Yesterday (7/28/2008) all media were talking about a new launched search engine called CUIL (pronounce cool). Does it really become a threat to Google or other search engine? I say no, at least now. The conclusion was based on my own tests and comparisons. What is Cuil anyway? Cuil was founded by a former Google employee named Anna Patterson along a few other former Google engineers. Instead searching keywords in web pages like Google is doing, Cuil is trying to analyze the contents of all web pages and give the search results. The following is what it says about itself.
About Cuil
Cuil (pronounced COOL) is a search engine that combines the largest Web index with content-based relevance methods, organized results, and complete user privacy. The company’s next generation approach to search is the result of proprietary breakthroughs in search architecture and ranking algorithms. Cuil’s employees have extensive experience in search, having worked at Google, IBM, eBay, AltaVista, Stanford University, the Internet Archive and other technology companies and research centers. Cuil is located in Menlo Park, California and has received series A funding from Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners, and series B funding from Madrone Capital Partners. Cuil derives its name from an old Irish word for knowledge, reflecting the background of co-founder and CEO, Tom Costello, who hails from Drogheda, Ireland. For more information, please visit www.cuil.com.
As 
Since this late noon, all of my domains on the Microsoft Windows Hosting server at 1and1.com could not be accessed. I called the tech support and was told all A records of my domain names have been pointed to an external IP address (82.165.204.153). Even I swore to the tech support that I did not make any changes on my DNS setup, but she insisted that only the owner of my account (of course, me) can do such changes. And I asked whether they could do some investigations to see who and when made such changes from logs, but I could not get any satisfied answer from her. Anyhow, the important part at this moment was to get all my domains back. So I had to manually change all A records back to my hosting server’s IP addresses. I was glad I only host less than 20 domains on this Microsoft platform, image I would have to change my Unix hosting domains (Shhhhh).
Have you recently used Google Maps? Maybe you already noticed its new feature from the maps, yes, it is called Street View. What can it do? well, when you browser the maps (of course, on the website of http://maps.google.com) and click the Street View button on the map. You will see a little man icon on the map, and some street view photos will appear when you drag “you” (the little man) on some blue line highlighted roads. These photos just like what you can see when you walk or drive on the road of the Google maps.
Today I downloaded 
Just wanted to explore some add-ons after I installed the final version of Firefox 3.0 today. I found this add-on named TwitterFox in Get Add-ons Tab after I clicked Tools –> Add-Ons option. Excitedly installed it since I am using Twitter accounts now. But after the TwitterFox installation, my firefox 3.0 acted very wired. I could not bring the Firefox screen focused. It always hid in the taskbar, and the left/right click of my mouse did not even work at all on FireFox in the taskbar.
I have been using Microsoft Windows Live Writer to update my blogs for a while, but today I got some errors when I tried to publish a post to my newly upgraded WordPress MU 1.5.1 blog. After this error message, I got a prompt windows to ask my blog logon user name and password. I thought the upgrading changed the user information anyhow, so that I updated my logon password, and re-typed it in Live Writer. When I re-published, again saw the same error. I stopped, and then tried to view the web blog within the WLW. The same wp.getusersblogs error popped-up as I encountered during the publishing.
I need to pull over a file from our FTP server every minute to the database server. I do not want to install any FTP schedule utilities on the database server. So I decided to use the FTP.exe comes with the Windows server OS. I brought up a DOS prompt, type FTP and hit Enter. I got some prompt screens, what I needed to do is to provide the remote server IP (host name) and user credential information. After I logged on, I then can use some UNIX like commands as LS and GET to download files. Great, it approved that we really do not need a fancy FTP client program.
When I was approached by a co-worker to come up a quick solution to design a training registration application. The requirement is to display all upcoming training events in calendar view and allow users to register to each training. And upon the registration is submitted, the training department and the user’s supervisor should receive notifications immediately (although not required now, but might need the approval from the supervisor in later development). The deadline is very…, how to say it, … how about this afternoon. Well, while the co-worker asked how to design the database tables and asp.net coding, I suggested why not giving the SharePoint a shot. Since I am the one proposed, then I had to create it for her.
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