New Search Engine Cuil

-
There is a new search engine in town and its name is "Cuil" (pronounced as "cool"). I tried out the service at http://www.cuil.com and I am pleasantly surprised at the relevance of the search results. For instance, I searched for "harry" and the results appeared to me as shown in the screen shot below.

The presentation of the results looks attractive - it has tabs categorizing the results and thumbnail images and neatly arranged 2 or 3 column results. Unlike other start up search engines like the ill-fated Zotspot, the search results are pretty good and relevant to my queries. The service seems quite fast and responsive, although the site was down on the first day. I noticed that Blogs from Blogspot have not been indexed yet. But I will keep an eye on this site as an alternative to Google.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image background removal using Krita

-
Image
Like other image editing software such as Gimp or Photoshop , Krita has similar tools to remove the background of an image non-destructively using transparency masks. The following steps show how: Open up an image in Krita . In the Layers pane on the right, mouse right click on the paint layer. A pop up menu appears . Choose Add | Transparency Mask . A transparency mask sub layer is created underneath the paint layer . Draw a selection polygon roughly around the foreground object in the image using the Polygonal Selection Tool , as shown below. Then in the File menu, click Select | Invert Selection . Choose Black as the foreground color. Choose a Brush e.g. Basic-1 Ink . Make sure the transparency mask layer is selected or active. Then paint over the background. Choose Select | Deselect to remove the selection polygon. The marching ants selection polygon is removed . Make the brush size smaller and zoom closer  to the background - foreground boundary. Brush over t...
Read more

Making a simple balloon using Inkscape

-
Image
Here is a simple example of making a simple vector line art of a balloon (shown below) using the Inkscape paths and node tools. Create the balloon body Create a new Inkscape document. Click the Create Circles, Ellipses and Arcs (F5) button of the Toolbox . Place an ellipse on the canvas. If you like, toggle off the stroke and color fill it with solid pink. Select Path | Convert Object to Path . Then click the Edit Paths by Nodes (F2) button in the Toolbox . Drag a rectangle to enclose the middle node as shown below. Press ARROW UP on the keyboard a few times. Drag a rectangle to cover the middle and bottom nodes as shown below. Then press the Insert New Nodes into Selected Segments button on the Controls Bar . 2 nodes are created . Drag a rectangle covering only the two newly created nodes. Then press > on the keyboard a few times to shape the balloon to your satisfaction. Create the balloon end In the Toolbox , click the Create Rectangles and Squares (...
Read more

Create an embossed text effect using Inkscape

-
Image
I learnt how to use Inkscape to create a 3-D embossed effect on text objects simply by using the text object's fill blur property. An example of the effect is shown in the image below. The following steps show how the effect was created on an existing text vector drawing. In Inkscape , open up the Fill and Stroke pane by selecting Object | Fill and Stroke  in the menu bar. Press F1 . Click on the text object. The text object is selected with handles around it . Press CTRL+C . The selected text object is copied to the clipboard . Press CTRL+V twice. The text object is duplicated twice . Press F8 . Click on one of the text object. In the Fill and Stroke pane, click the Fill tab. Change the selected text object's  fill color to black . In the Fill and Stroke pane, adjust the Blur property to define the emboss effect e.g. 10 . The selected text object is blurred . Press F8 . Click on another text object. In the Fill and Stroke pane, click the Fill tab. Adj...
Read more