By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Cuil is pronounced “cool” and what makes it potentially cool is the participation of former Google search architect Anna Patterson and her husband, Stanford professor Tom Costello, as well as other prominent search tech folk. (Where have we seen that minimalist home page before, eh?)

Cuil purports to have a larger search index than Google’s, and to be faster, and to be better than everything than Google. Of course, if it wasn’t, why would I use it instead of Google, right?

Search results (example above, for the “iPhone 3G”) are decidedly non-minimalist (click to enlarge). Speed reader that I am, I prefer more results per page with little if any “fluff.” Still, that’s me, and perhaps not you. It would be nice to see some preferences to allow this to be changed.

There’s no specific news search, though news shows up in the results, as with Google. Speed-wise, I can watch Cuil render the page of results, so it’s not faster, but it’s certainly fast enough.

Results-wise, while top results on both Google and Cuil for “iPhone 3G” turn up, who else, Apple, results after that for Cuil are pretty old news stories on the iPhone 3G. Meanwhile, Google has more recent results.

There is something Cuil seems to be better at than Google: privacy. Here’s their privacy policy:

when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours. More precisely:

Logs

We do not keep logs of our users’ search activity.

Cuil is relatively new, and thus will have some growing pains. Will it replace the word “Google” as a verb on TV shows and the like? Probably not. Will it gain market share? Time will tell.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge, according to the site.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

I guess this one isn’t a shocker when you think about it, but the venerable school yearbook is heading for the history books. With a high print cost and the connectivity of the Internet, students are skipping the bound volume.

“After more than a hundred years of publication Purdue University, in Indiana, has published its last yearbook, as has nearby DePauw University. McKendree University is the oldest college in Illinois. Although the university still publishes a yearbook, the print-run is a mere 150 copies, only half of which are bought by students. Being on the staff of the yearbook used to be considered prestigious: now only eight students show up for the job. The downturn in print publications has also hit magazines for alumni. These, for instance at McKendree, are increasingly being replaced by online editions.” Source: Economist

We Say: Makes sense, but finding an old yearbook in your attic and leafing through some very funny pictures is a classic moment. Will online yearbooks last that long?

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

When I login to Gmail, I always leave the “Remember me on this computer” checkbox unchecked. Why? I don’t want to get into the habit of checking that checkbox, as what would happen if I would make that selection and leave a public computer with myself still logged in. That would be a problem. Until now, anyway.

Gmail is rolling out a new feature. Typical of such roll-outs, it will be gradual and may not be available yet on your account.

If it’s available, you should see something similar to the above at the very bottom of your inbox. You’ll see information about the last activity on your account and whether it’s still open in another location.

Obviously, this is a great way to find out if someone has hacked into your account (as has happened to me previously, though not with Gmail), but it doesn’t give you all that much info. However, click the Details link, all you’ll see a lot more (below). More

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

We cover the classic Nintendo game “Duck Hunt” from time to time. (take a look at some earlier posts below and then get back to this one, we’ll wait.) Today, we found a very serious shooting simulator from Marksman Training Systems AB called the ST-2. It is designed for shooting instructors and from the excerpt below, you can see this is no toy.

Shooting
The simulator can be used with most shotguns and rifles. The camera sensor that registers gun movements and shooting direction can be easily attached to the barrel of your own gun. The shooting direction is calibrated by a single shot at a calibration target. The shooting scenarios include moving and fixed targets. Starting position, trajectory, speed of the targets are parameters that can be altered by the user creating a wide variety of scenarios to practice on. Hit position and the effectiveness of the shot are evaluated according to all contributing factors: ammunition load and weight, range, target size, trajectory and speed.

Diagnostics
The diagnostics provided by ST-2 after a shot
- Illustrates how you missed
- Why you missed
- If you have correct gun fit
- Helps improve your shooting technique to increase success in the field and competition
Source: Marksman Training Systems AB

We Say: No pricing yet, but my guess is that unless you are Bill Gates or some other very bored billionaire, this one is not showing up in the home anytime soon.

More Ducks

–Kill the Dog from Dog Hunt < --New & difficult
–Duck Hunt + Doom = Duck DOOM< --don't miss
–Play the Original Duck Hunt Online
–DIY: Build a Sniper Rifle for Duck Hunt < --sick

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

As Google prepares to launch Street View in the U.K., and has already launched it in France, concerns over privacy have been raised by the group Privacy International, which says it feels Street View violates privacy laws.

You’ll recall that Canada, which has very strong privacy protections in place (for example, a study has said that DRM violates privacy law), has already raised such concerns.

“In our view they need a person’s consent if they make use of a person’s face for commercial ends,” said Simon Davis, Director of the group.

Davis has also written a letter to Google, given them seven days to respond to his request for technical information on the “blurring” technology, or else he will file a complaint with the U.K. Information Commissioner.

