The Future of the Internet III (via Roy Tennant’s Digital Libraries column…)

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released their third “canvassing of Internet specialists and analysts,” “The Future of the Internet III.” They are quick to point out, however, that this is not a representative survey, as respondents could choose to respond or not.

Of the results to various scenarios put forward by the Pew researchers, only one seemed to have any significant weight of opinion. In responding to the scenario “The mobile phone is the primary connection tool for most people in the world,” 81% of the total respondents (which included “stakeholders” in addition to “experts”) agreed.

For other scenarios such as “Social tolerance has advanced significantly due in great part to the Internet,” and “Content control through copyright-protection technology dominates,” there was much less agreement.

What I found more interesting than the results themselves, however, were the comments….see entire piece HERE.

Cuill – a new search engine to consider!

 I read about Cuil in other blogs I browse fairly regularly and was curious, so I investigated and so far I like it!  It is an excellent competitor to Google, and since I recently returned from a wonderful and too short visit to Ireland, the name sounded quite Gaelic, also peaking my curiosity.  Here is some content from their about and philosophy pages:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.

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.

Cuil believes that:

Size matters

Size matters because many people use the Internet to find information that is of interest to them, even if it’s not popular. Existing technology can’t keep up with the increasing volume of Web pages. If a search engine is incapable of indexing the Internet properly how can it hope to provide accurate search results? Imagine if the phone company decided to stop listing infrequently called numbers in the phone book. Maybe no one phones your grandmother much, but if her friend from the old neighborhood wants to get in touch, shouldn’t her number be in the book? Cuil lists all the numbers, even the ones that aren’t called much. Because one day someone will need that number.

Popularity is useful, but not always important

Popularity is useful, but has dominated search results so heavily that it gets harder and harder to find the page you want, especially if your search is a complex one. Cuil respects popular pages and recognizes that for many simple searches, popularity is an easy answer to your question. But for a deeper search, establishing relevancy is more than a numbers game. Cuil prefers to find all the pages with your keyword or phrase and then analyze the rest of the content on those pages. During this analysis we discover that your keywords have different meanings in different contexts. Once we’ve established the context of the pages, we’re in a much better position to help you in your search.

Organization is fundamental

The Internet is information; usually too much. Ten blue links is a simple concept which fails to reflect the huge diversity and variety of information available to you on the Web. Cuil organizes the Internet so you can find the information you want. We separate different ideas from each other so you can choose the one that interests you. We pick images to illustrate the idea behind each page to aid you in your choice. We include roll-over definitions and offer you ideas to refine your search. We can do all this because we believe that information is only useful when it’s sorted. Cuil’s goal is to guide you towards answers to the questions you’re not even sure how to ask.

Cuil analyzes the Web, not its users

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service. Because Cuil analyzes Web pages and not click-throughs, we don’t need to know your search history and habits. So our privacy policy is very simple: 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 cookie. Your search history is your business, not ours. We don’t need to keep logs of our users’ search activity, so we don’t. For further details, read our Privacy Policy. Don’t worry, it’s short and to the point. No legal mumbo-jumbo….

More, and to give it a trial run, visit http://www.cuil.com