This is our bargain we've made with the modern age and all the technologies that have come with it; we don't work a straight eight or ten hours a day. We sneak in cell phone calls to our friends, text our families, work from home to accomodate a dentist appointment and a trip to the DMV.

But, we also don't play for a straight eight to ten hours a day either; even or Saturday or Sunday. We slip away and check our e-mail, take a call from our boss because he or she doesn't have enough sense to take a day of rest.

If you want to truly honor Labor Day (which, by the way, has been an American holiday since the 1880's set aside to pay tribute to the contributions and comraderie of trade and labor organizations), then you need to untether yourself from the office. In other words, do the second two directives of Timothy Leary's famous quote.

It's okay if you can't remember and have to follow the link. That's why I put it there.

Have a great weekend! We'll get back to business AFTER Labor Day on Tuesday.

- Renee Oricchio

Earlier this month, I commented on a previous posting of mine that the mixing of personal and professional life that seems to happen on Facebook leaves me a little... (hmm, how did I put it?)

Squirmy!

I'm rethinking that one and I'm a big enough person to admit it publicly.

I've been spending quite a bit of time on Facebook lately, with both friends and colleagues (many of whom are both). It was one of those colleagues-slash-friends that read my earlier posting and actually "un-friended" me. He feared that I felt put on the spot to be his FB friend knowing we're colleagues, as well.

Now I feel like a bad friend, not just on Facebook, but in real life, as well.

I've also had a change of heart realizing it is okay to let people you deal with professionally know that you're a real person; with cute kids who likes the Dixie Chicks, historical fiction, has 42 friends in almost as many cities around the country and went a little nuts recently with yearbookyourself.com.

I often point to David Packard, Sr. and Bill Hewlett for what I think was actually their most important contribution to Corporate America. Hint: it wasn't a calculator or an oscillator (Walt Disney bought eight of their early models to use in what was then a unique surround sound system for its movie, Fantasia).

Packard and Hewlett made Corporate America a lot less corporate. They called it The HP Way; business casual dress, Friday afternoon employee beer busts, open door policies with the top brass and open cubicles; not to dehumanize employees, but rather to mingle them together in hopes they'd be more human, instead of less.

Maybe Facebook is picking up where they left off.

Check out LinkUp! Rather than sifting through endless job sites and cherry picking your way through all the potential employers that you can think of (and worrying about who you aren't thinking of), LinkUp is one stop shopping to find out who's hiring what positions in a specific geographic area.

LinkUp crawls through employer sites and pulls up their postings for you. It doesn't cost a dime, either.

It's also a cheap way to find potential employers who may not have the right posting today. But, just might be someone you want to start networking with now and see what happens later.

For example, I ran a search on "health insurance" and "Connecticut" and got 264 results. That's a lot of corporate sites to explore and research.

Thanks to Sara Mannix, from Mannix Marketing, for this one. It came up in a recent interview for a story that I'm working on for this site.

If you have a bricks and mortar business that relies on customers coming to your location, then you surely want to be on Google maps. Let's put it this way, do you want to be the only CPA firm not on the map in your home town?

Didn't think so.

Here's what you do. Real simple: just make sure you put your office address at the bottom of the pages on the company web site along with the copyright. Many companies just put a P.O. Box address. Use your physical address. That's the easiest way for it to get picked up in Google's map engine and that's how you get flagged in Google Local.

Now e-mail your web master with this link before you forget!

It won't be by posting a classified ad in your local paper(has anyone ever got a job that way?). It likely won't be by connecting through Monster.com or CareerBuilder, either.

According to a recent survey by ExecuNet, an executive matchmaking firm, 70% surveyed said their next job or job candidate would likely come from professional networking. For the record, ExecuNet surveyed a mix of 6000 recruiters and potentially itchy executives looking to make a move. Out of that same group, only 16% said they expected to make the connection through online advertising.

My question: what is to become of site's like Monster? Are they going to survive in the Web 2.0 world?

At 16%, I'm guessing their executives better be getting those resumes out - on Facebook and LinkedIn!

DCAA – What is it and how can you comply?

What is DCAA? The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), under the authority,
direction, and control of the United States under the Secretary of Defense, performs
all contract audits for the United States Department of Defense (DoD). DCAA also
provides contract audit services to other government agencies. Today, the
DCAA consists of approximately 4,000 people located at more than 300 field
audit offices throughout the world. Much more data is available at www.dcaa.mil.

