Thursday, July 31, 2008

Cuil - The World's Biggest Search Engine

Cuil - The World's Biggest Search Engine

Welcome to Cuil—the world’s biggest search engine. The Internet has grown. We think it’s time search did too.

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.

Friday, July 25, 2008

CNN Study: Girls equal to boys in math skills

Study: Girls equal to boys in math skills

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, "Math class is tough!" girls are proving that, at math, they are just as tough as boys.
Girls have caught up on test scores, which researchers attribute to more taking higher math classes like calculus.

Girls have caught up on test scores, which researchers attribute to more taking higher math classes like calculus.

In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in math in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.

Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls, who grew up believing it, wound up avoiding harder math classes.

"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," Hyde said.

That's changing, albeit slowly. Women are now earning 48 percent of undergraduate college degrees in math; they still lag far behind in physics and engineering.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Beauty School Dropout...

If the federal government can't accurately forecast which jobs will grow, can anyone do it? - By Jacob Leibenluft - Slate Magazine: "Help Wanted
If the federal government can't accurately forecast which jobs will grow, can anyone do it?
By Jacob Leibenluft
Posted Monday, July 21, 2008, at 3:29 PM ET

Has the BLS caused a boom in beauticians?
If the Bureau of Labor Statistics could predict the future, makeup artistry might look like a very good career right now. The government agency—perhaps best known for publishing the nation's unemployment rate every month—released a forecast late last year predicting which jobs would grow fastest over the next decade. Once it crunched all the numbers, the bureau reported that makeup artistry would be the seventh fastest-growing occupation in America from 2006 to 2016, between personal financial advisers and medical assistants. Overall, the bureau said, the number of jobs in the field would grow by a whopping 39.8 percent over the decade."

Lively - Welcome

Lively - Welcome: "Create an avatar and chat with your friends in rooms you design"
Google's new virtual chat. SecondLife-y and pretty cool!

Team Collaboration, Market Awareness, Competitive Intelligence Software: RivalMap

Team Collaboration, Market Awareness, Competitive Intelligence Software: RivalMap: "What is RivalMap?

RivalMap is a web-based application that gives companies an internal hub for market information. It's a faster, more effective way to monitor and share news, maintain industry and competitor knowledge, discuss information, and more. RivalMap helps companies stay agile by connecting people to the information they need to make better decisions."

100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of | Teaching Tips

100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of | Teaching Tips: "100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of

By Laura Milligan

Beyond Google, Wikipedia and other generic reference sites, the Internet boasts a multitude of search engines, dictionaries, reference desks and databases that have organized and archived information for quick and easy searches. In this list, we’ve compiled just 100 of our favorites, for teachers, students, hypochondriacs, procrastinators, bookworms, sports nuts and more."

Monday, July 07, 2008

Where the Hell is Matt? - A very touching, and silly, video


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

(via BoingBoing and WhereTheHellIsMatt.com)
"Matt is a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he'd saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made this site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he is.

A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said "Hey, why don't you stand over there and do that dance. I'll record it." He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It's actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as "That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I'll send you the link. It's funny."

The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he'd be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they'd be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea."

Dictionary adds new batch of words - CNN.com

Dictionary adds new batch of words - CNN.com