Just less than a year ago a new search engine named Cuil was released. It was heralded by many as the search engine that could finally be the “Google Killer”. Cuil’s search technology was said to be much more thorough than Google, and more respective of personal habits and search trends. While the latter is certainly true, Cuil does not collect user data or personal search history, their thoroughness remains to be debated.
A query for the ever popular search phrase “make money online” on Google returns three quality websites in the top three positions of page 1 of the SERPs with excellent content focused on assisting internet users accomplish their goal of making money online. The same query entered into Cuil returned much less reliable results including [click to continue...]
BuzzFundis a truly remarkable idea by a man hoping to revolutionize the way students pay for college or at least minimize their college debt. BuzzFund allows students to make personal profiles stating their college info, a little information about themselves, and how much their current college tuition costs. Donors can also create profiles and choose students to give e-scholarships to in an effort to help with tuition costs.
The Good: BuzzFund takes advantage of the already popular and successful business of crowd-funding/micro-lending (i.e. Kiva, LendingClub, Prosper.com). The main difference is that BuzzFund does not process loans. Rather, BuzzFund is [click to continue...]
It is easily surmised from my previous posts and comments elsewhere that I am not at all impressed with Microsoft’s latest search engine gimmick passed off as bing.com. However, I do have something good to say about them. Thanks to their advertising superbudget a few excellent and borderline impressive commercials have found themselves on millions of TV screens worldwide. I should explain that I like thier commercials, and not their commercial fast-forwarding scheme. Check the vid:
While bing’s ad is somewhat true of other search engines, it is a bit deceptive. The related keywords that the man is reciting as search results from the “other” search engines most often occur in the form of sponsored listings – which Bing also Otherwise, the actual query results remain rather accurate. Bing is clever, but will they prove to be better?
P.S. – If you want to humor yourself, head over to bing and type in “traffic ticket”, and then see how many of the results match up to what the man recited in the commercial. It is funny how a few of the results are exactly what bing contends they shouldn’t be.
Most successful internet ventures (including but not limited to websites, services, videos, articles, etc.) are the result of organic growth turned viral. Before the Microsoft Network’s recent release of the new bing.com search engine I have never seen an online company/service want so virility and acceptance so badly.
Bing’s first major call for acceptance comes in the $100M+ that they are spending on marketing and advertising. Do a search for “search engine” and Bing is the #1 sponsored result. Couple that with Bing’s recent Bing-a-thon on Hulu, which turned out to be [click to continue...]
It’s all fun, good news, and games until you read the fine print and FAQs.
The#squarespace story. Super-simple website creation and hosting company SquareSpace is the latest company to throw out a twitter gimmick. For each of the thirty days running between June 8th and July 7th, SquareSpace has committed to give out 1 new iPhone 3G S. All that must be done to win is to write a twitter update containing the hashtag #squarespace. Sounds cool and simple right? It is. But then we read the official rules and detials.
5. Winning prize will include a $199 gift certificate to the Apple store, which may be used toward the purchase of an 8GB iPhone, or toward any other official Apple products or services. This is currently the price listed by Apple of the most expensive new iPhone, and we were advised by Apple that this is the best way to conduct the giveaway.
6. Should the daily winner choose to purchase an iPhone with their gift certificate, he/she will be responsible for establishing and paying for their own cellular/data network plan through AT&T (or whichever provider supports the iPhone in your country).
Financial stimulus packages are terms of the distant past (in internet time), and so it is time to shift attention to a mental stimulus package. If you are looking for a bit more brain exercise after reading your daily subscription of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, then let this list of websites guide you in your insatiable quest for knowledge.
Wikipedia. Wikipedia has established itself as the go-to resource for simple and quick online research and knowledge gathering. While it is constructed and written by anyone who decides to add to it, there lies a strong community of “moderators” insuring that the content is verified and can be accounted for in a concrete (book, article, etc.) source.