It's happening. Maybe not in your school district yet. But all over the country the little punkins are heading back to school. Some kids have already started. Mine start next week here in CT. Bottomline, it's time to stick a fork in it. This summer is a goner.

What does this mean to us business folk? Get with the rhythm, I say.

We have two rhythms in this country and they are kissing cousins of one another: the old agrarian calendar and the school calendar. I say kissing cousins, because the school calendar was built on top of the old agrarian calendar when more people lived on farms and went to school around planting and harvest times.

If you haven't been in a classroom in fifty years, chances are the end of summer and the coming of fall still triggers a jump start feeling.

My tip for the day, join in with your kids while they scramble to organize for a new school year. At the same, reorganize yourself for a good fourth quarter.

Here are some steps to do so (from a techie's perspective, of course):

1. Clean up your computer. Delete old files and e-mails. Defrag your hard drive. Uninstall old programs you don't use anymore. Make your machine run faster and make it easier to find stuff.
2. Clean up your contacts. Check your cell, your social network sites, your e-mail client address book, etc. and do a little housekeeping. Out with the old, input all the numbers and e-mail addresses you've been carting around on little pieces of paper and in the form of creased business cards.
3. If you haven't thought about downloading security patches, upgrading software, etc. in awhile, then do more than think about it. Actually do it!
4. While your kids are getting new backpacks and lunchboxes, have you looked at your briefcase lately? Would it make a good or bad impression on clients? Maybe it's time to go briefcase shopping and get one that has all the right pockets and padding for your notebook, cell and other gizmos you never leave home without.
5. If you do have kids, chances are you are spending some quality time at Staples or the likes these days. What about you? Do you need a new flash drive? CD-R's? ink cartridges for the printer? Stop limping by. It's nice to have that feeling once a year of being fully stocked with crisp clean notebooks and pens that work.

One reason that IT projects fail sometimes is due to apathy.

It's important to remind your people why their work matters.

Every business is providing something of value to someone. People don't give you money unless you do a good deed for them. Businesses serve the company, departments serve the business, employees serve the company. So you are doing a moral thing and should be proud of your work. But everyone forgets this. If employees can be reminded that they are doing good and moral works in the universe this helps to push against apathy.

There are other reasons for IT project failure too, but this is a big one.

Curt Finch runs a project resource management company in Austin

This is the stuff everyone forgets to do:

1. Check for broken links on the company site. It's very frustrating for a visitor to click on a link and get an error page. It also sends a message that the company really doesn't think their own site is active or relevant enough to keep fresh. If you don't believe in your own site, why should site visitors.?

5. Does the look and feel of your company site match other marketing collateral? It should. Is it using the latest version of the company logo and other corporate brands? Is it pushing the same initiatives as corporate brochures and ad campaigns? The corporate web site shouldn't be a year behind the rest of the company, it should be ahead of the curve instead. It may be time for a relaunch.

Tsk Tsk! The Apple-ites are really having a time with their MobileMe service (the replacement for the .mac mobile e-mail client),

In truth, the MobileMe outages that have happened since last month's release of the new iPhone 3g have only affected about 2% of all customers. That doesn't sound like much, unless you are among that 2%.

Apple has gotten hammered by all the bad press from those outages, however. Steve Jobs has done everything but whip himself with his own turtle neck. He has been apologizing to customers and promising a swift fix, which just hasn't been swift enough.

Ergo.. Apple is announcing a 60 day extension on the free trial period of MobileMe to customers. Here's the details from the Apple site.

I guess it is a consolation prize for those affected that at least they're not paying for spotty service. Is it another way of saying that Apple needs another two months to pull it together? Was that a "the glass is half empty" observation? oops!

I wouldn't be too hard on Apple. When my phone service or cable modem or cable TV service goes down, I can assure you my providers could care less and NEVER take responsibility or credit my account.

I say bravo to Apple for at least taking responsibility and offering something to customers.

I don't know what is going on and this is just one woman's story. But in recent weeks, it seems everyone and their brother is contacting me via Facebook. I've heard from old childhood friends and long lost colleagues that I haven't seen or worked with in ten years. It's wonderful to reconnect with both, of course!

That being said...

Confession: I set up a Facebook account well over a year ago and until recently virtually ignored it.

