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.

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.

Looks like we can add screen savers to the list of things we have and use that are completely unnecessary (like butlers or… your appendix).

See, just a few years back, the average computer screen used phosphors, which might suffer from “burn-in”, where images left on screen for too long would burn into the screen forever.   That’s why screen savers like the flying star field or the flying toasters were invented (why were early screen saver designers obsessed with flying things?)

But today’s flat-screen LCD monitors are made with completely different materials and “burn-in” is officially no longer a concern.

Yet people still use screen savers as though their life (or the life of their computer) depended on it.  This guy suggests that if you simply turn your monitor off when it’s not in use, instead of using a screen saver, you’ll save energy.  If everyone in your company does it… that energy savings might actually show up on the bottom line (depending on how many people work for you).

Even if you’re not concerned about saving energy, you can still deactivate your screen saver.  It’s not saving anything, preventing anything, or protecting anything.  It’s just… there.

Do you remember the security X-ray screeners in the movie Total Recall, where the passengers filed through a corridor and on the outside… security personnel could see their skeletons as they passed through?

Those are now a reality… sort of.

The TSA has begun deploying security screening devices which can see through a person’s clothing, exposing any metal, explosives, plastics, or ceramics that might be hidden underneath.

Ten US Airports are getting the machines, with a total of 30 screeners planned across the country by the end of 2008.

The controversy, of course, is that in addition to any guns or other contraband, these machines also apparently show off the passenger’s naked body.  The ACLU thinks that’s unacceptable:

“People have no idea how graphic the images are,” Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP.

Okay, is there anything the ACLU finds acceptable?  Isn’t it their mission to abhor and challenge pretty much everything?

But seriously, they have a point here.  How many of you, by show of hands, want the TSA screeners to see you naked?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Oh, but they won’t know who you are:

While it allows the security screeners — looking at the images in a separate room — to clearly see the passenger’s sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger’s face is blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website.

Right.  Because they can’t see my face as I’m walking into the machine.  Somehow I don’t see the fact that the faces are blurred making Americans feel better about being so exposed.

The images are also not stored in any way, but are erased once the passenger is cleared through the checkpoint.  So that’s good, at least.

Look, not to be graphic or anything, but I really don’t care if the TSA wants to see me naked.  I’m all for doing whatever it takes to help make the skies safer.  And I’m no Adonis–it’s their loss, really, if they have to put me in one of these things.

But millions of Americans are going to cry foul.

Thankfully, the TSA is saying that travelers have some options:

Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not obliged to accept the new machines.  “The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-down,” she told AFP.

Sweet.  So if I don’t want strangers to see me naked I can choose to let strangers put their hands all over me.  Excellent choice.  I believe that’s what’s called a Catch-22.

Anyway, now that the TSA is blogging, you can head over there and leave them some feedback on this new development.

We’ve sort of been following the saga of Windows XP for some time now.  Clearly Microsoft would prefer all users to move on up to Windows Vista.  But for various reasons (mostly bad reviews and XP loyalty), a lot of users have resisted.

The availability of XP on new computer purchases has been reluctantly extended by Microsoft a few times already, and they were set to shutter it this month.  And whether it was due to user petitions or simply basic business math… Microsoft has decided to extend XP’s life yet again with a last minute stay of execution from Governor Gates.

Actually, they’re extending its availability through 2010–when the next Operating System from Microsoft (currently called Windows 7) will be released.

That’s right.  They’re going to let you buy XP all the way up to when Vista’s new baby brother arrives.

But… there is a catch (isn’t there always a catch?).  You can only get XP on new machines if you’re buying the lower-end computers.

From the article:

The extension Microsoft granted to XP for these low cost laptops, or netbooks, covered machines that have no more than 1GB of RAM; a hard drive up to 80GB in size; a processor running no faster than 1GHz; a screen no larger than 10.2in (25cm) and no touch screen.

So far Microsoft has laid down no specifications for the low cost desktops, called nettops, but it said it was working with 20 PC makers on these machines.

