While the debate rages on as to whether most social networking is truly a positive way of staying in touch with friends or if it’s just a way for people with more interesting lives, or just more time on their hands, to show off, it would seem that at least one website has come up with a truly innovative and potentially useful spin on the idea.

Called skimbit, it’s sole purpose is to aid in the social decision making process. That is, those instances where, for instance, one of your friends suggests going on a holiday but none of you can decide where to go, or, where you’re trying to organise buying a big present for your parents silver anniversary. Rather than the usual situation where it takes hundreds of emails and phone calls between you all to even get things started, skimbit simplifies the whole process by bringing all the information together in a central repository. You and your co-conspirators can add suggestions and then vote on them until you hone down your choices. You can then add notes and checklists, and there are even link-ins to apps like googlemaps so the thickies in your group will actually know where it is you’re going.

All in all it seems like a brilliant idea. It completely cuts out the hassle of, let’s face it, things that shouldn’t be stressful but somehow always end up being. Certainly I can see many a situation I’d use it for.

There’s  just one problem, it’s yet another site to convince all my friends to signup to. For the, what, half dozen, at most, times you’ll end up using it every year, I just can’t see everyone bothering to keep on top of it. If someone could make a Facebook widget that did the same thing then they would be onto a real winner, though!

Yes, that’s pronounced ‘cool’, in case you were wondering.

It’s a brand new search engine launched in part by three ex-Google employees, which should lend it some weight. That along with the fact it apparently has indexed three times the number of pages Google has and it could seem like a genuine competitor. Unfortunately, it seems to have fallen at the first hurdle, getting wrong what every other search company bar Google has. Namely, the interface is a mess.

Where Google presents you with a clear list of results down the left hand side, Cuil scatters them across the page, including far more detail then is often necessary. It also seems to be a bit slower than Google, with recent articles failing to show up the day after publication.

I’ll give it a few more tries over the next few days but for the most part it would seem like Cuil is set to be another also-ran in the search engine race.

http://www.cuil.com/

Yes, I’ve owned the game since the day it was released yet it’s taken me until now to actually complete this masterpiece of PC gaming. And it really is a masterpiece.

Sure, I got really frustrated with it along the way as the lack of variation wore the gameplay perilously thin, and the drawn out sections in the middle of the game before the Andrew Ryan encounter were too long but the sense of completion that I felt upon getting to the end wasn’t something I’d felt since playing the original half-life (half-life 2 was good but it never really finished). Indeed I felt the endings were one of the strongest parts of the game; offering up complete closure and creating the appropriate warm fuzzy feeling you expect from the ‘good’ ending and leaving you with the deserved maniacal, dirty, and yet helpless feeling from the ‘bad’ ending.

Also, the way the story unfolds at the end as you start to believe that maybe Tannenbaum is using you is pure genius.

There’s not much more I can say that doesn’t touch over already very well trodden ground. So i’ll just simply say that this truly deserved all the praise it got all that time ago.

So it seems the Tories have been at the top of a landslide victory in the local elections with buffoons like Boris Johnson even looking likely to win the London Mayorship. Well, all I can say is well done England. Well done for not seeing the wood for the trees. For being fooled by the slimey weazly charm of David Cameron rather than the slightly bumbling figure of Gordon Brown. Believe it or not, personality has nothing to do with how to run a country but once again the general populace has fallen for it.

I really do despair.

Let me ask you one simple question. What have the Tories said they will do better than Labour? Magically lower taxes without any talk of consequences to national services. Somehow miraculously solve the situation in the middle east and Afghanistan? Solve the impending financial downturn?

For instance, Boris’s policy list for making London a better place currently runs as:

• More police on the streets.
• Action on gun crime
• Safer public transport
• Protection for our green spaces
• Freedom pass guaranteed and extended
• Tax Payer value and honesty at City Hall

So, the top three are essentially targets labour has been trying to reach for a number of years. What makes Boris think he can do this any better?

Protection for our green spaces? How vague is that.

Freedom Pass guarantees and extensions - Ok, I’ll give him that one. +1

Tax Payer Value and Honesty - Come off it, he’s a politician just like the rest. In fact, probably worse than the rest. Just recall the number of controversies that have surrounded him already in his political career.

Look, we all know that Gordon Brown messed up with the 10p tax debacle but that’s no reason to start switching allegiances to possibly the most obsequious political leader our country’s seen since, well Tony Blair. Let’s just give the dullard a chance before we make even more rash decisions.

Even though I spend my entire working life reviewing, researching, playing with, and generally enjoying the wonders of new tech, it’s not often I see something that is truly inspiring but that’s exactly what happened last week.

I was out in California where I was watching the DARPA Urban Challenge, which is, or rather was, a robot car race. I won’t go into too much detail (you can read my piece on TrustedReviews about it if you like) but essentially normal cars had been retrofitted with LASERs, RADAR, computers, and all manner of other bits and bobs to enable them to literally drive themselves. The challenge was a race to see which of these contraptions was the best.

Now, being a technologist, I was understandably blase about this and walking round the ‘paddock’ it didn’t really excite me as such. However, once the race got underway and I saw a car drive past me with no driver, it suddenly dawned on me how amazing, surreal, and even freaky it was. There was certainly something special about that moment and though I’m not sure if fully autonomous cars are more a scary or exciting prospect, it was certainly a privilege to be witness to these first steps towards that final goal.

Oh, and if you use such things, give my story a digg here.

Cheers.

As of yesterday the 22nd October 2007, TrustedReviews Ltd became part of no less than AOL, CNN, and New Line owning Time Warner! That’s right, I’ll soon be kicking it with the stars up in down town L.A., sipping on my Mohito while basking in the sun as I casually type away. Or maybe not…

Actually we’re going to be part of IPC Media, one of the largest print media publishers in the UK, who are themselves owned by TW. So, this will mean precisely naff all to us for the short to medium term as we’re not moving offices, no staff are coming or going, and our contracts stay the same. However, sometime in the not too distant future TR will start to grow into the publication it was always meant to be and, personally, I can’t wait.