Text of the letter is as follows:

2nd July 2008

Jane Horvath,
Senior privacy counsel,
Google
Mountain View, CA

Dear Jane,

Recent media reports in Europe have mentioned that Google has begun deployment of its StreetView system in the UK and elsewhere in the EU. You may be aware that Privacy International has stated, both privately to Google legal staff and to the media, that we are concerned about a number of potential violations of national law that this technology may create.

In response, Google has informed the media that it will institute “face blurring” technology to ensure legal compliance. However, when we requested information from Google six weeks ago about the specifications for this technology your colleagues admitted that there were problems with it at an engineering level.

We are concerned that claims of protection are being made that may not be possible to institute. I am writing to request full disclosure of the technology specifications for the promised face and number plate blurring system so that the public can be assured that Google has taken every step necessary to satisfy not just legal requirements, but that it is also fulfilling its stated commitments.

We have in the past raised concerns directly with Google that such claims have historically failed to materialise. I recall the promise made by Google to the FTC during the Doubleclick acquisition that “crumbling cookies” would be developed. We have seen no evidence that this technology has been deployed. In response to concerns expressed at the time of our 2007 Internet privacy rankings, Google also promised a “privacy dashboard” to help consumers understand the functionality of their user settings. This technology has not appeared.

You will know that we have often complained that Google performs poorly on the issue of transparency. I believe this is one occasion where disclosure is crucial. Public trust in Google will suffer if there is a perception that the company is manipulating the facts.

I ask that you respond with this technical information within seven days. I also ask that you inform us of the steps, if any, that you have taken to consult the public over the use of their images for what is, in effect, a commercial purpose.

If we do not receive a satisfactory answer within that period we will have no choice but to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner with a request that StreetView deployment be suspended pending a formal investigation.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Davies
Director
Privacy International

So, is this all overblown? P.I. has battled Google over privacy concerns in the past, including issues with Gmail, even naming the company among the worst for privacy practices.

For its part, Google has taken steps in the past, such as the facial- and license-plate blurring technology it has added to Street View, as well as the link you can use to tell Google if you think an image infringes on your privacy, and the privacy link they just added to their home page.

Still, no one can deny that the amount of data Google stores is monolithic, and things like Viacom being able to sift through all YouTube user data isn’t exactly comforting. We’ll see where this goes.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Last night the federal court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google to hand over (.PDF) user data for all videos watched on YouTube to Viacom, stating:

Plaintiffs seek all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website.

Red flag, right? This means your privacy, assuming you’ve ever watched anything on YouTube, has gone out the window. As users should have assumed, and as confirmed by the ruling (.PDF),

Defendants’ “Logging” database contains, for each instance a video is watched, the unique “login ID” of the user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the internet protocol address other devices connected to the internet use to identify the user’s computer (“IP address”), and the identifier for the video.

Viacom said it wants the data so it can prove that copyrighted material is far more popular than user-created videos. Think about it though. Why do they need user data … shouldn’t they just need data about the number of times copyrighted material was uploaded and watched, not who watched it?

I don’t know about you, but generally I don’t login to YouTube, so they won’t be getting my user ID - but they will be getting my IP address. Oh, but let’s not forget that Google themselves said that IP addresses are not personal information. More

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Until now Flash (.SWF) media files have been pretty, well, opaque: search engines couldn’t index them. For webmasters, this meant extra work, as the old adage was “a search engine likes text.” No longer.

In a press release on Tuesday Adobe announced that it was working with both Yahoo! and Google to enable indexing of Flash files. The project will enable searches on Flash content to return text and links, which can then be indexed. Better still, current Flash content will be immediately searchable by search engines, without alteration.

David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe said:

“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs (rich Internet applications) and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player. We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”

Of course, all this assumes that the search engine has the Flash tech working: Google is rolling out Flash search today, but Yahoo! said it was going to enable the feature in a later release of its search engine and that it was “working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation.” And no, Microsoft wasn’t mentioned at all.

However, Adobe’s statement does indicate Adobe will work with other search engines as well. With Microsoft having its Flash competitor, Silverlight, however, I’m wondering if that will slow things down between the two companies.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Thursday in Paris, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) completed its 32nd International Public Meeting. The biggest decision made at the meeting was increasing the flexibility of top-level domain names, and this could be a huge change for users of the Web.

Most people are aware of top-level domains, though they may not realize it. Suffixes like .com, .net, .biz and so forth are called generic top-level domains (gTLDs), and there are 21 of them at this point. Suffixes such as .uk are country-code TLDs, BTW.

In a press release, Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said:

“The Board today accepted a recommendation from its global stakeholders that it is possible to implement many new names to the Internet, paving the way for an expansion of domain name choice and opportunity. The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net. It’s a massive increase in the ‘real estate’ of the Internet.” More