Chris-Linfoot.net

05/09/2007 12:50:50   HTTP Web Server: Couldn't find design note -
           mwt/feature/2000/02/28/intro_commercial/htdocs/links.htm
           [/linfoot/blogsphe.nsf/mwt/feature/2000/02/28/intro_commercial/htdocs/links.htm]

These hits have two common characteristics:

1. They all comprise a request for what would otherwise be a valid page (in the case above, /htdocs/links.htm) prefixed with a path which has no relevance at all in the context of this site (in the case above, mwt/feature/2000/02/28/intro_commercial).
   
   
2. They all come from the same place.

What is that place?

Here's what the Domino log reports:

38.99.44.102 chris-linfoot.net - [05/Sep/2007:12:50:52 +0100]
   "GET /mwt/feature/2000/02/28/intro_commercial/htdocs/links.htm
   HTTP/1.0" 404 13858 "" "Mozilla/5.0
   (Twiceler-0.9 http://www.cuill.com/twiceler/robot.html)" 297 ""
   "d:/Lotus/Domino/data/linfoot/blogsphe.nsf"

These have accounted for nearly 10% of all hits here over the past few days. So, who or what is Twiceler?

Twiceler is an experimental robot belonging to an outfit called Cuill.

Cuill Inc. (pronounced [kool]) is a startup company that is pioneering a new approach to Search. The company was founded by Anna, Russell, and Tom. Our offices are located on a quiet street in Menlo Park, CA. If you'd like to learn more about Cuill or the people behind it, please get in touch.

That new approach to search appears to involve large numbers of requests for non-existent pages and is, nonetheless, 10% more efficient than Google.

Says who?

Says TechCrunch, for one.

The murmurs about new stealth search engine Cuill (pronounced “cool”), which were barely a whisper earlier this year, are gaining strength and are starting to reverberate through Silicon Valley gatherings. Expect Powerset-like hype to begin forming around Cuill in the next few months. The company just recently put up a landing page with very basic information.

The company’s main claim is that it can index web pages significantly faster and cheaper than Google can - Cuill has told potential investors that their indexing costs will be 1/10th of Google’s, based on new search architectures and relevance methods.

Well, those search architectures and relevance methods don't look quite so pretty when you're on the receiving end of that robot.

Category: Misc
Technorati: Cuill

1. Stoomaroo06/09/2007 17:34:35

BLAM! Firewall rules time.

Cuill? I dunno...I guess they thought that one up over a case of beer.

stoomaroo

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