So Where Do I Go From Here?

I haven't written much lately. Well, at least not on this blog. My Tumblr blog on the other hand has been fairly active by comparison. And of course I'm extremely active on on Twitter, somewhat less active on Google Plus, and I keep in touch with my family through Facebook. So where does Blogger fit in? In the past it was a no-brainer to put whatever I wanted on my blog but now there are so many more choices, many of them more convenient and faster than blogging. Twitter is amazing in this respect and Tumblr fills the gap nicely when Twitter falls short. Tumblr even holds its own nicely against Blogger in terms of longer form writing, something I never really did much anyway....

So here I am with my old blog writing a post wondering if it will be my final one.

Although the new revamped interface for Blogger does look cool once you get used to it. Maybe I'll play around with it a bit....

The End of XMarks

Today Marks announced that they will be closing their doors soon. They had a great bookmark syncing service for Firefox which made it possible to share bookmarks across multiple computers and access them on the web. It was great for people who had more than one computer (at and at work for example) or who simply wanted an easy way to import their browsers when they upgraded their computers. You could even access your bookmarks on your cellphone through XMarks' web interface.

It was a great, innovative service—real cloud computing at a time when most people had not even heard of the term. But their support page for the shutdown shows quite dramatically, why XMarks will cease operations soon. Simply put, the functionality of XMarks has been taken over by web browsers. Beginning with Chrome, all of the major web browsers today have added a syncing solution for bookmarks in recent months. While XMarks could also sync bookmarks between different web browsers, most people tend to pick a browser they like and stick with it.

That's certainly what I do. While I occasionally run different browsers just to compare and keep on top of what's out there, I've mostly stuck with Chrome over the last couple of years after having been a loyal Firefox user for many more years. And before that, I had stuck with Netscape for the better part of a decade. In fact, even though I have fond memories of XMarks, the truth is that I haven't used it in years. And even if I was a big browser slut, I could always use a social bookmarking service like Delicious without installing XMarks. So while the closing of XMarks seems surprising to me at first, perhaps it shouldn't have been much of a surprise.

But the end of XMarks causes more than just nostalgia; it also raises concerns. While it came into existence before "cloud computing" caught on, XMarks is essentially a cloud service. It stores your bookmarks on a remote server and allows you to download them on whatever computer you are using. XMarks is not the first cloud computing service to be shutdown after going out of business or being bought out but it will not be the last. And that is the issue that we all must grapple with as more and more of our data migrates from our computers and our control and onto remote servers which companies which may or may not be financially stable control.

This is going to keep happening. Cloud computing services will come and go and users will be forced to scramble to save their data when those services go. Ultimately, the only solution is that age old solution that we always seem to be too lazy to do; set up a backup plan and stick with it....

Cuil—Google's Kid Goes Goth

It may come as a surprise to younger web browsers but there was actually a time when "Google" wasn't synonymous with search engines. In fact, there was a time when Google didn't exist at all. In the early days of the mid-1990s, there was no place to go looking for information.

Then Yahoo came along with its nice little web directory and the search engine wars began. For several years, a number of search engines with names like Yahoo!, Excite! (exclamation points were big in those days), AltaVista, and Hotbot vied for eyeballs with flashing banner ads vying for advertising dollars and assaulting the senses. Some of them even had useful features. AltaVista, for example, could translate web pages from one language to another. But as the search engine wars accelerated, search pages evolved into ever more bloated "portals" and search was relegated to an afterthought.

Then Google came along. A late-comer to the search wars, Google blew the competition away with two weapons: its powerful page ranking algorithm, and minimalism. While other search engines where turning into bloated messes, Google presented the average web surfer with a much simpler page—a page which looked much the same then as it does today. Once Google found a way to use its search results make tons of cash without annoying too many people, it was all over.

Flash forward to the present. Former Google employees have started Cuil, a new search engine that aims to take a bite out of the hand that once fed them. Like its predecessor, Cuil presents the user with a simple web page. In fact, Cuil's page is even starker than Google's. I don't usually like white text on a black background but unlike other white on black pages, Cuil's actully does succeed in looking cool without impairing usability. The real difference for users shows up in Cuil's search results.

Cuil does a nice job of laying out and organizing search results. Popular search results are organized by categories in an attractive tabbed layout with more thorough descriptions than the ones you'll find on Google. An image from each page is also added the description; while these images are usually related to the page, sometimes Cuil will merely display an ad that just happens to be on the page. Speaking of images, even though Cuil, like Google, has a "Safe Search" feature designed to filter out pornography, I didn't notice much difference between searching with this feature on or off.

So can Cuil compete against Google? Probably not. Google at this point, is turning into another Microsoft in terms of its power on the web. With a wide array of services, ranging from search, to advertising, to video, and beyond, Google is simply too big to fail. Cuil might be able to carve out a niche as an easy to use alternative search engine—an Apple to Google's Microsoft but it can't become a David to Google's Goliath without some divine intervention. Nevertheless, Cuil will be exciting to watch if for no other than reason than to see if its competition can drive Google to be a better search engine.

Update: I could have sworn that I'd seen a slashdot article about Cuil and sure enough here it is. As always, the discussion was pretty interesting. Most of the slashdot geeks are dismissing Cuil but there was also a surprising amount of hostility towards Google in the comments. It surprised me but perhaps it shouldn't have.