I'll preface with saying that I am 18 and I support lowering the drinking age, but there is a fallacy that needs to be pointed out. A common argument is that if you are old enough for the army then you should be able to drink. This is an illogical argument. The reason why 18-21 year olds make good soldiers is why they make bad drinkers-- their decision making ability is not fully developed and they have not matured completely. There are great arguments for lowering the drinking age, but the fact that 18 year olds can join the army or be drafted is not one of them.
I suggest you capitalize on your studied profession (music). Music and programming is an uncommon set of interests, and if you can talk about the parallels you see between them, it can really set you apart. Picking up a certification or two wouldn't be a bad idea. Also, your qualifications for any type of technology job are completely experienced based. Assembling your projects into a portfolio as a supplement to your resume would be a wise move.
And as a side note, I would definitely avoid jobs with titles like "PHP Wizard". It's a personal opinion, but I wouldn't want to work for an employer who expects me to work magical miracles with PHP. I'd prefer someone who has a good understanding of the realistic capabilities of programmers. I might be totally off base here, but it's my opinion.
This is certainly much less significant then giving preferential page rank. Google controls what over two thirds of people see through search. If it doesn't appear on the first 3 pages of a Google search, exposure is very limited.
It's a shame that my original comment got voted down (didn't even know you could do that). I'd rather people share their opinions rather then voting down; the topic is worthy of discussion.
I really don't mind bundled software either. In fact, I don't mind preferential treatment being given to Knol. What I do mind is Google opening itself up to a lawsuit. A significant lawsuit against Google would have large negative effects in my opinion. I'd just like Google to show a little bit more discretion.
There is certainly solid legal ground for arguing that Google giving preferential search results to itself is an anticompetitive practice. It would be different if Google didn't control the vast majority of the search market, but it does.
Let's say there is a phone book company that pretty much controls the entire market. Google's actions are akin to the phonebook company only listing businesses that it owns in the main pages, while listing everything else in an appendix. Anticompetitive practice, to be sure. The phonebook company might argue, "Well since we are so tightly integrated with out own businesses, it is much easier to index them. Our competitors ending up in the back is simply an unintended side effect". Possibly true, but it's not going to fly in court.
To be honest, I don't care if Google is giving preferential treatment to Knol. But please, establish some plausible deniability. The speed in which Knol is being indexed is far too obvious. I think it would be a damn shame if Google were to lose its hold on the search market because of a lawsuit.
If they don't get the issue of Knol pagerank sorted out soon, they are going to be hit with a massive anti trust lawsuit. And they are going to lose.
I'm curious as to why everyone is so surprised that this is happening though. It already worked like this with blogs hosted through Blogspot and websites hosted through Google Pages.
Three major problems that I see right off the bat:
1.) Quality of Search-- In order to be successful, the quality of their search must be at least as good as Google (obviously it much more helpful if it's better). As many have noted, this clearly is not the case right now, and slightly complex queries such as "Linux search and remove multiple files" return zero results.
2.) Revenue Stream-- As noted above, it is going to be difficult for Cuil to break into the search market because they have to achieve such a high quality of search. But even if they are successful breaking into the market, how are they going to generate revenue? An Adsense like program? That's just another thing that they would have to do better then Google, and I just don't see both things happening.
3.) Overcoming Inertia-- Even if Cuil addresses 1 and 2, the moment of inertia of an average Google user is very high. Google has the best web mail available on the market, and along with all the other services Google provides, people will be reluctant to switch their searching to Cuil because everything else that they do will still be through Google.
I don't mean to be negative, and more power to these guys for taking on an area of the web that most people are afraid to even look at. But I guess I would say that if I were to plan a startup, I would probably pick a more advantageous slice of the market (probably one that doesn't exist at the time of planning). At the same time, you have to play your strengths as a programmer, and it seems like thats what the Cuil team is doing.
I'm not impressed so far. A search for "linux find and replace multiple files" returned zero results. On google it returns 280,000. Further reducing the query to "find and replace multiple files" and "find replace multiple files" still return zero results.
I usually just put my email into an image and leave it at that. As previous people have said though, it is only a matter of time before your email gets on some lift. Ultimately it all comes down to the quality of your spam filter :-).