HubPages. HubPages is a bit less academic than wikipedia, and is a bit more practically informative and personal. Hubs can be found on any topic from the crazy looking Vibram Five Fingers Shoes to practical advice such as [click to continue...]
Back at the time of it’s inception, gather.com was one of the premier websites for writers to showcase their work and abilities – and snag a few rewards for doing so. As time rolled on they remained the same and added an element of “newsiness” to their site by incorporating the Gather Essentials (major categories for posts – Money, News, Politics, Food, A&E, Movies, etc.) In recent times, it seems that gather has moved away from any sort of creative or writers showcase and has become in their words “the premier social networking website for the 35+ crowd”. Now that the social networking giant FaceBook has all but snagged every last bit of that crowd and allowed them to socially network in a popular and much easier way than was available on gather, it seems that gather is somewhat lost yet again.
I have always held PartnerUp.com as an invaluable resource for entrepreneurs looking to join up with others, grow their team, network, or simply learn from and interact with other like-minded individuals. However, until now I have always found PartnerUp to be a bit old fashioned and poorly designed. It seemed as though it was unable to really live up to its full potential.
While design should not diminish the helpfulness, effectiveness, value, or overall usability of a website it does affect a users overall impression and will to use a website. PartnerUp’s user interface [click to continue...]
A growing trend amongst the increasing amount of social media adopters is to take advantage of integration tools which cross-network certain social networks and social media applications. As more internet users (namely those from FaceBook) adopt twitter, they are making an attempt to kill two birds with one stone by porting their twitter updates to FaceBook. It is my position that those who use social media in this way to not have an accurate understanding of the services that they are using.
Whether intentionally or not it seems the the prompts for updates are somewhat reversed based upon current usage of the services. Twitter begs of users “What are you doing right now?” where as FaceBook kindly wonders “What’s on your mind?” More often than not users are more apt to tweet what is on their mind in the form of [click to continue...]
…at least in terms of clever advertising. Intel, the ultratechnologized company most famous for making computer processors, was recently hit up for $1.45 billion for abuse of market power (see full article at Forbes). While they might not be the hottest or most loved tech company at the moment, their new commercials are absolutely genius and poke a bit of fun at the uber-geek, but it is fun for everyone. Check it out.
This is the first of two of these type of ads so far, and I am hoping that they will turn it into a bit of a series. Note to self – if your company ever ends up in trouble, be sure to hire an excellent marketing and advertising team…
Just less than a year ago a new search engine named Cuil was released. It was heralded by many as the search engine that could finally be the “Google Killer”. Cuil’s search technology was said to be much more thorough than Google, and more respective of personal habits and search trends. While the latter is certainly true, Cuil does not collect user data or personal search history, their thoroughness remains to be debated.
BuzzFund
Most successful internet ventures (including but not limited to websites, services, videos, articles, etc.) are the result of organic growth turned viral. Before the Microsoft Network’s recent release of the new bing.com search engine I have never seen an online company/service want so virility and acceptance so badly.
Financial stimulus packages are terms of the distant past (in internet time), and so it is time to shift attention to a mental stimulus package. If you are looking for a bit more brain exercise after reading your daily subscription of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, then let this list of websites guide you in your insatiable quest for knowledge.
Back at the time of it’s inception, gather.com was one of the premier websites for writers to showcase their work and abilities – and snag a few rewards for doing so. As time rolled on they remained the same and added an element of “newsiness” to their site by incorporating the Gather Essentials (major categories for posts – Money, News, Politics, Food, A&E, Movies, etc.) In recent times, it seems that gather has moved away from any sort of creative or writers showcase and has become in their words “the premier social networking website for the 35+ crowd”. Now that the social networking giant FaceBook has all but snagged every last bit of that crowd and allowed them to socially network in a popular and much easier way than was available on gather, it seems that gather is somewhat lost yet again.
I have always held 
A growing trend amongst the increasing amount of social media adopters is to take advantage of integration tools which cross-network certain social networks and social media applications. As more internet users (namely those from FaceBook) adopt .jpg "T-logo")
