Just a quick update! If you submit a website with your comment, the link will now be indexed by Google; just reward for taking the time to carefully construct and submit your thoughts.
Please note that any spam will be ruthlessly destroyed. 
Today sees the launch of Cuil (pronounced ‘Cool’), a brand new search engine launched by ex-Google employees.
So far, the launch has not gone smoothly. Having tested it quite a bit today I can report the following:
The performance issue on day one are forgivable; the usability issues less so. With excessive AJAX, and the issues mentioned above, the site is uncomfortable to use, at best.
Having said all that, I hope they do manage to provide an alternative to Google; everyone will benefit from a more competitive search market (rather than Google eating an ever-increasing slice of the pie), and their committment to privacy is laudable.
However, they’ve got a long, long way to go before they can match the power and simplicity of the big G.
Have you tried Cuil yet? What have your experiences been like?
As I mentioned before, my elderly computer is on the way out.
Although making the switch to Ubuntu certainly extended the lifespan of my home PC (I would probably have chucked it out of the nearest window otherwise), I’ve been gradually picking up components for the last few months now, ready to build myself a new monster to be proud of! Besides, I’d lose my geek card if I told anyone the stats of my current box…
What I’ve picked up already:
Still to get:
I’m still not sold on the advantages of quad-core computing just yet. The main advantage of building my own PC will be ease of upgrading later, so maybe in a year or two, I might be changing my mind!
As for operating system, I’m still undecided. I’ve had a great experience with Ubuntu, but I’m itching to try out other flavours of Linux – with Fedora and OpenSuse being top of the list.
Look out for some unboxing photos soon!
While it will take a long time for the full implications of the Viacom vs. Youtube battle to be known, one thing has already become clear – user privacy is an extremely low priority.
The great fear, of course, is that users are held responsible for having viewed copyrighted content, wittingly or unwittingly.
Yes, I said unwittingly!
You may or may not know this, but many modern applications prefetch links. They’re smart enough to know what link you’re likely to follow next, and they queue it up for you, in advance. This speeds up your browsing experience quite dramatically!
It affects your privacy too though, since the act of prefetching registers that you’ve loaded a particular page, even with no action on your behalf. From Mozilla:
“Privacy implications
Along with the referral and URL-following implications already mentioned above, prefetching will generally cause the cookies of the prefetched site to be accessed. (For example, if you google amazon, the google results page will prefetch www.amazon.com, causing amazon cookies to be sent back and forth.”
(http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Link_prefetching_FAQ)
I know of at least two applications that prefetch links – Firefox and Stumbleupon. You can check your settings quite easily.
Network.prefetch-next is Firefox’s setting for prefetching links; double-click this to toggle it from on to off, if you like.
If you want to adjust Stumbleupon’s settings for prefetching links, it is easiest to do this through the SU toolbar thusly:
Tools->Toolbar Options->Configuration->Prefetch Stumbles (makes stumbling faster)
So will I be changing my settings? Probably not. I don’t honestly believe that my youtube viewing habits will get me into trouble. However, knowledge is good; and you should know that the prefetching options that speed up your browsing comes with a cost to your privacy.
