Imad Jomaa blog

Humans in general love to innovate and in fact, it seems like it’s a never-ending passion. To really describe this innovation in under a minute I’ll be using a video by Kevin Nalty to describe this precisely.

In the video I embed below, you will notice the child on the left (Patrick) gets hit by his sister (Katie), the child cries for a few seconds, demos his new innovated idea then gives it a try by whacking his sister back with a balloon. His sister counteracted by whacking Patrick back, then he really uses his new innovation by putting it to the full test at full power.

You’re probably thinking I’ve lost it at this moment in time, but let me explain the similarities. When Patrick got hit and began crying, he realized their was an issue that needed to be solved as we would do when you’re trying to create a new innovative product. The child then realized he had a balloon which became a great counterattack tool, he demoed the new idea with a few air blows to the right of him, seemed liked it worked. Similarly, when we develop new products, we usually demo them or beta test them before we move them out at full stream. When the child realized it might just work, he went for the attack or in other words, he introduced the innovative product to the public or in this case his sister.

I may be over-analyzing things, but take a look at the video yourself:

(link if embed doesn’t display: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzHO20N9xyk )

The reason I used the video as a demonstration of innovation, is due to the fact the child nailed it dead-on in relation to today’s society and innovation.

Feel free to leave your comments and opinions, I’d love to hear them. =P

Until Next Time,

Take Care.

I’m sure we have all heard of the Cuil (pronounced cool) search engine. It’s dark, gloomy, and well, it seems like they don’t want me using it.

When you first visit there website, before you can start browsing, there are a few steps as shown below:

1. Give your eyes a few seconds to adjust to the dark color
2. Locate the tiny search box near the bottom of the screen
3. Enter your search query & hit return

While their idea may be innovative, the theme they have chosen isn’t quite working. Imagine yourself as a door-to-door salesperson, you come up to a home, the lawn is dead, the mailbox post is barely standing, the walkway is well beat and destroyed, and as you get to the door, your face covers with spiderwebs - not a welcoming place is it? This is exactly how it is for Cuil, the first thing you see when you land on the homepage is a dark & unwelcoming page with a tiny search box screaming “Over here!”

Despite the theme, lets dive right into the search.

When they first launched they had a feature allowing you to select how many columns of results you want per-page, now, it’s a default two which creates a ton of wasted space that can be used for displaying more results.

“Relevancy”

It seems like 127 billion indexed pages and counting provides quite a bit for you to search through, but without relevancy, you can definitely spend a lot of wasted time. Furthermore, it seems like they return decent results, however, they don’t seem to order their results based on site popularity, and the best example for this would be forum software. It seems it lists a forum software of which isn’t popular above others that are no doubt, the most popular forum software available. Additionally, while choosing a thumbnail for results is difficult, it did mess it up for quite a few as shown below (click on image for full size):

“Great Features”

Enough criticizing, let’s take a look at features that definitely make Cuil unique.

Firstly, they have an excellent mobile version which utilizes all their great features, check it out by visiting cuil.com on your mobile device. Secondly, they include a lot of fun javascript and real-time features that keeps things interesting while searching.

One of the main things I really enjoy about Cuil is their privacy policy:

“When you search with Cuil, we do not keep any personally identifiable information, period. Your search history is your business.”

Definitely beats Google, but I can see how it will effect optimization as it’s pretty much a guessing game at a larger-scale. However, another great addition is the option to turn ads on or off, it obviously shows you how devoted the team are towards their users’ browsing experience which they definitely deserve a pat on the back for.

Overall, the Cuil Search Engine definitely has a long way to go before I would consider using it solely, but check it out for yourself: http://cuil.com and leave your comments or feedback on the subject.

Until Next Time,

Take Care.

Technology seems to advance overnight, every-night. New gizmos and what have you are released everyday and seems like Apple Inc just made Apple sauce.

I’m sure you have heard about Apple’s new device, the iPad:

Now before I begin yapping about this product, I first would like to say that the only reason I’m blog posting about this device is because everyone seems to jump on Apple products whether it’s a door handle, or something like this - in other words, if it has the Apple logo on it, everyone wants it.

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I like to Twitter on Facebook, Google on Yahoo!, and Flickr on Photobucket - What’s wrong with that?

It’s honestly any Co-founder’s dream to hear their company name being used all over the net, in the paper, or in person. However, if we really break it down to trademark law you’ll notice that these companies really don’t want you using their company name as a verb.

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So if you didn’t figure it out already, I am a college Student majoring in Computer Science as well as a Web Developer with 4 years accumulated experience in PHP, HTML, CSS, MySQL, (some Javascript) and Linux Server Management (along with a few other stuff). I have developed all sorts of systems ranging from social networking to marketplaces to Content Management as well as anything else I decide to create.

Anyway, who cares about my background. I created this blog to discuss random thoughts as well as some informational goodies that might help you out if you are a Web Developer yourself or looking to learn more about whatever I blog. =P

I’m hoping to post some good informational used marketing tactics as well as “the “DO’s & DONT’s” in marketing based on my past experiences. (I’m no professional, just someone with experience from trial and failure =P)

Anyway, I’m waiting in on the A record of my subdomain to eventually update, so you can therefore access this blog by visiting: http://imadjomaa.dynno.com

Until Next Time,

Take Care.