Added Local Auctions to Local Events Feed

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One of the things that is great to be "in the know" about is local auctions where great deals can be had by the scrupulous buyer.

I've added a Nevada auctions listing to my local events feed.

If you are a Reno/Carson/Tahoe local subscribe to my local events feed.

Google vs Bing

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Today to my surprise I found that a number of my searches worked better on Bing than they did on Google.

Being a programmer that has built a search engine before - my searches usually have a high degree of specificity. I've been using internet search since highschool and understand the querying concepts.

Within the last 6 months I've noticed that Google's search algorithm and query behavior has been deteriorating. I used to enjoy typing exact phrases with dashes such as:

to-be-or-not-to-be

Rather than have to arrow over to the phrase and key in quotation marks. No more, Google took that feature away. Furthermore Google is now automatically mucking with my queries. If I enter something in plural form - I'm usually looking for that word to match exactly. No more, Google wants to dumb down the search and find plural and singular forms... I'm also a little weary of Google advocating Chrome. Many people prefer the flexibility that Firefox offers and don't want to be coerced into another application like Microsoft has done in the past.

It's all a bit saddening really...

I don't really care for the "Bing" name. I think that Microsoft marketed the live.com product suite incorrectly. The word Live is only 4 letters and is a great name. Microsoft needs to kill off the MSN division and get back to the basics. Stop confusing the customer...

So just this morning I was doing a search with high specificity. Google returned 3,440 hits and Bing returned 46,600.

If Google can get it's act together -I'm thinking I'm going to be shorting Google's stock...




3D Model of my Home

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Got around to modelling my home a few weeks ago.  I'm currently in the review qeueu to have it added to Google Earth. 

The end goal is to eventually build out an application framework for home automation with a heads up display of the aspects of a home.  Unfortunately the Google Sketchup software has limited compatibility with .NET.