YouNoodle is a new site that can predict what your startup’s value will be in future. I’ve gotta admit that it is truly a…piece of shit! Or maybe I’m wrong. I guess they’ve made a site that can time-travel and tells you how your startup will do in three years.

Okay this site is being worshipped by TechCrunch. I read about YouNoodle on TechCrunch and it looked interesting. Well it was in private beta and it had a signup form. I wanted to take the prediction thing for a test drive. So, I entered my email address feeling confident that I won’t be spammed since it was referred by the holiness, TechCrunch.

Well guess what? The title of the post says it all. I’m being fucking spammed by YouNoodles. They sent me 21 emails within 5 minutes about their stupid launch. Like WTF? But, wait that’s not all. I’m going to get my ass spammed more because they sent everyone an email by CCing.

Just take a look at this screenshot. See what I mean? Now someone can just copy/paste all the email addresses and start spamming us. Plus it shows how professional YouNoodle is. Couldn’t they do something less “noobish”? Like c`mon, this is how little kids send emails to all their friends.

Now the point is that you can see how much bullshit TechCrunch posts about. They’ve got it all wrong. It should be quality over quantity. I’m surprised how they managed to get 862K readers. Lucky bastards!

TechCrunch please check things before actually posting about it. And YouNoodles can you please stop spamming me now (and you gotta nice name for a noodle company).

Update: Okay I contacted YouNoodles a few minutes back and they apologized for this. Well I don’t know if their predictor actually works because its not a perfect world. Its like trying to predict when you’re gonna die. But, I love their attitude and that’s something you need in order to be successful:

Hi,

Huge apologies, our mail transfer agent malfunctioned and batched
messages together.

You were among a small number of people affected and thanks to your
message, among others, we were able to catch this quickly.

Today we rolled out Startup Predictor to a massive audience with very
minimal technical problems of which this was one.

Thanks for your interest in what we’ve built, look forward to your
feedback. Again, apologies for this.

- Kirill

YouNoodle, cofounder

http://younoodle.com

Does Google AdSesne have double standard? What do you think? The answer would be yes. A bit surprised? I am.

I noticed this a few months ago and I forgot about this. Last night I was just surfing the web and I saw this. I saw AdSense ads on milw0rm (a site that shares exploits). Last time, I checked it was against AdSense’s policy to put ads on a hacking/cracking related site.

Accounts get closed (and sites even get banned) if they have a bit of hacking/cracking content. No exceptions. You can’t hide. They’ll find out sooner or later. But, why the fuck does milw0rm get to use AdSense (take a look at this screenshot)?

Now this is just crazy. Its a bit unfair, don’t you think? milw0rm has been using AdSense for years now. I’m just mad at AdSense. They treat low-traffic sites like shit and let the popular ones do whatever they want. Oh sorry, I forgot high-traffic sites make them money. So, its okay to bend the rules for them.

So, do they have double standards? Its a rhetorical question. What can we do about it? I don’t know. Contact them if you want.

I’m glad that I’m not using AdSense anymore. Plus its not like you even make a lot of money. Few dollars a day. Who cares. Do you?

Cuil is a new search engine (by former Google employees) that launched the day before yesterday. Everyone was being optimistic about it. I was too. And I still am. The thing is everyone just started hating on Cuil after its launch. Now that’s not nice.

People are complaining that the search results are not (so) relevant or there aren’t a lot of results. Oh I forgot to mention that people were crying about Cuil having no results for their search. Cuil also got some additional hate when it went down for a bit. Well I guess they didn’t expect this huge traffic rushing towards them.

What’s so stupid is that people don’t realize that Google had a decade to perfect its search engine while Cuil is just a few days old. WTF? Like c`mon its not even a fair fight. Its like a small kid fighting a professional wrestler.

Right now, Cuil is looking cool. I think it might be the Google killer. If not, at least Google gets a new competitor. That should make it a bit harder for Google to try to own the web. Plus Cuil actually cares about our privacy unlike Mr. Evil Google. Cuil does not log IP addresses or send out tracking cookies. The features are nice too.

Now the question is, will it be a Google killer? I wish I could see the future (some how). So, right now I can’t tell. But, I think it could be the Google killer. People might just move away from Google because of their privacy issues. Well I do know that Cuil will work and improve their search engine, so I’m looking forward to that.

Over to you: What do you think of Cuil? Do you think it can beat Google?

Did you notice that Google seems to own everything we use on the web? They are just buying everything off. We still have a few things that are not owned by Google. But, soon it will be under Google. Why though? Why the fuck are they doing this? Why are they trying to control (pretty much) everything?

What they already have

The list below is just a few examples of what Google controls. A shit load of people use these services. Don’t forget the Google search engine itself (the most popular search engine).

1. Feedburner: A site that allows you to promote your RSS, keep track of subscribers, send email subscriptions, etc. This site is used by almost all blogs.
2. YouTube: World’s most popular video sharing site. Everyone knows about it and uses it.
3. Gmail: A free webmail service that is getting popular every day.
4. Google Reader: A RSS reader that is pretty popular and used by a lot of us (including me).

Breaking news guys. Google is trying to buy Digg for $200 million. Digg, the #1 social bookmarking site. Shit!

I think you understand that Google is trying to have a big influence on the web. Trying to own and control everything. Almost trying to make us dependent on it.

What’s the reason behind this?

Why though? Why are they doing this? Is it good or bad for us? Obviously bad because we don’t wanna be puppets of a big corporation. I can’t tell what Google is planning. But I sure can tell what I think they’ll be doing.

What do you have in mind? What do you think they are trying to do? What can WE do about it?

Don’t forget that Google has a lot of privacy issues (my own post here) and its been ranked worst on privacy. Hint, hint!

Yeah so is Google stealing our money? I mean from AdWords and AdSense. I think they are. I have a reasonable explanation. Google doesn’t look like the kind of company that would do that, but its shocking that they are actually doing this.

AdSense has a very strict TOS and because of that thousands of sites get kicked and even banned from the program. But wait. Ask someone who used AdSense and got kicked. Google doesn’t kick you out right away. They do that when you’ve made a bit of money (around $15-70).

Yeah that’s weird, isn’t it? But wait a second. What happens to your money? The few dollars you made in the last couple of days. Oh they keep it unless the advertisers complain and then they investigate it. But they still don’t give a clear, detailed report about it.

I would say that about 2500 AdSense accounts get terminated around the world every day. And lets say that each account has an average of $20. Now do the math.

Of course my estimates are not accurate. There are probably more than 2500 accounts getting closed everyday. Plus why do we pay Google so much when we want to advertise and the publishers get about a few cents to few dollars per click? Do you know if Google is paying us 50/50 or 70/30?

Well its just people being greedy. Nothing new.