Is Cuil Cool, or Not?
This week's quick tip:
When entering a url in the address bar, type the main body of the url (such as "blogger"), then hold the CTRL key to append ".com," or the SHIFT key to append ".org."
Now, on to our story!
I belong to a user group for usability experts and information architects. Though hardly a usability expert, I like to keep informed, and these folks usually learn quickly about what's new and different
Thus, before the press got hold of the "hot search engine of the moment," Cuil, my user group was fighting about it.
The argument is over whether there is anything valuable in doing something differently just for innovation's sake, or whether presenting search results in yet on more way actually builds a better mousetrap.
I visited Cuil, and so far, I'm underwhelmed.
Predictably, the site crashed shortly after launch - after all, it was "the" place to be on the Internet! (You have to give founders Tom Costello, Anna Patterson (late of Google) and Russell Power (also late of Google) credit - they know how to promote!) But as one usability guru pointed out, there is something wrong right from the beginning if you're not sure how to pronounce the name! (It's Kewel, btw.)
Cuil is sort of a variation on the semantic web. Remember we talked in a previous article about Freebase? The idea is to provide "context" to searches. As I noted in that article, it's somewhat amusing that the trend is back toward something that search engines, in the early days, did automatically. Taking their cue from library science, search results were analyzed (often by sheer human brain power) and categorized, attempting to figure out what you might have meant when you searched for "cat," and provided results for domestic tabbies, wild carnivores, and snow machines.
Cuil explains, "Cuil searches the Web for pages with your keywords and then we analyze the rest of the text on those pages. This tells us that the same word has several different meanings in different contexts. Are you looking for jaguar the cat, the car or the operating system?
When entering a url in the address bar, type the main body of the url (such as "blogger"), then hold the CTRL key to append ".com," or the SHIFT key to append ".org."
Now, on to our story!
I belong to a user group for usability experts and information architects. Though hardly a usability expert, I like to keep informed, and these folks usually learn quickly about what's new and different
Thus, before the press got hold of the "hot search engine of the moment," Cuil, my user group was fighting about it.
The argument is over whether there is anything valuable in doing something differently just for innovation's sake, or whether presenting search results in yet on more way actually builds a better mousetrap.
I visited Cuil, and so far, I'm underwhelmed.
Predictably, the site crashed shortly after launch - after all, it was "the" place to be on the Internet! (You have to give founders Tom Costello, Anna Patterson (late of Google) and Russell Power (also late of Google) credit - they know how to promote!) But as one usability guru pointed out, there is something wrong right from the beginning if you're not sure how to pronounce the name! (It's Kewel, btw.)
Cuil is sort of a variation on the semantic web. Remember we talked in a previous article about Freebase? The idea is to provide "context" to searches. As I noted in that article, it's somewhat amusing that the trend is back toward something that search engines, in the early days, did automatically. Taking their cue from library science, search results were analyzed (often by sheer human brain power) and categorized, attempting to figure out what you might have meant when you searched for "cat," and provided results for domestic tabbies, wild carnivores, and snow machines.
Cuil explains, "Cuil searches the Web for pages with your keywords and then we analyze the rest of the text on those pages. This tells us that the same word has several different meanings in different contexts. Are you looking for jaguar the cat, the car or the operating system?
We sort out all those different contexts so that you don’t have to waste time rephrasing your query when you get the wrong result.
Different ideas are separated into tabs; we add images and roll-over definitions for each page and then make suggestions as to how you might refine your search. We use columns so you can see more results on one page."
Right now, I find the results page a little heavy, and there isn't that "at a glance" recognition we've come to expect from Google's briefly stated results. But I'll give it some more time and we can evaluate it further. I'd love to hear what you think! Email me at nancyc.roberts@gmail.com with your take.
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