Google Profiles are here – well almost.

Recently launched,  Google Profiles are like online interactive business cards letting you share your details with other Google users. With a Google profile, you can easily bring together your web content and social networking links  into one central location. You can set up your profile to include, links to your blog, online photos, and other profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. It’s not perfect, but the big plus is if  someone is searching on Google for you by name, your linked details will appear at the bottom of the Google Search page, complete with a thumbnail picture of you.

Once clicked, they get taken to your full profile – see below

So, why do I say that Google Profiles are almost here?

Although more than 700  Kiwi businesses and people already have their profiles on Google, as of today they still can’t be directly accessed from www.google.co.nz, our default Google page.

Apparently, Google Profiles will be coming to New Zealanders soon but in the meantime, if you can’t wait to set up your own Google profile you can always go here and do it.

Viewzi, a nice user interface for home surfers

Here’s another search engine you should check out. It’s called Viewzi, and it is very cool indeed.
The search function seems to work pretty well, and our ‘standard list’ of search terms pulled reasonable results. What gives Viewzi some real appeal however, is that it creates a terrific visual search experience.

Search engines – cuil, or what?

The hype surrounding the launch a couple months ago of cuil caused me take a moment to check it out, and although everyone likes to support the little / new guys on the block, I have to say that I don’t understand what all the excitement is about.
I gave it a go using a set of search terms we use for evaluation purposes, and wasn’t particularly impressed.
Just to be sure, I did what most people do and then read the user instructions, but still found that this search engine, while providing an interesting results presentation layer, doesn’t cut it for me. Where’s the ‘advanced search’ facility – perhaps I’m missing something?
That may be a possibility, but if so, then how intuitive is the interface design in the first place?