Now this is a BIG deal. CNN reports on Cuil.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Anna Patterson’s last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

She believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it’s not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced “cool.” Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers — Russell Power and Louis Monier — searched for better ways to search. Now, it’s boasting time. What do you think of the new Cuil search engine?

For starters, Cuil’s search index spans 120 billion Web pages.

Patterson believes that’s at least three times the size of Google’s index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index’s breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages.

Cuil won’t divulge the formula it has developed to cover a wider swath of the Web with far fewer computers than Google. And Google isn’t ceding the point: Spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.

Continued here >

Planning online display advertising can be challenging, particularly in scaling your company’s campaign reach while keeping it relevant for your target audience.  To help in the pursuit of efficient and effective online media plans, Google introduced a new tool on June 24th called Ad Planner.  Ad Planner is marketed as a research and media planning tool that will give advertisers another way to measure their media audience and help measure ROI. Currently, Ad Planner is in a beta version and is available for use by invitation only. The service will be free and available to all after the initial trial period.

Ad Planner may prove to be an effective tool, and offers some interesting features. It allows companies to search for attractive Web sites to place their ads using demographic and usage criteria. Companies can also find out the other sites their target audience is visiting. Business product manager of Google, Wayne Lin cited the example of ESPN.com, showing that visitors to this site also tend to visit cnnsi.com and Cubs.com. Additionally, Ad Planner can provide keywords that were used as search terms.

Google seems to be positioning the tool to reach the long-tail of the internet. This means that the tool will not focus on large Web sites but rather help companies reach niche consumers.

Although Google Ad Planner may be a useful tool, it should be used with caution. Google claims to use outside data as well as their own, but they do not disclose any specific sources. Users should be concerned about the conflicts of interest as Google sells advertising space. The service is not equipped with costs or a brokerage system to enable buying. So companies will still need to seek out vendors or professional media buyers. The service should be seen as a starting point and used in conjunction with other research tools.

Seybold is currently investigating ways to use Ad Planner to improve service to our clients.

Search Engine News: Saturday Yahoo rejected a proposal from Microsoft Corp which involved selling Yahoo’s Search Business. Most Yahoo shareholders want Microsoft to buy the company outright have little interest in any partial transaction that involves only Yahoo’s search advertising business.

What does this mean for Internet Marketers, probably not much. We could see an increase in the cost of Pay Per Click, at both MSN Adcenter and Yahoo Search Marketing.  We’ll have to wait and see.

This is how to achieve DFU mode. You can do it on every phone:

• Attach the phone to the pc
• Turn the phone off
• Hold power and home together for *exactly* 10 seconds
• Release power but keep holding home until the pc beeps as a USB device is recognized.
• At no point will the display come on. Now your restore should work.

Want to change computing? Want to lock in subscribers to a broadband network plan that tethers them to you and delivers unprecedented shareholder value. Well the fact is that Steve was on the right track. I’m no Apple Insider, so I can’t say this without a doubt, but let’s look at two plus two and see what we get.

Steve tells his team to create a highly portable Internet-centric notebook. I want it unfettered – minima to no cables, light weight and transportable. I want it small enough to fit nicely on an airplane’s fold-down tray and I want it to be wirelessly connected all the time. That’s right, wirelessly connected all the time. Read the rest of this entry »