Paul Wille Consulting, Inc

When I went into business for myself last year, I decided up front that I would make a concerted point to only use software and equipment that was easy to use and maintain. I also decided that my clients should never be exposed to technological issues on my side, whether that be email, phones, calendar scheduling, or simply inefficient technological infrastructures.

This meant (happily) ditching Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Word, Visio and even Windows. I bought my first mac at that time, loaded it up with Apple iWork ’08 (now using 09) and software from the OmniGroup, and was off and running. As the year progressed, I bought an iPhone, and ultimately an iMac for my office with a little more horsepower.

Once you introduce a second computer into your normal working environment, synchronizing files, address books, emails, etc. become a huge problem. Add to that a phone as well, and there’s little chance you’ll ever be totally synchronized. When you’re self-employed, time is money, and you simply do not have time to deal with these issues.

Introducing MobileMe

(image courtesy of Apple, Inc.)

Now before you laugh, MobileMe is actually a slick service and works great for consultants like myself. And although many individuals find the MobileMe service too expensive ($99/yr) and/or limiting compared to other services, I like that it simply works. MobileMe has been out for some time, I’m new to it. MobileMe, once set up synchronizes everything behind the scenes between any participating computers and phones that you set up, including:

• Address Book – Addresses, emails and phone numbers are always the same
• Calendars – always have your calendar up to date, no matter where you are
• Email Accounts and Signatures
• Saved Passwords (Keychain Access) – ever try to access a password protected system from a computer where your password isn’t saved, and you don’t remember what your password was? No more with MobileMe.
• Apple Dashboard Widgets
• Notes
• Computer Preferences – each computer looks and behaves the same, all the time.

This alone is great, but a few more features make MobileMe really worth it:

• iDisk (disk storage in the “cloud”) – online storage of files, photos, videos, etc.
• Back To My Mac – ability to connect to a remote computer (i.e. home office computer) from any remote location.

Back To My Mac is everything that Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) is supposed to be, but isn’t. From any remote location, I can access shared files and folders on my iMac, access the actual screen (via Screen Sharing), as though I were on my home network. Best of all, its fast and super easy to set up – turn on “Back to my Mac” in the MobileMe settings, and turn on File Sharing and Screen Sharing under your Sharing settings:

(image courtesy of Apple, Inc.)
Geek Note: For those who are interested in the technical details, your router must support UPnP. If it does, it will automatically configure itself to allow remote connections.

Once its set up, you can access your home computer remotely within any Finder window:

(image courtesy of Apple, Inc.)

Now I can get to any of my files, anytime, using MobileMe’s iDisk. All my contacts are always synchronized between my computers and phone (without ever plugging my iPhone into the computer).

Best of all, no matter where I’m at I’m able to run my business efficiently. In the event an unfortunate computer failure happens, my files are all backed up and I’m able to get up and running in no time. My clients never see any technology hiccups. The time to set all this up? Negligible. The return? Endless, in my opinion.

Anna Patterson (an “inventor” of search algorithms) developed her own search engine in 2004, which was so impressive that Google bought it up to upgrade elements of their own search. Today, she launched another project dubbed “Cuil” (pronounced “cool”). And this time she says Cuil isn’t for sale.

There are plenty of news stories about this search engine, so I’m going to focus on a few key elements that I think are worth a look at:

1. More robust approach to relevancy

Unlike other major search engines that use quality and quantity of web links within content, Cuil actually drills down into the pages they link to and analyzes the content of that page for relevancy. Seems simple enough, and certainly a good idea to get past ridiculous SEO link tactics used these days. I appreciate this – its aggrevating reading a page with unnecessary links within a paragraph. I also suspect (although I haven’t verified) that if this is perfected it will easily contend the more traditional approach.

2. “Article”-based search results

Rather than a list of text-only links, photos and paragraph snippets of content are returned as part of the search results. When interacting with a search engine, most results returned do not contain enough information to qualify the result in the user’s mind. Cuil does a nicer job of this, although it does mean more reading for the user.

3. Dynamic Faceted Searching

Faceted searching is the concept of narrowing search results based on multiple “facets” or aspects of your search results. For instance, if I search for “Portland, Oregon”, a few facets that I could narrow my results by would include “Neighborhoods in Portland”, “Municipal Parks in Portland”, etc. Faceted searching has been around for a few years in mainstream merchandising websites, but its just appearing in search engines (Ask.com is using this in a more simplified form). This is probably the best part of this engine in my opinion. And even though it could still use some refinement, the first view of it is good.

4. Privacy

Cuil promises to not store search history by user, and believes that this will attract users to their search engine too. Although I appreciate this, I don’t think there will be many people coming to Cuil simply because of this.

So where is this thing going? Well with $33 million in VC, I think Cuil will be an interesting story to watch. But even if Anna says Cuil isn’t for sale, what’s the likelihood of it becoming mainstream? I do enjoy routing for the underdog, but in this space its hard to not be very doubtful.

If nothing else, its another clever idea to diversify the search landscape. And for that, I appreciate Anna’s concept and the $33 million backing her.

Starwood recently launched their new Preferred Guest site. Note the usage of rich imagery as the backdrop for the whole site (in fact, refresh the page a few times, as there is different photos in the rotation). I’m a big fan of this for travel sites, as I mentioned in previous posts.

Simplified navigation options, simple calendar controls, great use of AJAX search for the destination search box too.

Nice work Starwood. Hope the rest of your brand sites are on their way to similar improvements.

Hawaiian Airlines just launched their new website about a week ago. You know, I really like it when I see a company break the mould of their online presence that all their competitors follow. The site is inviting, easy, and provides great tools that travelers need when planning their trip. Best of all, note how they do not show photos of the tail-section of an aircraft (which historically has been so prevalent on airline websites). What does a tail-section have to do with my vacation?

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