Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google

Interesting article @ TechCrunch which I didn't even realize was a problem until now.

Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google

TechCrunch

This semester, my students at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley researched the VC system from the perspective of company founders. We prepared a detailed survey; randomly selected 500 companies from a venture database; and set out to contact the founders. Thanks to Reid Hoffman, we were able to get premium access to LinkedIn—which was very helpful and provided a wealth of information. But some of the founders didn't have LinkedIn accounts, and others didn't respond to our LinkedIn "inmails". So I instructed my students to use Google searches to research each founder's work history, by year, and to track him or her down in that way.

But it turns out that you can't easily do such searches in Google any more. Google has become a jungle: a tropical paradise for spammers and marketers. Almost every search takes you to websites that want you to click on links that make them money, or to sponsored sites that make Google money. There's no way to do a meaningful chronological search.

We ended up using instead a web-search tool called Blekko. It's a new technology and is far from perfect; but it is innovative and fills the vacuum of competition with Google (and Bing).

Continued at http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/01/why-we-desperately-need-a-new-and-better-google-2/

Setting up a Windows machine

This is a solid set of advice that I would encourage anyone to follow, either with a new PC or an old one that never really had a geek set on it at some point:

http://lifehacker.com/5717628/set-up-and-get-to-know-your-new-windows-pc

The Ninite recommendation I've mentioned before.

PAX 2010

Penny Arcade Expo was a pretty cool event, reminded me a lot of GenCon which I hadn't been to in over a decade. Wizards of the Coast appears to be making a huge push for the casual gamer to get into D&D, including trying to rekindle the old 'Red box' edition of D&D, although it is a completely updated set of stuff they are selling in that red box.

Guild Wars 2 looked VERY nice, and although it doesn't strongly break from GW1 (nor the WoW mold it came from), they look to add several new features and the graphics looked really excellent.

Settlers of Catan was running on a Microsoft Surface table and looked really well implemented.

There were lots of great Team Fortress 2 costumes, usually traveling together in packs, though never a complete team.



Tron is big again with the new movie coming out this December after 28 years since the original. Apparently (and obviously) a video game is being released soon as well called Tron:Evolution, the collector's editions of which contains a little light cycle that is awesome.

Portal 2 added co-op play and had a lot of attention, but I didn't check it out (long line). I'm sure it will be excellent.

Other stuff:

Duke Nukem Forever finally saw the light of day at this PAX, and by one of the original 3D Realms guys.

There was a booth devoted to NBA Jam and Hitz/hockey stuff that Jr and I checked out. He was humbled by my slapshot in a 1v1 duel.

I saw a really cool game called SpyParty where one player (Spy) tries to blend in with NPCs at a dinner party while another player (Sniper) is outside the party with a rifle, trying to identify the Spy within a time limit to take him out. Reminded me of an older game called The Ship that I always wanted to play.

Monaco looked cool and was getting a lot of attention-- I wanted to see it after reading an excellent preview in PC Gamer.

Dragon Age II looked cool but I still can't be bothered unless there is a multiplayer component.

I also played the new Castle Ravenloft cooperative boardgame, which was fun but a little oversimplified maybe.

Finally, Microsoft was demoing an amazing, newly announced Age of Empires Online.

habouji

Gamer roll call.

Left-to-right: BonesJr, Lyle, Scifi, Elvar, Spinach, MoneyJr, SirSpeedy, Hunter, Tornado, Prentice

How-to quickly find the best ANYTHING

I normally research the crap out of whatever electronics/device/product I want to buy in advance of heading to Amazon or wherever to buy it. As a good place to start, or if I just don't have time to do a full net scour, I love a little-known site called consumersearch.com. For each major product type, they do a compiled meta-review of the product sourced from across all the big sites (cnet, Wired, Consumer Reports, Epinions, etc.) as well several specialty sites (niche digicam review sites, for example) to give you a few short and sweet answers. I just used the site yesterday to decide to order a new Jawbone Icon Bluetooth headset, but in the past I've used it to research things like HDTVs, dehumidifiers, power tools, digital cameras, and more.

The big positive for the site is that they actually evaluate and weight the quality of the review (e.g., ignoring Epinions that are shills for the company, determining if a self-hosted camera reviewer's review is any good, estimating whether the Consumer Reports article is too out-of-date to be still valid). Another bonus: If you don't have a CR subscription, you can still learn what that company recommended.

The main negative is that, like any review site, after a month or more, the information can be too dated to be of use, so just be sure to check the date on any particular product category article.

Amazon.com deals

If you are a student, go to amazon.com/student to sign up for free Amazon Prime membership (free 2-day shipping) for a year. This is an excellent deal.

Also of interest: you can get a refurbished Kindle 2 for only $110, though I'm not sure how long that price will last.

iPhone launch infographic

This excellent infographic was just posted at GigaOm: