Andrew Rollins

For anyone who missed the flurry of news over the startup Cuil, I think it’s an interesting look at what’s wrong (at times) with Silicon Valley. Despite being full of ex-Google employees and $30+ million in funding, all they have is a crappy search engine that sucks. It might be because they were too busy eating muffins and strawberries.

It’ll be interesting to see where Cuil goes. The search relevance is so bad that some people speculate it isn’t about search, it’s about flipping their indexing algorithms. Considering the high amount of funding, I have a hard time believing anyone will pay for this.

Quite possibly one of the funniest things to come out of this was the jab from Yahoo. Using their BOSS API, Yahoo created a search mashup called Yuil. Yahoo has since taken down Yuil, but it was a funny shot at Cuil while it lasted.

Despite how much the product sucks, I do have to hand it to Cuil or whoever did their marketing/PR/advertising. They were all over the blogosphere and major new sites. I haven’t seen a launch blitz like this in a long time. Hell, they got me to say something.

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Check out this screenshot from Crysis Warhead, and this one, too. Now if only the colors could be a little less brown and gritty, and maybe go a little less on the bloom.

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I liked this illustration of 2008 Internet and tech trends by Matt Inman. He did one back in 2007, too. It’s not particularly comprehensive, I just think he’s a good illustrator. His portfolio is creative and vibrant. Now that I’m working on my own web projects, I’m starting to appreciate good, original design work.

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Just yesterday I attended a panelist discussion about mobile web browsing organized by Mobile Monday Boston. I did a write-up of the event here.

This is a good opportunity to plug my new blog, Boston Startups (where the write-up exists).  The purpose of this new blog is to more properly separate my coverage of Boston area startups from my personal blog, as well as to provide a voice for the Boston startup community. I welcome guest posts and coverage of events.

Regarding the event, I enjoyed it. Turn out was somewhere between 50 and 100 people. At an after party, I learned about some companies relevant to one of my current projects: Admob and Quattro Wireless. Both deal in mobile advertising, and Quattro is local to Waltham, MA.

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