New York Times Article On Kosmix

Our little startup, Kosmix, was just covered in the New York times 

The article was titled Just Don’t Compare Kosmix to Google

Published: March 14, 2009

KOSMIX, a well-financed Silicon Valley start-up, is often described on blogs and news sites as a search engine that may someday rival Google.

As flattering as that notion may sound, it rankles Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, the co-founders of Kosmix. And that’s not because other start-ups making similar assertions have fallen laughably short of the mark. It’s because Kosmix is trying to do something that is quite different from traditional Web search.

“Search does what it does well, very well,” Mr. Harinarayan said. “I don’t think we can ever compete with that.” Kosmix, he said, is not about finding the best set of documents for a specific keyword or phrase. Instead, its goal is to “tell me more about something,” he said.

For a key word or topic that a user enters, Kosmix gathers content from across the Web to build a sort of multimedia encyclopedia entry on the fly. For many queries, the results are pretty satisfying and look as if they have been compiled by a human editor, not a computer.

If Kosmix succeeds in attracting a large following, it may well be the latest challenge, not to Google, but to a long string of old and new media companies struggling to hold on to their audiences and make a living on the Web.

Kosmix’s home page offers a mix of news, entertainment and other content from around the Web. But it is on searches that Kosmix becomes really interesting.

Type in “Kauai,” for example, and Kosmix will return a fairly rich page that includes an entry from WikiTravel, a user-created travel site; restaurant recommendations from The New York Times; photographs and videos from services like Flickr and YouTube; audio clips of local music; reviews of guidebooks, bed-and-breakfasts and other services; blog posts and more. It also has top results from Google, and suggests a list of related topics.

(Read the rest of the article on the New York Times website)

Meehive Launched, Nice Press Coverage

Kosmix' personalized newspaper, Meehive, launched today.  We've had some good coverage, including:

• Techcrunch
• Venture Beat
• Louis Gray

Kosmix Introduces Meehive to Deliver Personalized News Pages

“As much as you might think I'm overloaded with information from the Web, I'm not, honestly. I find that often my first tendency after reading through my Google Reader items is to want to go back to the site and start again, only to find them empty. It's possible, with MeeHive up and running, that when I've hit zero on Google Reader, and tapped out my FriendFeed and Twitter, I can have a destination to find out what the rest of the world is doing outside my little bubble.”

• Portfolio, Tech Observer

“Now there's a company that will make you your very own personalized newspaper made up of traditional media posts and blogs, kind of like a cyber-news Frankenstein delivered right to your inbox.”

• Killer Startups

MeeHive.com Your Personalized Newspaper

“When all is said and done, this is yet another legitimate way to keep abreast of any development that could appertain to you, and access that information as part of a personalized website. An account can be created in no time at all, so that if you want to see if this solution is right for you or not just wend your way to www.meehive.com.”

• Fone Arena

MeeHive Personalized News on iPhone/iPod Touch App Review

“I have been playing with the MeeHive iPhone App for over a week now and…it’s a simple app which makes news consumption on your iphone very easy.”

• Resource Shelf

Kosmix Launches MeeHive Personalized News

Facebook With (More) Egg On Its Face

Facebook recently updated its Terms Of Service to effectively say - "we own your data in perpetuity, even if you go ahead and leave Facebook.  Complain all you like."  

(Ok, I took some liberties with my summary).  Anyway, Shades of Beacon!, they got slammed in the blogosphere, and had to bow down to the public's wishes.  Here's what I saw on my Facebook home page yesterday:

"Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. "

What does this mean for Facebook?  Without oversimplifying, they do need some of the updates in their Terms of Service, to better manage their network.  And they would like to add some of the other updates, to be able to use data on their network better - specially for monitoring and monetizing. 

My guess is that they'll slowly start adding a tweak here, a sentence there, and gradually update their Terms of Service to include most of the  changes they wanted.  It will just take them some time now.

Passing 80,000 Visits On Blogs

Earlier this month (February, 2009), I crossed the 80K visits mark on my blogs.  Nice. 

My blogs are:

• The serious blog - all about Tech, Startups, Revenue
• The all-purpose, main blog
• Blog on cars - one of my passions
• Blog about Travel topics, including not just destinations, but also food, wine, etc.
• The older, retired Autos blog

And on a smaller scale, my profile on blogger has now been viewed over 1,000 times. 

Nissan In Pain

The current economic meltdown is taking down another Japanese Automaker.  Nissan fell to a full-year loss, its first in almost 10 years.  In this, it followed in Toyota's footsteps

About 20,000 employees (9% of its workforce) are being let go. 

Directors will have salaries reduced by 10%, and will not get bonuses, while Managers will have their salaries reduced by 5%.

Nissan, more than the other big Japanese auto makers, is rushing towards the future, as evidenced by the awe-inspiring GTR (I just saw it on the street - nice).  Lets hope they can get back to their profitable ways soon.  Their new lineup is quite exciting, with a number of speedy looking cars, including the 370Z and the Altima coupe.

iPhone App Review - Perfect Girl

The Perfect Girl app on the iPhone ($0.99) is hilarious.  Its one of those perfect simple ideas - and is copied (natch) by that beer ad all the guys love.

The interface is simple - one "Speak" button.  By either pressing it, or shaking your iPhone, you get the Perfect Girl to give you a perfect line.  Some examples include:

"I love ninjas"

"Wear what you want"

"I'll try anything once"

"I hooked up the surround sound",  etc.

(My favorites so far are the first and last ones).

Layoffs At Wal-Mart, Too

Recession-proof no more?  Wal-Mart is cutting 800 jobs at its Arkansas (Bill Clinton!) headquarters.  Mainly, the cuts are in the departments responsible for building new stores - as only 125 - 135 are planned for 2009,  a 20% - 25% drop from 2008. 

At the same time, I guess they'll add a lot more folks when these new stores do get built.  So at worst, this is a bit of a re-alignment.