So, basically, if you want to buy a really slow computer that might have been top of the line 8 years ago, you can still get XP.  Sweet! It’s really kind of a bittersweet victory, though, isn’t it?

But seriously, if all you use your computer for is surfing websites and checking email, then you’re probably the target market here.  If you want to watch DVDs or play video games or do much in the way of multi-media… you’re stuck having to upgrade to Vista–which really isn’t as bad a thing as you might think.

This is fantastic news, and I say that with not even an ounce of my traditional sarcasm.  Anytime I hear about a new WiFi hotspot in my area, I’m happy about it.  If I had my way, I would see every square inch of Sumner County covered in a giant net of WiFi.  (And I think that day will come… but not yet).

Hendersonville residents visiting Drakes Creek Park can now surf the web for free.

According to the article:

Its wireless Internet access has been available off and on since mid-May, parks Director Dave LeMarbre said. “Within the last week to 10 days, it’s been up and operational 100 percent,” he said. LeMarbre said it cost about $5,000 to install the Web access.

Now I can go to the park on Friday nights, and live-blog the pick-up volleyball matches.  Or check email while I sit in the Little League stands.  Or download White Castle nutritional information before walking across the street for some tiny square burgers.

Outstanding news.  The park is already a favorite spot in town for many–this news only makes it more attractive.  Instead of buying a Starbucks card just for the privilege of using their WiFi, I can just buy my grande latte and walk on down to Drakes Creek… and get my Internet for free… no hoops to jump through, no strings attached.  Thanks Hendersonville!

Time Warner and the other cable companies are trying to find a way to deal with the rise in bandwidth demand.

Their genius solution?  Let’s meter out how much Internet each person can have, and charge them extra when they go over.  For instance, if your plan is 50GB per month, and you hit 53GBs, you’ll have to pay overage costs on those 3GBs.

Wonderful.  Now my Internet service is becoming more like my cell phone plan.  Except, with cell phones, the industry trend lately has been the opposite:  they used to charge you for going over your monthly minutes, but more and more plans are becoming “unlimited minutes” plans.

Time Warner is testing this metered access approach in Texas as we speak.  Comcast is rumored to be looking into it as well.

How is this any different from the airlines saying, “You remember how we used to let you check 2 bags with every ticket purchased?  Yeah, we’re going to stop doing that.  Now you have to pay for every bag you check.”???

This is not going to sit well with Internet power users like myself, who are online for several hours a day.  In fact, there may well be some sort of revolt.

Metering out the Internet access is a giant step backwards, not forward.  Remember dial up?  Yeah, in the early days of the web, you had so many hours per month of dial up access.  Then the cable companies got wacky with the broadband and trained all their customers to expect unfettered access.

And now they want to take it away.

It’s like taking candy from a baby, after training the baby to think candy was a regular feature of baby life.

From the article:

Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail have little reason to pay attention to the traffic caps: a gigabyte is about 3,000 Web pages, or 15,000 e-mails without attachments. But those who download movies or TV shows will want to pay attention. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

And there’s the rub.  Movie and television downloads (legal or otherwise) have caught fire and are clearly the direction that industry is headed.  Very soon there will be more people downloading digital copies of movies than those buying DVDs in the store.  So it’s hard not to see this new metered Internet approach as anything but a way to make more money.

Maybe it would be easier to take if there wasn’t such a clear problem with monopolies in the cable/broadband world.  If I had any other cable company to choose from besides Comcast, for instance, I could at least go see if they’d offer me a better deal.  If I want broadband cable Internet, though, I have only one choice… and soon they’re going to be telling me how much Internet I can use.

Blockbuster is rolling out a gem of a new service:  Digital downloads of movies… available only in-store.  Sweet.

Between Netflix’s delivery-to-your-door model and the shrinking window between a movie’s theatrical release and its availability for cheap purchase in DVD format… Blockbuster has been taking hit after hit the last few years.  And that’s before all the digital download services cropped up at Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, & XBox Live.  Those services let you zap your favorite new movie directly to your PC with the click of a button.

