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Cuil: We Get Over It

Note: Opinions expressed here are my own, and not that of my employer, Cuil. Google is full of creative, smart, and innovative people, but above all else, they are a fantastic PR machine. Sometimes it’s because of a carefully executed PR plan; sometimes it’s just because they are such a household name; either way, anything [...]

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Things in America That Australia Needs

I’ve been living in the United States for almost a year now, and there are a few services that I use very regularly that would do fantastically well if someone were to bring them to Australia. It’s been a while since I’ve been home, so someone could have started these already, but here is the [...]

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On Joining Cuil

As I announced on Twitter, I have recently joined Cuil as Senior UI Developer. While there are many reasons I chose to come on at Cuil in favor of other opportunities, there is one factor that really won me over: the people. Cuil has a very flat management structure, and as such everyone has to [...]

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Aggregate Opinions on uTag

Launched at Startup Camp Australia last weekend, uTag is a new service aimed at rewarding users for the value they pass onto their online social networks. At its core, it is a URL shortening service – the difference is that uTag place a banner ad frame on top of the redirected website, sharing revenue with [...]

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Why It’s Cool Not to be an A-Lister

Obviously, despite all the talk of long tails, quitting blogging, and all the other issues flying around lately, there are a hell of a lot of perks to being an A-List blogger, or indeed an A-List anything. One huge perk of not being an A-List blogger occurred to me the other day, however – being [...]

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United States Visa Process – Australian E3

When the opportunity to move to the United States first came up, the number one potential issue in my mind was obtaining a working visa. The U.S. Embassy website makes the process seem incredibly complex, and the only first-hand accounts of the visa application process made it sound very hard and daunting. Plus, these accounts [...]

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Damn Twitter

I write this as I wait for a late train – the perfect time for a bit of Twitter action – but the service is down once more. Sure, their actual uptime rating might not be so bad, but it is one of those services that people (including me) really miss when it isn’t there. [...]

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Can Academia Prepare Students for the Real World?

Note: This is skewed toward computer science courses. I’m interested to see if it is the same in other subjects. I have long had a belief that universities are, by and large, completely out of touch with the real world. This may not count for all universities/colleges or their staff, but in my experience most [...]

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Referer Stats for ObsoleteSkills.com

In the month-and-a-half since I started the wiki at ObsoleteSkills.com (thanks again for the idea, Scoble), it has been linked to from a whole bunch of blogs and websites, generating almost 3 million visits. Big name sites including BoingBoing, Slashdot, and Daring Fireball have all given me the privilege of a link. What really surprises [...]

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ObsoleteSkills.com and Network Solutions

Inspired by an interesting blog post from Robert Scoble (yes, he does have them every now and then), I purchased the domain ObsoleteSkills.com and set up a wiki for people to document all those skills that the latest technology really makes obsolete. So far, skills that have been added to the wiki include things like [...]

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