commenting systems

Disqus released their new commenting system today. It adds:

# Comments are indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
# Export and import of comments
# Automatic synchronization between Disqus.com and your WordPress comments
# Uses the new Disqus API
# Moderate/administer your blog right from the WordPress admin

The important one there for me was the ability to import and export comments. It actually is not working for some reason right now (an export to Disqus gives an error) but I am hoping this is just teething problems. This feature meant I could move in the first place (as before moving to disqus meant a blackhole for any new comments), but it is also the trackbacks and larger userbase that makes me want to switch in the first place.

This does mean goodbye to Intense Debate for now - I loved the automatic export out of friendfeed provided by that service but the larger community of disqus hopefully will mean a greater number of people coming to this site. Not that I am ignoring Intense Debate - with the ability to import and export as well - I could move between providers with little pain - and not lose any comments in the process. This alone is going to make it interesting to see how this particular niche progresses. The competition is huge and with only minimal barriers to switch providers, somehow the commenting providers are going to have to balance innovation and stability to maintain their userbase.

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So delicious finally launched version 2 of their website. It was due back in September last year so it is almost a year late. Rumour has it this was down to a complete reworking of the backend to ensure it was more scalable - no bad thing.

The only problem is - I haven’t actually visited the website more than a handful of times in over a year and yet I use the product everyday!

Why?

Well as I wrote previously, I cannot use Firefox without my delicious addon. It uses delicious to store all my bookmarks centrally but integrates tightly with Firefox allowing me to access those bookmarks just like I would normally. The difference? I could be using my computer at work or at home or even my parent’s computer. It doesn’t matter - my bookmarks are right there. It is a huge productivity boost for me.

So congratulations on the launch, but well - I am waiting for the next version of the Firefox addon (and hoping the new version does not cause any downtime)

I am amazed.

Today I received a piece of spam with the following subject line:

“Cuil - new google-ish search engine”

The contents was pretty obviously spam thought hat too was topical:

“Tens of thousands of US homes lost to sub-prime crisis monthly - will you be next **link hidden**”

Before ending with them saying that they use Opera’s revolutionary new email client - not sure thats a positive for Opera

On the bright side, Microsoft Outlook junked it

If you are anything like me, you are using Firefox and a multitude of addons. The downside to all this it turns out is that not only does Firefox become a huge memory hog (it is not unusual for Firefox to be using ~400MB of memory) it also becomes very slow.

The one thing I found which speeds up Firefox no end was disabling the Firebug plugin. I use it a lot when editing the layout of this blog but those are only for short bursts at a time so I can easily disable it.

As for the memory usage, well we shall see..

Cuil (pronounced Cool ) has launched their new search engine - and it is making ripples across the net because of its claims to have an index of over 120 billion web pages bigger than Google’s. Google doesn’t actually talk about how many web pages are in their index but it is thought to be a trillion web pages which obviously would make Cuil’s claim invalid. I cannot see Google releasing the info to prove them wrong and so nonetheless this has allowed them to make a splash.

The real test of how good the search technology is - ie how relevant the results are - seems to indicate that they are not there yet. For example searching for Switzerland on Google places the official site at number 2 (ignoring the paid link above the list). Cuil does not even mention it. A search for the Olympics gave the official website at number 1 for both (thoguh Google’s was below their news results) BUT amazingly with the Beijing Olympics just around the corner, Cuil did not even have the official site on their front page (they did have the 2012 Olympics in the UK though!). Google’s search had it in second place.

Interestingly doing some “ego” searching (where you search for your own name) came back with nothing the first 3 or 4 attempts as I tried different ways of searching under my name even though searching for “razorshine” came back with results which have my name on it. After about 20 minutes the original searches started to come back with results.

I do like the layout of the searches, the quirky results means that I am not switching now, but with it having some ex Senior Googlers on board it is worth keeping an eye on it.

By the way - there is no advertising on the site currently - a plus for some I am sure - though surely that can’t last forever

Update: It was just pointed out to me that the first result under “riaz kanani” (for boxedup.com/razorshine) has an image with “my success in scientology” on it. Very strange as I have no connection to scientology. It will be interesting to hear the response from Cuil on it.