Fighting The Suburbs

Cuil 'Google Fighter' Can't Find Fighting The Suburbs!

There’s been a lot of hype about the massive launch and immediate failure of new search engine Cuil. TV stations talked about it taking on Google and you couldn’t escape it for about 24 hours. But now TechCrunch and other technocelebs are taking it to task for, well, for sucking.

I did a simple test. I typed in “Fighting The Suburbs” to see what would happen. I own the url and this blog is hosted by typepad and it gets indexed by all the right places etc. Cuil did not bring up this site in the first page of returns. Nope. All Ben Folds references. I will now admit for the first time that I was subliminally influenced by "Rockin’ The Suburbs" when coming up with the name of the blog. When I first mentioned the blog name to my wife she said “Like the Ben Folds’ song?” and I then went “Doh!”

Anyway, FTS only emerges on Cuil on page 2 with an image of…Ben Folds!!! See above pop-up.

Awesome.

If you type “Fighting The Suburbs” into Google we’re the first response. And the second and third.

On Searchme, another new search start up trying to emulate iTunes scrolling album artwork effect, we’re also first. So a startup search engine can do it right. Just not Cuil.

Quick Vista Thoughts

I made the plunge this weekend and bought a new PC with Vista. My old computer was showing signs of going kaput so I figured instead of waiting until it exploded, like my last desktop, I'd save myself the headache. It had lasted a good 3 years and that seems to be the shelf life these days.

I got an HP with an AMD Athlon 4600 dual core processor and 2 GBs of RAM. I was going to get more of a budget buy but the difference in cost was about a new gig of RAM and I got a much better processor. I didn't need a screen or anything.

Setting up the computer was as easy as any XP. The guy at Best Buy gave me a warning slip that it needed to boot for 25 minutes before it would work. OK. Well it didn't. It worked fine right out of the box and I followed the prompts. 20 minutes later I'm staring at Vista.

I don't have screenshots because I haven't put PhotoShop on yet. I'm hunting down all my product codes. I also used a Belkin transfer cable for documents. It took FOREVER. Like 4 hours. I had some old videos on it though that I guess I should've deleted. Oh well.

The only thing I can't get to work is Zune surprisingly. The software just won't install, it thinks I already have it running and says there's no update. Yet there's no Zune software. MS support was no help. Call Zune support they say, I've done that before and they're clueless.

I'll run down the pros and cons with screenshots later in the week but now that I've seen it those Mac commercials about cancel and allow are stupid. That happens when you're installing new software or downloading stuff off the internet. It's not like every process requires that. Oh and Aero does look great and I haven't had one slowdown yet or crash.

Side Note: Most posts on FTS are coming straight from Word 2007's blog publishing. The only thing I add via typepad are photos. You can do photos via Word I just don't think they look great. The Vista Logo I did via Word.

Dave in PC Magazine

Last month I did a quick interview with PC Magazine on the future of blogging and the issue just hit stands. Here’s a link to the story if you’re not into print.

I actually thought the illustration that went along with the story (to the right) was pretty interesting. If everyone is inside at their computers blogging how will they meet their neighbors? Online? How will they hang out with like-minded people they find online or through their blogs?