I also have a LinkedIn account, as well.

I personally like to do my online professional networking through LinkedIn and my personal life networking through Facebook.

While LinkedIn doesn't really lend itself to auld lang syne moments with long lost college friends, Facebook does. Facebook also lends itself to professional networking, as well.

This puts me in a squirmy spot. I really don't want to mix the two worlds. Maybe it's a generational thing. I earned my corporate stripes in a more button-downed era when you didn't mix resumes and recipes together.

There is a real danger, I think, of giving TMI (too much information) to business colleagues. Facebook is increasingly designed to address two very different audiences. Sure, I love sharing with old friends what I'm currently reading, my favorite hobbies, goofy pictures of myself. But, it doesn't feel very professional when I think of .. oh say.. you looking at it (and now you surely will.. oh well!).

I would offer a word of caution to think about who might look at your Facebook page before you post (like your boss, or someone interviewing you for a job, or a client, etc.).

Other reporters love to write stories about Facebook versus LinkedIn, as if one will kill off the other. I don't think that's the case. I think there's a case for both and I believe I've made it today.

By the way, I like long walks on the beach, golf, historical fiction and Lenny Kravitz turned way up high when I'm in a good mood.

Right now, Renee is blogging for Inc Mag's technology resource center in her pajamas.

Did you really need to know that? Didn't think so.

But, will it live to see 27?

Should it?

I say "yes" or something like it should survive.

It speaks to a bigger issue; what is it's purpose?

The CD as a primary delivery source for recordings of any kind (In English: Buying a CD to get a copy of the latest Coldplay album or book on tape...) is doing a fast fade.

Similarly, who buys software on CD-Roms or DVDs anymore?

Downloading is in. Buying hard copies is out.

Owning a hard copy of a software application or Springsteen's latest, greatest; well, that's a whole other story.

I do think the CD, the CD-ROM and the DVD aren't going anywhere, anytime soon. But, their purpose is already changing. They are increasingly more for back-up purposes. Files on hard drives get corrupted or lost. iPods die.

When these formats truly breathe their last, it won't be because downloaded file formats took their place. It will be flash drives and something else.

Meantime, happy birthday to the CD!

This is a generation gap thing. Young whipper snappers don't remember the frustrations of scratched vinyl albums, not being able to jump around and listen to songs out of order or the jarring "ka-chung" half way through "Stairway to Heaven" on an eight- track tape.

In other words, there's a whole generation of young professionals out there who have no recollection or experience living in a linear world.

I do. I remember when the CD revolution was truly a revolution in sound quality, data storage and convenience.

Scott Thill from Wired has a quite a diatribe knocking the CD on his blog from the weekend. I don't think Scott and I graduated from high school the same year (or the same decade, perhaps millenium).

Scott berates the CD for the all paper and plastic wasted in shrinkwrap over the past 26 years. Would he have preferred the much larger packaging of record albums? How long will it take his old iPod to break down in a landfill? How long will it take CD packaging to break down?

And the hits just keep on comin' for Apple and its MobileMe customers. Ever since the launch of the new iPhone 3G last month, there has been a spate of outages for MobileMe users.

The good news: MobileMe seems to have stablized for now (after becoming priority one in the eyes of the black turtle-necked one: CEO Steve Jobs).

The bad news: phishing attacks. Word is, some MobileMe customers are receiving bogus e-mails claiming their recent subscription charge didn't process correctly and to please click through a couple of links to update billing information.

Here's a picture of what the e-mail looks like courtesy one MobileMe user's Flickr account. Note: I say picture. It's a pretty slick e-mail looking pretty credible.

As always, anytime you get an e-mail asking for personal information, especially financial information, chances are its phishing scam (or a company that is clueless when it comes to customer service).

When Firefox 3 came out a couple of months ago, I marveled at how much faster it opened than Firefox 2 and certainly the other guys (IE 7 and Safari).

What a difference a summer makes. Firefox 3 has a ton of add-ons. You can go add-on crazy with literally hundreds of choices to bling your browser. I did go crazy and guess what? It's as slow as Christmas now.

From the "do as I say, not as I do" file:

- Pick your add-ons carefully.
- If you don't use it on a regular basis after the first week, then uninstall it.
- For work, stick to add-ons that help you work better online. Save the games and fancy skins for the home computer.

I've also noticed Firefox 3 crashes quite a bit. But, it's great about recovering all the tabs you had open in your last session.

I'm still in Amish country, by the way. Through the miracles of science, I can attend a butter churning while my musings automatically post online.

Quilting anyone?

If you're like me, you're already half- deaf from too much Rock and Roll in your youth (and now!). Spending a good part of the day with some sort of piece stuck in your ears, whether it's your blue tooth or ear buds for your iPod; chances are your ears are paying dearly.

I am always thrilled to see a new product that actually protects the human body, rather than harm it further. Introducing Purebuds! I've been using mine for several days now and I love 'em. They're actually comfortable, the sound is like having a Bose system in your ear and best of all: it has this unique design to protect the ear drum.

Purebuds use what they call their own "reverse sound technology". What that means in English: the little speaker buds point outwards and not inwards towards the bowels of your ear canal. This means your ear drum is spared a direct assault of all those decibels coming from your iPod.

How does it work? Don't ask me, I'm not an audiologist. I don't even play one on TV. All I know is the darn things work and for fifty bucks, I would consider it a bargain.

Memo to Purebuds: I'm very concerned about the younger generation growing up with their ears under constant assault from other headphones, cell phones and ear buds. I'm guessing the fallout when they're my age will be far more damaging to their hearing than Aerosmith was on my eight track tape player way back when.

Why don't you start a program to get your product into schools with an educational discount or offer a program for businesses to make donations? Also consider making a size smaller for little ears.

I assume you're listening.

I can't resist sharing this. Confession: I wrote this posting in advance. I'm actually on vacation this week. You'll never guess where! Amish country!

Is it me, or is there something humorous about a technology reporter going to visit the Amish on vacation.

I would say it's truly a vacation from my work. My hotel doesn't even have WiFi.

Of course, the Amish are not technology-adversed. They just liked the technological innovations from the 18th and 19th century so much that they decided to stick with them.And who's having the last laugh now that gas is around four bucks a gallon. I may come home in a horse and buggy.

I expect to feel very inspired by my visit with this wonderful sub-culture that manages to hang on to its communal integrity. You'll be hearing about it next week, I assure you.

P.S. I'm also going to Hershey. Tech reporters like chocolate on their vacations too.

PCs come and go. But, the mice tend to stick around. Yes, there are fancy ones out there: wireless, three buttons, ergonomic models with sleek designs and jel-based squeeze points. Chances are. over the years, you've ignored those and just stuck with the same old mouse that comes with each new computer through the years.

After awhile, you can end up with more computer mice than real mice in the building. What to do?

1. Issue them out with the laptops. I don't know about you. But, I hate those little touch pads on a notebook. I ALWAYS carry a mouse to plug into my laptop.

2. Throw a few into the receptionist's desk to loan out to visiting road warriors for that very reason.

3. Keep a couple in the conference room for those that forget their mouse walking into a meeting.

4. Hang 'em on the "holiday" tree this year in the company lobby as a goof.

5. Office practical joke: hide a co-workers real mouse behind the monitor and put out a dummy mouse unplugged by their keyboard. Stand back and watch the expletives fly.

6. Box them up and offer them to a local school. Many schools are using laptops and the kids are left to struggle along with those touch pads, too. No kidding, this is probably the best advice.

Maybe it's just me. I thought they were more widely used than this. According to a new survey from Pew Internet & American Life, only 50% of all web surfers use a search engine at all on a daily basis.

No wonder that new search engine, Cuil, thinks it has a shot of getting in on the ground floor of something.

Other thoughts on this no so little survey nugget:

- As big as Google is, it can get a lot bigger. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
- No wonder Microsoft is like the stalker boyfriend that just won't take no for an answer trying to get a piece of Yahoo.
- For companies spending out the nose on search engine optimization, a word of caution; floating to the top of the search engines is literally half the battle.
- If half of all surfers aren't searching; then this must mean half of all surfers go to the same handful of sites day after day or find new sites via links. That being the safe, take note of the importance of getting other sites to link to yours.

Have a good weekend. We'll get back to business on Monday.

- Renee Oricchio

For those of you that read yesterday's posting, you know that Microsoft has got me down to my last nerve.

I'm sick of my browser crashing. I'm sick of my O/S crashing. I'm sick of overwrite just coming on without provocation in a word document and literally eating my words as fast I can write them.

And I will not upgrade to Vista. So where will this leave me in the next year or so, when I'm ready to upgrade to a new notebook?

Mac?

It's tempting. But, I would feel better about it if Apple did the following:

1. Make a tablet version of the Macbook. I just played around with a friend's HP Tablet notebook. It's about 18 months older (and has Windows XP on it). I have to admit, I coveted it. I love the idea of handwriting notes directly into my notebook.

2. Put a right click button on the Apple mouse. Just do it. A mouse without a right click button is like driving on the left side of the road in England. It's just plain weird.

3. Lower the prices. How can I justify spending between $1100 and $1500 on a Macbook to get what I need? The notebook that I'm using now cost me a whopping $400 new and out of the box about two years ago. Memo to Steve Jobs: money is tight. Gas is over four bucks a gallon in Connecticut.

4. Throw in a free iPod Nano or shuffle. Something. Other PC sellers throw in free printers and scanners all the time. It's a nice gesture. Just do that too! P.S. It's smart business. You know it's just going to get me to buy more songs, etc. off iTunes.

5. Bundle in Microsoft Office for Mac. Don't make me pay extra for it. I get it bundled into my el cheapo PC notebooks without feeling the cost. If you really want me to jump ship, then you have to make room for all my old baggage (namely files that end in .doc, .ppt, etc.).

Today's posting was going to be about the new round of rumors about Apple possibly launching an iPhone Nano just in time for holiday shoppers (and fourth quarter sales).

While I writing about it, Internet Explorer 7 (see yesterday's posting) got hopelessly stuck when I dared to have three sites open at the same time.

Three guesses what happened and first two don't count; that's right, it crashed! It crashed taking my almost done posting with it. Curse you, Red Barron!

My question: why have tabs for additonal sites, when most of the time it can't handle it?

I realize this isn't exactly a family audience. But, it is a professional one. So, I will curb my language. Suffice it to say, the air is blue around my work space right now.

An Open Memo to Microsoft

This is why I refuse to upgrade to Vista. After years of considering myself a Microsoft apologist, shamelessly using your products damning myself to be forever technologically "uncool" compared to my Mac friends and open source friends; I've had it. To paraphrase a source of mine, Reuben Swartz, from Mimiran in Austin, TX, quoted in my recent piece about switching to Macs; "I'm tired of more powerful machines that run slower".

I would link to Reuben's site and my piece. But I'm afraid it will crash my IE browser calling up the other pages, so I can cut and paste the urls into my posting.

It's one thing to deal with this forever-rickety, fragile frustrating browser; I would be putting too much of my precious work productivity at stake to entrust my operating system to Microsoft. As it is, I have three browsers on my desktop; Firefox 3 (my favorite), Safari (second favorite) and IE 7 (the devil I know).

Microsoft still has an overwhelming market share in both the browser and operating system war, although it has eroded substantially in recent years (there's a lot of room to fall, when you're riding at 99% for a generation). This means there are plenty of people who are complaining as I am. Here our cries.

Cut it out, Microsoft!

Yes, we want our security. Maybe that would happen if you stopped alienating all those disaffected programmers in Southeast Asia and Scandanavia (I'm not sure why so many viruses and worms originate from those areas. But, they do.). How about that, instead of another overbloated version of your product line crammed down our throats?

Imagine if my Toyota just up and vapor-locked while driving, the way my Microsoft applications do?

Or my central air conditioning system in August?

Or my electrical system in my home?

Or my washer and dryer?

You get the idea. Too bad Microsoft doesn't.

I have a theory: maybe it's because Microsoft has too many programmers on the corporate dole up in Redmond. It would cost too much money to package a significant chunk out to pasture. They have to earn their keep, so the code factory keeps on writing and writing. Microsoft churns out code like Stephen King churns out bookstop- sized spooky-ooky thrillers. Both need an editor and to make use of their word count tool (if it doesn't crash the system).

Microsoft is, what, 25 - 30 years old now? Can we hope a lot of these programmers will retire soon and force the company to get lean and mean with its code, at last.

To quote one of my favorite movies, Amadeus; "Too many notes".

(I am now stepping down off my soap box...)

There's a 40% chance that it's not the latest security updates; in fact, not even the latest browser.

