This is the search bar on the New York Times webiste. Today for the first time I noticed the filters that help you to refine your search to more recent articles only. The default is 'Since 1851'. I love it. Says so much with just two words...
And this is the homepage of new search engine http://cuil.com (pronounced 'cool' apparently). They're the new hot thing in the tech market and their USP is the size of their index - it's been a long time since we've seen a 'Search 100,000,000 web pages' tagline - takes me right back to the days of AltaVista, seriously.
It'll be interesting to see how cuil develops, but for now, despite that whopping index it seems to be somewhat lacking. Everyone does a vanity search on their first visit to a new search engine right? Well in this case Alex Gawley brought up lots of interesting stuff (link to follow when they are back up) from Friendfeed and Twitter and MyBlogLog, but not a single page from dear old aBlog. By comparison on Google we're right up there - what gives?
The other thing I'm not sure about on cuil is the UI. True, they're breaking the mold of the 10 blue links, but I can't tell if the I should read from left to right or down the columns in order to go from least to most relevant. Maybe I am just being old fashioned, but that really threw me.
This one is going to be a good one to watch (if they can get their servers back up...)