Archive for July 2008

Let us start at the outset by saying that we aren’t the best headline writers. But that’s not the point.

A few folks from the Kosmix team attended the annual TechCrunch August Capital party this past Friday night. As a sponsor of the event, we had the opportunity to set up a booth and show off our shiny new alpha version of Kosmix.com.

The feedback was extremely positive and insightful. We’d also like to state for the record that this had nothing to do with those wonderful mojitos which the bartenders mixed with impressive flair. Kosmixers Vijay, Nicky and Matthew manned the booth while the rest of us walked around talked Kosmix with the 750 other entrepreneurs, investors, press people and professional glad handers that packed the event. You might also be interested to know that one of our demo topics of the night was Akon’s November 2006 album “Konvicted“. Why? Presumably because Akon abuses the rewriting of the letter C to the letter K almost as much as Kosmix, but this is pure speculation
Proceeds from the event went directly to Malaria Now, “an inclusive, grassroots movement to control malaria”. Jeff Weiner presented one of those massive checks that we can’t help but associate with Publisher’s ClearningHouse and Kosmix sponsored a business card raffle that gave away four tickets to indoor skydiving!

If you were at the event and have photos to share, drop us a line at saumil AT kosmix DOT com and we’ll link to them.

If you are like us, there is nothing more you enjoy than a few minutes spent every afternoon watching cats skate on rollerblades at that eternal time waster site (aka YouTube).

But what if you or a loved one has a health condition, something you’d like to get information for? Where do you find the most comprehensive information for diabetes or breast cancer or anorexia, for example? We’d like to hope that that place is Kosmix RightHealth and it is that hope that keeps us swilling the caffeine and eating all those pizzas (sorry, we meant celery greens, this is a health website after all).

To that end, we’ve partnered with The NBC Digital Health Network to deliver high quality compelling video content to our consumers. We’re launching with over 1000 health videos targeted to several categories like depression, diabetes, women’s health, etc. We expect to add 50 videos a week, so – at the risk of sounding horribly clichéd – stay tuned.

Here is a sample link where you can find videos about diabetes: http://tinyurl.com/6y6z2h. Do leave us feedback in comments, we’d love to hear it.

If you think that most Kosmix employees just sit around creating homepages for every topic on the web and playing ping pong all day long, you might be interested to know that our own Dr. Steven Chang was recently interviewed for the Washington Post’s new health blog The Checkup. During his interview with the blog’s author, Jennifer Huget, Dr. Chang highlighted some of the funniest and least-known medical terms for the routine bodily conditions that drive us all nuts. (The blog also gave a shout out to RightHealth.com, the - ahem - #2 health site online.)

Our favorite medical terms from Dr. Chang’s list? We like rhinotillexomania (compulsive nose picking) and neuropraxia (pins and needles in the limbs). Take a moment to check these out and read the full story here…we think you’ll be tickled.