Kosmix Blog

With the Peanut Butter Memo leak at Yahoo, and Google's stock price flirting with the $500 mark, I thought it would be interesting to see what people thought about two of the more common non-Search services that these two giants provide -- Messenger, and Email.

Lets start with Messenger. Yahoo Messenger was quite popular over the years, competing mainly with AOL's AIM and Microsoft's Messenger. The Yahoo smiley even came into the common lexicon. Google, meanwhile, launched Google Talk using an interesting tactic -- making it available inside Gmail.

What do people think of the two offerings? My two cents -- Yahoo's myriad features are very nice, but Google allowed me to chat while working at companies where the internal firewall prevented me from downloading Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger. While this is no longer an issue, now that I am in a startup, I still have a lot of friends in bigger companies (like Johnson & Johnson) who primarily use Google Talk.

-Vikram

An interesting new article on the Search space takes up the fact that Search, in general, is so broad and tough a problem, that "Google, or even Yahoo and MSN, can’t do it all—so nimble startups across the world are seizing opportunities in emerging areas of search."

Kosmix is given as an example of a startup which, through its specialization in verticals, "avoids retrieving the huge number of irrelevant responses that pile up at Google.", instead giving better results in Health, Video Games, Travel, Finance, Autos and US Politics.

The full article can be read at:
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=20376&hed=What+Google+Can%E2%80%99t+Do

As part of a redesign of our frontend architecture (code named Merlot), we just launched a new look and feel for www.kosmix.com. While there have been many cosmetic changes, we also have a new application tier serving this UI. We are very excited about this rollout as it provides us the ability to create new visualizations of results and answers. Tell us what you think of these views, what you liked and didn't like as well as what you would like to see.

One very cool feature that we rolled out is the "Topic Overview" page. This page is a new visualization specifically designed to support Information Surfing. Since we have a categorization of the web, we are able to surface relationships between the query and other potential concepts of interest. We hope that you will find these relationships very interesting as useful as you explore the web for information regarding your query.

Here is an example query for that feature: pain in the left stomach. Notice that on the topic overview page, we have identified that pain in the left stomach is related to conditions such as Appendicitis and Gastritis, procedures such as Gastric Bypass and diagnostic tests such as Endoscopy. I dont think any other search engine provides this kind of information and you will have to use many search queries and read many of the results to surface these relationships.

So we think this is extremely valuable and unique and we would really love to hear back from you on what you feel about this feature. Coming soon will be more features and another blog post to describe our vision to support information surfing.

In my last post I reported the lauch of Merlot, our new application frontend architecture. In this post I want to describe our vision for Merlot and Information Browsing. Topic Overview Pages is version 0.1 of our attempt to enable "Information Browsing". Traditional search results pages only give you a small sample of the wealth of information on the web for your query. More importantly they dont provide you with the context surrounding your query. Others have tried to do this but they have been small in scope and been done through a manual process.

The really cool thing about what we have done is we have figured out a way to identify relationships of interest to your query. This is to facilitate your browsing of information (rather than just web pages). Our goal is to produce the best overview page for your query given the variety of information on the web and take you closer to browsing for answers rather than searching.

Here is an example: Try the query "breast cancer". The basic information section provides you with a short overview of the common drugs, procedures, symptoms and tests but if you look at all the related topics, you will find a list of all the things we found connected to breast cancer. I dont think you can find such a comprehensive list anywhere else on the web.
Another example is "Diabetic Foot Infections". One of the related body parts is "Achilles Tendon". At first, I thought "Oh man! a bug", but then I decided to click on it and found the first link to be " Achilles Tendon Surgery Helps Prevent Diabetic Foot Ulcers". Cool huh!!!

So chime in and let us know how you like this form of browsing and in particular if there were any interesting relationships between topics that you found on Kosmix.

In the spirit of the season, Kosmix held a mirthful and merry holiday party at Zibibbo restaurant in Palo Alto on the evening of December 19th. Temperatures were frosty outside, but ardor was sparkling inside as employees and their families gathered together to celebrate. And there was so much to be jubilant about at year’s end! It was a genuine pleasure for anyone in attendance to meet their co-worker’s families, and in turn, for the families to shake hands with other Kosmixers, and get a sense of what occupies our time at all hours of the day and night.

Pooja (our snippets engineer) had prepared a stellar music video to rival the techno stylings of the Chemical Brothers to share with all the families assembled. It painted a vivid picture of a company that is close knit, and although we work hard, also know how to play hard as well—visiting such events as the Boardwalk trip, summer barbeque, foosball tournaments, cricket matches and bowling!

Although I was not in attendance at last year’s celebration, Tina (coordinator extraordinaire) and others that have been at Kosmix since the beginning commented on how last year the company only filled half the room. We have been undergoing rapid expansion in the last year to match our rapid innovation. This year our company’s employees and families filled out the room of long tables arranged in the fashion of a medieval banquet. Perhaps next year we will need to clear out the entire restaurant needing a castle of sorts to fill our accomplishments, staff, and families!

Brian (web designer) addressed the assemblage on Project Merlot, explaining to those unfamiliar with the work, the style and function of our new Topic Overview pages. To toast this occasion were bottles of Merlot on hand, labeled with a screenshot from our Topic Overview pages on Merlot wine. Thanks are deserved to Marietta (Tina's partner-in-crime), James (category analyst), and I believe even Bruce (operations), for orchestrating this divine detail that was the topper on a perfect night.

We supped on delicate and flavorful morsels throughout the night including green salads, glazed shrimp, ravioli, cooked portabellos, and chicken. Venky and Anand (the founders) toasted the company with thanks for the previous year and excitement for the future. Many were on the edge of their seats, others already assured of their victory, as they then announced the winners of the design-on-a-dime room competition (see coming Kompany Kulture blog for full details on design-on-a-dime room competition). All the rooms were imaginative, and the teams were rewarded in kind, with two winners and three runner-ups.

Santa came a week early at night’s end, as Marietta and Tina distributed the hottest trend in office fashion: the grey fleece Kosmix vest! As I left that night, I put on the vest and appreciated the added warmth on the trot to my car. I reflected on how far we’ve come, even in the six months that I’ve been here; Merlot is a 2006 signature, and with a little age, it will be the perfect companion to a savory web meal.

Cheers! ---Matthew Krajewski