IBM, Google and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology recently published the results of an exhaustive 18 month study of who's browsing with what on the Internet. Some 60% of surfers are doing so with the latest version of their browser. That leaves 40% who are not.

Why is this a bad thing? Three reasons:

Security. Security. Security.

Old browsers don't include the latest security patches, for obvious reasons. Just under 80% of all surfers worldwide are using Microsoft Internet Explorer (Oh how the mighty continue to fall! But, that's another story.). Out of those IE users, 48% are still using IE 6, and not IE 7. Just a reminder, IE 7 was released in 2006 and IE 8 is already out in beta. This gives you an idea how quickly the average bear is jumping on those new browser versions.

In other words, a good chunk of people in the world don't bother ever updating their browser. They just wait until they buy a new computer, most likely.

I'm sympathetic. I do have IE 7 and it drives me crazy. It's so secure that I can't login into my own domain hosting company for my professional site and update pages. I have to do so on an older version of Internet Explorer or another browser.

Other interesting nuggets from that study. While Internet Exporer's market share has eroded to 80%, it's not Apple Safari or Opera that is gaining ground in its place. It's Firefox. Firefox now takes up more than 16% of the browser market and those figures pre-date the recent version 3 release that saw more than eight million downloads in the first 24 hours.

So why don't more people (and businesses) update their browsers more often?

Shooting from the hip, here are my best theories:

- If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The older versions serve their purpose and you can't salivate over slick new features you're not aware of in the first place. It's not like driving down the road and seeing the latest Ford Mustang and wishing you had one, too.
- We've all been burned enough times with new versions of browsers and other applications to know they often arrive buggy and too bloated to function well on our current system. I will give a nod to Firefox 3. It does actually run faster than version two. I can't say the same about IE 7 compared to IE 6.
- Not everyone reads technology headlines (unfortunately for writers like me). A great many people simply don't know there's a new version available.
- For the average IT department, checking each computer on the network to see what browser they are using ranks on the priority list somewhere between writing a employee manual on good ergonomics and cleaning bagel crumbs out of all the keyboards.

You don't even need to have a web site to help your search engine rankings in Google.

Mystified? Here's my Google tip of the day; list your business address with Google maps.

This is free, of course. It's also a no-brainer. If you have the type of business that customers or clients visit (in other words, you actually want people to know where you are based), simply create a Google account and list your busines and accompanying address.

When users search your business category in your locale, your bricks and mortar location is flagged on the map to click on for contact information. Hopefully that does include a web site. But, again, it isn't required.

Speaking from the stand point of a "searcher"; when I seek out businesses this way, I check out the ones with corporate sites and typically ignore the others. I'm guessing that I'm not alone on this.

So if you really are still operating without a corporate site; well, I'll save that tongue-lashing for another day.

If you've followed any tech headlines this week, then you have surely heard of Cuil (pronounced "cool").

Cuil is the new search engine that launched earlier this week with much fanfare and curiosity. It's well named; it's cool looking. But, that's about it.

It is refreshing to see a sleek uncluttered search engine home page that loads uber fast. Cuil claims to have more sites in its search engine than Google (do we really need more!).

After playing with it all week, here's my take on the good, the bad and the ugly of Cuil.

The Good

- Loads fast, nice and spartan look that is refreshing.

- Black is at last the new black. The black background is also very trendy. I'm guessing it'll be a hit in Manhattan.

- The search results come in either two or three columns and include more copy leading into the site, with a thumbnail picture. It's visually engaging and nice and clean.

- Search results typically come up with tabs at the top to click on categories of information. There is also a very elegant box of drop down options of other tangential information on the search topic. I would say this is the most innovative part of the search engine. Very cuil!

The Bad

- It's so simple, it lacks all the basic search engine features we've all come to depend on; searching by images, for example. How about a quick link to news and weather?

- This is a barebones search engine. It's like buying a car with no air conditioning, electric windows or iPod doc. If you like that sort of thing...

The Ugly

- I'm not sure what determines which sites rise to the top of the search results. Whatever the criteria, it doesn't work for me. I find the most obtuse stuff rises to the surface and I have to click through page after page to find what I really want. For example, I ran a search on Picasso's "Starry, Starry Night" and got everything but a picture or write up on "Starry, Starry Night".

Frankly, I'm not sure the world needs another search engine. Although Google could use some competition, so I will withhold my opinion and wish Cuil well.