moar internets

Cuil.com – what is supposed to be the answer to Google and next-gen of search is all over the news today. So far I’m not impressed. Apparently the 121,617,892,992 web pages their crawler has indexed doesn’t include my own website!

Besides being a bit ego bruised, a quick search for myself on Cuil turns up all of these old… circa 2000 old… TCLUG (Twin Cities Linux User Group) mailing lists posts. While Google will also return some of these for my name, Google doesn’t think they are as relevant as, say, this domain… that includes my name and has my name, Jacqueline Urick, all over it. Ego aside, I’m siding with Google (and Yahoo, MSN and Ask) on this one – this site is going to be VERY relevant to a person searching for my name.

Searching for some clients, I found a blog post that referenced a blog post dated from 2005 in the first ten results that is now 404. Not so relevant.

Searching for linkedin (without quotes) doesn’t bring up linkedin.com. It doesn’t bring up anything. The error page you get is somewhat condescending.

We didn’t find any results for “linkedin”

Some reasons might be…

* a typo. Please check your spelling.
* your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
* too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.

Finally, try to think of different words to describe your search.

I like how all the reasons the search fails is somehow my fault for sucking at searching.

If I put “linkedin” in quotes, I actually get results. That is really intuitive.

Maybe I’m jaded from using the “old way” for too long but I’m having a hard time meshing cuil’s results with my idea of relevant. According to their philosophy listed on their website, they appear to know what is relevant.

The Internet is getting bigger and more disorganized every day. Cuil’s goal is to solve the two great problems of search: how to index the whole Internet—not just part of it—and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results.

Cuil’s founders worked with other search engines and knew that tinkering with old systems wouldn’t work. A fundamentally different approach was needed. So we’ve developed new architecture and algorithms that can handle the exponential growth of the Internet and organize results that reflect its enormous complexity.

Maybe we have different definitions. Maybe cuil is just inundated with requests right now. So far, I’m not impressed. I’m willing to give Cuil another chance.

Holy Memes Batman, Its Weezer.

I didn’t think it was possible to have moar internets and then Weezer came along and gave me a crap ton of internets. “Pork and Beans” is rockin’.

But besides just being a rocking Old-School-like Weezer jam, it is quite possibly one of the most brilliant viral marketing campaigns for a new album — ever. Check out the video:

So just about just every popular internet trend in the last few years featured here. Most notably, Weezer has gone out and picked up some of the most picked on people to feature. Chris Crocker (of LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! fame) gets a hug from River. Ms. South Carolina, Caitlin Upton gets to blend some maps (maybe if the kids didn’t blend their maps, they would know where the US is). The Afro Ninja returns and kicks some ass. Tay Zonday’s leans away from the mic to breathe. The Numa Numa guy dances, immortalized. So many more… it’s like someone dumped ebaums or /b/ onto weezer and God touched it and it was good.

Shit’s brilliant. Not only is this going to be one of those videos that people will watch 20 years from now and get all nostalgic for YouTube in its infancy (and the days before net neutrality or w/e regulation they legislate, amirite?).

But right now, today, it’s viral as hell. 4 million views and counting in 5 days? This is how you do it, my viral marketing friends.