There’s a new player in the search engine game, and its name is Cuil (pronounced “cool”).

It’s built by former Google masterminds, and claims to index more of the web than Google can.  The big claim to fame for Cuil is their ability to index the world’s websites and return search results to users in a much speedier manner than Google and the other engines… which saves tons of money.  It’s been estimated that Google spends billions every year just paying for their index and search functionality.

Cuil is also displaying a unique–some would say “mind-boggling”–new interface.  Instead of a single column of results, Cuil displays search results in a three-column layout, making it feel more like a magazine format.

The real problem, though, is that their results aren’t particularly good yet.  Now, they’ve only just launched, and the site is still in a beta-testing phase (though it is open to the public).  For instance, if you search for “keystone business solutions hendersonville”, Cuil says it can’t find any results.  On Google, we come up #1.

They’re taking a beating for this in the press, but honestly… you have to expect a brand new search engine to take some time ironing out the kinks.  While the first impression isn’t all that lovely, I’m personally quite excited about this.

Someday soon, someone has to step up and offer a real challenge to Google’s dominance in the search marketplace.  They simply have too much power and control right now (and I love Google!).  For the consumers to get the maximum service, there needs to be competition.  And who better to compete with Google than a team of former Googlers?

Check back down the line for more updates on what’s happening with Cuil.

InStream is a Nashville-based company that helps businesses eliminate frustration and cost related to tedious paperwork tasks.

From their website:

If your business is going paperless… we can help. If you are sure that technology can help reduce your costs, but are not sure where to begin… we can help. If your labor costs are soaring from tedious business processes (opening mail, sorting claims, scanning & retrieving documents)… we can definitely help.

The folks at InStream were a pleasure to work with while we designed their website and helped develop their content and photography, providing us tons of access to their personnel and operation.  They have some fantastic solutions that can help your business save real time and money, and we hope you’ll check out their new website.

Should we just surrender to Wal-Mart already?  They are fast becoming a one-stop shop for, well, everything.  Most Super Centers have a fast-food restaurant in them, as well as an eye-care facility, a silk-screen printer, a hair salon, and more.

You can get your car fixed at Wal-Mart.  You can even buy Search Engine Optimization services from them.  There is seemingly no end to the products and services they seek to offer.

Now, you can get your gadgets repaired as well.  Wal-Mart is quietly testing their own version of Best Buy’s Geek Squad, aiming to get their foot in the door of the ever-growing tech-repair-and-support market.

Geek Squad has a reputation that is far less than stellar, so I can only guess at the kind of qualified technicians and superior service the Wal-Mart Solution Station will offer.  I do know, however, that the lines at the Solution Station will be eleven people deep at all times, as mandated by Wal-Mart store operations code.

Listen, if you’re a Wal-Mart disciple, and you already trust them for your produce and meat products, your tire repair, and your household goods… odds are you won’t have a problem trusting them with your computer repair too.  So this might be the best news you’ve ever heard.  But in-store repair operations like Geek Squad and Circuit City’s Firedog are infamous for overcharging naive computer users who don’t know any better for service they didn’t really need to begin with.

So don’t be surprised if, when I pass you standing in line at Wal-Mart’s Solution Station, I laugh out loud and point at you.

Are you a photog?  Do you take digital pictures and upload them to Flickr to share with the world?  Did you ever wish that someone would come along and see one of your pictures and instantly think you deserved money for it?

Well, your dreams are about to come true.  Maybe.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say that your dreams now have a better chance of coming true.

In a long-awaited deal, Flickr is partnering with Getty Images to help their amatuer photographer users get their photos licensed.

From the article:

“Under a partnership announced this week, Getty’s editors will peruse Flickr to find pictures that may appeal to newspapers, magazines, book publishers, advertising agencies and other businesses.  Getty will then contact photographers who posted shots with sales potential to see if they’re interested in licensing the pictures.”

Oh, you’ll have to split your profits on the pictures licensed 50/50 with Getty Images, but that seems pretty fair considering they’re doing all the legwork to get your pictures noticed.  I mean, it was money you weren’t going to make before, right?  So it’s all gravy.

This is going to be hugely popular with Flickr users, who are already a pretty passionate bunch.  I also think it will drive some photographers to Flickr from other similar sites.

Just don’t expect all your photos to be selected for licensing.  In fact, I’m betting a very small percentage of users are going to make money.  But it’s a fantastic way for some phenomenal-yet-undiscovered shutterbugs to get noticed.

It’s a very Google day here at the Keystone Blog.  First we had the announcement of Google’s Second Life competitor, Lively.  Now we have news that Adwords customers are about to get a lot more useful search data to help with targeting their ads.

Adwords is Google’s advertising system for placing keyword-targeted ads among the search results–usually at the top or to the right, and always marked “Sponsored Links.”

Previously, Adwords had an “estimator” that served as a very rough guide to advertisers in picking the keywords for which they wanted their ad to show.

Now, however, Google will begin sharing actual search volume data on specific keywords–showing customers how many searches in a month or a year were performed for a proposed keyword phrase.

Google promises that this move will help advertisers more accurately target their ads to the right potential customers, and it’s hard to see where that’s not going to be the case.

If you have flirted with Adwords before, but never gave it a try, it can be a powerful driver of traffic to your website.  You only pay when your ads are clicked, which delivers the customer directly to your website–and all that only after they’ve searched for keywords you identified as important to you.  So it’s a lot more targeted than, say, a billboard on the side of the road.

And people are turning to search engines more frequently than they are to phone books these days.  Adwords is a fantastic way to reach potential customers that you might currently be missing out on.

We can help you understand Adwords, as we have lots of experience with it–we can even manage your Adwords campaign for you, which you can read more about here.

Google thinks that more and more people are using the web to socialize, and they’d like to let you know about a new virtual reality world they’ve created for just that purpose.

It’s called Lively, and it’s basically Google’s answer to Second Life.

What’s that?  You don’t know what Second Life is?  Well, your kids probably do.

Second Life–and now Lively–is an online environment where people create rooms and buildings to hang out in.  You get an avatar–character–to control, and you walk around the virtual room having conversations and such.

A key difference is that Lively, like most Google products, is completely free to use.  Second Life requires a membership fee.  So many are speculating that Google is out to sink Second Life.  I think it’s probably more likely that they just saw room in that virtual environment marketplace and wanted to carve a slice.

It may not seem like much, but Second Life is quite the thriving business–bands have played virtual concerts there, and Fortune 500 businesses have held virtual press conferences in Second Life as well.  As businesses embrace new media and new web technologies, the virtual social sites will only grow in popularity.

Anyway, you can read more about Lively here.  Or you can go directly to Lively here.  Just promise me you won’t let virtual socializing replace, you know, real socializing.

A new study contradicts some commonly held beliefs about people who use dial-up internet service.  We’ve long been assuming that they didn’t have access to broadband service–that they lived in too rural an area to be able to trade up.

Seems that idea is wrong.

The survey shows that only 14% are “stuck with dial-up” because they can’t get a faster service where they live.  35% say they stay on dial-up because of prices–they can’t afford broadband.

Perhaps the most surprising number?  The 19% of dial-up users who say nothing you do or say could convince them to give it up for something else.

That’s staggering to me.  They’re tech-savvy enough to want to be on the internet, but old-fashioned enough to stubbornly cling to 2 minute page loads even if that same page could load in 2 seconds if they swapped up to broadband?!?!  Weird.

How many of you still have dial-up?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.