It’s a new year and for most it means back to work or school. In the tech community it also means Macworld SF and CES conventions. The last time I went to Macworld was the year before last year. It seemed like an okay show. It was the year the iPhone and AppleTV was released and a lot of people were interested in that. From what I remember more people were interested in that than anyone else exhibiting there. That makes this year unusual. Steve Jobs is not giving the keynote due to health reasons and Apple has said this will be the last year they will be attending. To me this seems like a huge blow to the show. For me it’s almost no point in trying to go anymore. This pushes me more towards attending CES in the future.

While I’m not attending either show this year (we’re in a recession), I’m thinking CES might be better to attend. It’s got a more diverse product line up and the show takes place in Vegas. There are not many times I can go out to a place like Vegas that’s business related. I would be able to see first hand new products before they are released and also concept products that I wouldn’t see otherwise. While it isn’t a direct link to web development, it is people in the technology industry which can be tied into our field of work.

I’m still on the fence about attending CES next year. I think it might be fun. Then again I can just read everything going on on a variety of blogs and not really miss a beat. I’m intrested to see what comes out at both shows this year. I don’t think it will be as big as years passed, and with everyone blogging about every rumor nowadays it brings disappointment when the real products are actually announced. Tomorrow is the big day so I guess I’ll find out then.

A new search engine, Cuil, was launched recently and it claims to index 3 times as many pages as Google and 11 times as many pages as Microsoft.  There has been a lot of buzz around the blogs with the new search engine.  It got me thinking, what’s it going to take in order to beat someone like Google.  Google has become the household name and I think the majority of people still use it as a search engine.

I figured I would give Cuil and shot and see what all the buzz was about.  I have some mixed feelings about it.  In some of the searches I performed, the actual search results were okay.  I think I am happier with the results that both Google and Yahoo show.  Also I noticed in some posts they have thumbnail images.  Some of the images have nothing to do with the article and I’m just wondering where they even came from.  They don’t even appear in the article body at all.  For example, I searched for “apple” and I expected results from Apple Computer and those showed up.  One result was for the Apple Cinema display, but it had a thumbnail of the iPod Touch.

The two and three column layouts are kind of cool, but a little unusual.  I think it takes some time to get used to, but I don’t find that it helps or hurts the ability to search.

I like that they have tab recommendations and also category recommendations.  The other search engines have this as well, but I think it is layed out well and sometimes I find that it’s not prominent enough on other sites.  I think Ask does the best job of making the feature easy to use, but Cuil does a good job as well.

Overall I think I could use this search engine, but I think I am much happier with Google results.  I’ve found that I’ve built up a comprehensive del.icio.us bookmark list and find that I can find most new information through those channels.  Usually when I looks for businesses or restaurants I use Google maps as opposed to a search engine like I had in the past.  So as of right now I’ll just stick to what I’m already doing.

So today is the big Firefox 3 release and starting at 10AM PST they are trying to go for a Guiness Book of World Records title as the most downloaded piece of software in one day.  If you want to be part of the action head over to the download site.