So naturally Blockbuster wants to keep up, right?  So they’re launching they’re own digital download service.  Great, right?  WRONG !

The only people who will be able to use the digital download service from Blockbuster will be the people standing in their physical stores.  Because Blockbuster’s digital download service is an in-store kiosk.

Yup.  They are that stupid.

They think that you’re going to put your flash drive in your pocket, and drive down to their store, plug it in the machine, pay for a movie, wait for the download, then drive home and watch it.

From the article:

“The latest idea from Blockbuster can best be described as “Netflix meets YouTube, without the convenience.” That’s basically the pitch Blockbuster Chairman and CEO James Keyes made at his first annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday when he unveiled an in-store kiosk he hopes consumers will use to download movies.”

I would think this was hilarious if it wasn’t so insultingly backward in its conception.  Consumers will pay for convenience. That is proven.  I would rather pay twice as much through Netflix or Amazon (and get my movies to my home, from my home, on demand) than get in my car and drive to your physical store to tap my toes while your stupid kiosk downloads my movie.  And for the record, it’s pretty cheap to download a digital copy of even a new movie.  Most movie downloads on iTunes, for example, are $9.99 or so.

Blockbuster’s new service is basically the equivalent of Coke creating a new kind of vending machine… that allows you to put in your dollar… but instead of receiving in return a 20oz. bottle of Coke,  you get a coupon that says “take this coupon to the nearest grocery or convenience store to redeem for a refreshing bottle of Coke.”

It’s like the library announcing that checked out books can no longer be taken out of the building.

I can only conclude that the executives at Blockbuster are a cave-dwelling lot.  Can you think of a Fortune 500 company with less of a handle on where their industry is heading?  Because I can’t.  It’s seriously one of the stupidest ideas I’ve heard in years.

Listen, I get that they’re trying to drive traffic to and through their physical stores to try and sell more product (and pay their rent).  But seriously… you’re supposed to take what your competitors are doing and improve on it (or at least leave it the same)… not make it worse.  A roving balloon-animal magician would be a bigger draw and would probably cost less too.

And you might think that with a headline like “Monkeys Control Robots With Their Minds,” that I’m about to write some goofy or sarcastic article that is barely related to technology.

But you’d be wrong. There’s actually real science at work here, and it has some pretty awesome implications for the future of medicine.

Some scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have implanted electrodes inside the brains of some monkeys. And those electrodes have allowed the monkeys to control a robotic arm with their thoughts. Yes… their thoughts. (Man, is there anything monkeys can’t do?)

From the article:

The arm is controlled by a network of tiny electrodes called a brain-machine interface, implanted into the motor cortex of the monkeys’ brains — the region that controls movement.

It picks up the signals of brain cells as they generate commands to move and converts those into directional signals for the robotic arm, which the monkeys eventually used as a surrogate for their own.

The scientists are talking about some incredible applications for this, chiefly the ability for disabled people to control robotic or prosthetic limbs… with their minds.

Think about that for a second. Let it sink in. In the not-too-distant future, a paralyzed person might be able to still have complete mobility and autonomy using this technology.

Of course, the non-scientists among us are thinking about evil schemes and world domination, where some psycho controls an army of robot soldiers in a bid to take over the Earth. I mean… Terminator anyone? What’s that? You weren’t thinking that? Hmmm, maybe it’s just me. I do watch a few too many sci-fi movies.

But seriously, this is kind of a big deal, though they have yet to test their electrodes in humans. There will, of course, be several more years of testing before anything can be known for sure or be made available to the public. And even longer before able-bodied people like me can buy it at Wal-Mart… but I’m going to start saving my money now, because I’d sure love to have a robotic arm laying around that I can order to change my TV channels or bring me a glass of water by simply thinking it.

(photo credit to Andrew Schwarz & CNN)