Okay, I tried Cuil for a day and I have to say what others have been saying so far: FAIL!

In a number of ways it’s failed for me:

1. Cuil is pronounced “cool”. Okay, so how do I tell people about this new search engine? “Hey try this new search engine ‘cool dot com’.” And they go type cool.com which gives you another one of those parked domains with a “search engine”. And then people who try cool.com get search results for all sorts of malware and pr0n pushing sites. Definitely not cuil.
2. The service if flakier than twitter. That’s right. One hour after being posted on reddit, the thing goes down. So you’re going to take on Google huh? You should be on stage at your local comedy bar.
3. Cuil is not as omniscient as they claim to be. I noticed this when I typed in “vim workspace” and it had nothing. One user on Mixx has also pointed out that they don’t have anything on “iraq war”.

Three strikes and you’re out.

    <style type='text/css'>
        #gallery-1 {
            margin: auto;
        }
        #gallery-1 .gallery-item {
            float: left;
            margin-top: 10px;
            text-align: center;
            width: 33%;         }
        #gallery-1 img {
            border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
        }
        #gallery-1 .gallery-caption {
            margin-left: 0;
        }
    </style>
    <!-- see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php -->
    <div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-180'><dl class='gallery-item'>
        <dt class='gallery-icon'>
            <a href='http://abing.gotdns.com/posts/2008/cuil-isnt/cooldotcom/' title='This is NOT cuil.com'><img width="150" height="150" src="http://abing.gotdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/cooldotcom-150x150.png" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="cool dot com vs cuil dot com" title="This is NOT cuil.com" /></a>
        </dt>
            <dd class='gallery-caption'>
            cool dot com vs cuil dot com
            </dd></dl><dl class='gallery-item'>
        <dt class='gallery-icon'>
            <a href='http://abing.gotdns.com/posts/2008/cuil-isnt/cuil-is-down/' title='Cuil is down'><img width="150" height="150" src="http://abing.gotdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/cuil-is-down-150x150.png" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Cuil goes down after 1 hour of reddit exposure." title="Cuil is down" /></a>
        </dt>
            <dd class='gallery-caption'>
            Cuil goes down after 1 hour of reddit exposure.
            </dd></dl>
        <br style='clear: both;' />
    </div>

Found this through a submission on Mixx.com. There’s a new search engine built by former Google employees and it’s called “Cuil” (pronounced cool).

The home page is simple, like Google’s so it should present a familiar UI to everyone who has ever used Google.

Cuil Home Page, like Google only darker.

The difference is when you send your query. Cuil presents search results in a different layout from what we are used to.

Search Results for ADHD

As you can see, the way the search results are presented can be a bit overbearing at first. That’s 3 fricken columns of information right there! You even have the option to expand it to 4. I’m trying it out by setting it as my default search engine on Firefox for the next few days.

Answer: When it’s a PHP closure. It appears that PHP will have closures in 5.3. But as per usual, it does not work in ways that you would expect it to work. See the comment by “sapphirecat” on this . There still appears to be a problem when you “rope” off a global:

Oops! Closures are not supposed to do that! It sort of defeats the purpose of having closures in the first place. There is a workaround to the problem but that is one more quirk that you have to remember when working with PHP. Two steps forward, one step back.

Radiohead’s House of Cards music video is made of awesome.

Google Code has a behind the scenes look at the technology and techniques used in making this video.