black and grey does not work. The name seems like some half-arsed late attempt to jump on the ‘web 2.0 misspelled word’ bandwagon (even though it’s apparently derived from the Gaelic for ‘knowledge’ and ‘hazel’), and the claims that ‘it does a better and more comprehensive job of indexing information online’ are quite bold. And regardless of if it’s true – does it matter if no-one uses the service?

But let’s not be hasty. I will continue to dabble with Cuil, to discover if there are any true benefits. With such a huge web index and a fantastic team of ex-Googlers managing – there’s definitely potential. But the real test will be whether it still stands in 2/3 years time.

For more information on Cuil check BBC Tech News or of course – Cuil itself!

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The new site is alive!

New design, obviously not straying too far from the old one. Additions include Twitter and Flickr feeds, Gravatars and a few more features still to be added, including styling up the pagebar and adding social bookmarking links. But aside from that it’s here!

www.nathanbeck.co.uk will be up at the start of August, unfortunately it’s currently down because I’ve not been looking after my hosting.. tut tut.

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Google Pagerank finally updating!

Get on the edge of your seats people! Matt Cutt’s announced on Thursday that the latest Google Pagerank updates will become visible ’sometime over the next few days’.

Well I’m waiting… ‘anxiously’!

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I'm getting all twitterish

I’m on Twitter! I made a step forward in my life this week and finally reactivated my Twitter account to… err… do whatever it is you do on Twitter. Don’t forget – it’s all about the social networking!

So – find and follow at www.twitter.com/redswish

Let’s hope I keep it up, when the new site goes live I’ll include some Twittery functionality.

(Hey isn’t it weird – the Wordpress spellcheck didn’t pick up on ‘Twittery’… does this mean it’s actually considered a feasible word?! Googley, Googlish, Twitterish, MySpacing, Facebooking, Digg, Macified, Firefoxed… nope, all illegal words )

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Large Blog Site Navigation

With my ever-growing fondness of blogging, I’ve wrote an article for the Flame blog on the subject of Navigating Large Blogs.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

So when a blog grows and expands, it’s easy for older posts to get lost and unseen. Sure they’re still there, archived or categorized, but once your post count starts to rise above the lofty heights of 100 posts… chances are your old work, regardless of how well-written or useful, is going to attract less traffic from either external or internal sources.

The importance of internal blog navigation cannot be underestimated. It may seem obvious but a lack of categorization, clear navigation and tidy layout can have massive negative implications on a site’s usability, and therefore readership.

So go and check it out for yourself, but don’t forget to come back!

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New site launch delay

Hey all, today was supposed to be the launch of the new Redswish/Nathan Beck site but unfortunately, due to a high workload and the small inconvenience of a hungover weekend – the launch is being pushed back till next Monday.

So… 7 days and counting!

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Narrow Stairs

Well, actually my only gig of the year so far! I just don’t think the first half of 2008 has been particularly productive for film or music. The only new album releases that I can recall (off the top of my head) that have inspired me at all so far are the new Sigur Ros album, Rihanna… you know what? I’m sat here struggling, so I’m going to forget listing and jump straight the new Death Cab For Cutie release – Narrow Stairs.

I’ve been a fan of DC’s work for a few years now, but never really got into them. I’d struggle to name more than 5 songs, never mind sing them. However with the release of the new album, which I must say is fantastic, I’ve been gradually falling in love.

Thus, my mate Tom and I took our precious Wednesday nights out to pop down to the Apollo and thoroughly enjoy the Manchester show of their Narrow Stairs tour.

I must say it’s a while since I’ve been to a gig, possibly as far back as Leeds Festival last summer… so I was in the mood for a good show and wasn’t disappointed.

You don’t go to a Death Cab gig to ‘mosh’, jump around or scream. You don’t go to get hammered or stoned and stumble around. You go to stand and enjoy the beautiful sound of Ben Gibbard’s vocals and the harmonious ambient chorus of the band (except for when it rocks up a bit… then you can be swayed to throw one arm up!).

So suffice to say the gig was fantastic. They played a decent length set covering a wide range of some of the best old tunes and a modest selection from the new album. Thankfully they seemed to favour Transatlanticism, which being my favourite album was pleasing.

Tom had to complain at the fact a huge portion of the crowd were hardly die-hard Death Cab fans as they only seemed to know songs from the new album. I understand his point, a valid point indeed, but at the same time there’s no rule to stop someone simply turning up to a gig to enjoy the music – regardless of how much of the band’s back catalogue they own.

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Google looking at more social approaches to searching

In the attempt to continuously improve their already dominant powerful search service, Google are now looking at more social approaches to the way results are displayed and utilised by browsers.

A video from Tech Crunch shows a user interface being tested, demonstrating new features Google are looking to integrate into their search including the ability to vote results up and down, as well as removing them from your own results list.

Other possible features include the ability to add comments about websites. How this would be moderated, I’m unsure. The concept sounds great, but whether a comments facility would be beneficial on a search results page remains to be seen. I personally very rarely need to try any more than the first 3/4 results to discover what I’m looking for. I don’t think I’d even consider looking at comments.

The question arises of whether this will be beneficial to the user and a valid improvement to Google’s services, or another method of gathering user information and keeping tabs on us. An ever-growing paranoia surrounding the ‘Big Brother’ concept is only spurred on by news as the above.

With social networking becoming an integral part of every day life for many people, search results kept on record, bank account details, medical information, personal pictures, documents and details held on numerous computer servers all around the world by many different companies; the threat of identity theft or personal information being leaked becomes a very worrying subject.

I don’t doubt that Google’s research and testing is solely to provide a consistently better service. However, with the amount of personal information stored with Google – it’s easy to see why some people become more and more paranoid by this.

What’s your views?

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Let There Be Payne

October 17th. Max Payne – the film.

2008 has been a poor year for movies so far. No, don’t argue; it’s a fact. I’ve not been to the cinema once, not even on a date, not even to view the listings. The only good films to appear on DVD were No Country for Old Men and Rambo, neither terrible nor fantastic in my opinion – however brutal! The only thing that’s come close was 21, and that was hardly Spacey’s finest role.

But things are looking up. The big summer blockbusters are showing at the moment, including Hancock, Wanted, Wall-e (the latest offering from CG masters Pixar), The Dark Knight which promises to be awesome and The Forbidden Kingdom with my 2 favourite generic martial artists – Jet Li and Jackie Chan. As my memory serves, this is a far better serving than last summer. I think it’s time for a trip out to the movies!

But even more exciting is what the Fall (or Autumn to us) has to offer. In particular – sequel the fantastic Casino Royale; Quantum of Solace, and of course – a much awaited yet unexpected big-screen appearance of the dark, troubled and ridiculously violent Max Payne.

More and more game characters are finding their way into movie theaters. Hopefully it won’t be too long now till we finally see a Metal Gear Solid movie. God I hope so!

Snake, Snake, Snnaaaaaakkkee!

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Wordpress 2.6 attacks!

Another month, another WP update. Really not worth the effort this time, it’s took me about 4 months to slowly transition all my sites through 2.0 – 2.3 – 2.5 – 2.51… which, with the added visual and structural upgrades added with the help of Jeffrey Zeldman and co; I’m perfectly happy with.

What I’m not happy with is this sticky keyboard – it’s getting really difficult to type on.

The latest installment adds predominately editing-based new features such as word count, customizable default avatars, better structuring and management tools, increased and faster support for remote posting and the jQuery library. And of course much, much more…

More info on the ‘brand spanking new’ WP release on the wordpress blog.

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