Kosmix Blog

A blog? A Flickr account? What next?

Anyway, check out our photos from our company picnic in Santa Cruz this Summer. Some highlights follow. Hopefully I'll figure out how to get these images inline for next time =)

• The intern action shot
• Illicit drinking on the Santa Cruz beach(at least the underage intern is drinking Coke)
• Drinkin' at the Mexican restaurant

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

My source of entertainment yesterday evening was somewhat unusual... to say the least. I had sent an email to the k-krew at around 7pm.... And check my email later, to find numerous comments...

A snippet of my email:

"Can we all please, at the very minimum, tidy up after ourselves to ensure the freshness of food in the kitchen? I have seen ample times when croissant containers/muffin containers/cookie boxes are open… these things go dry and then are pretty much useless after that."

Snippets of everyone's comments below:

"I confronted Vijay and what did he say
I claim he messed up he said no way
The mess on the counter, said wasn’t he
Spilled milk on the counter, said wasn’t he
The bagel in the drawer, shouts wasn’t he!"

"The other day I saw a banana peel on the floor .. ? The risk it poses (and I am told we are not insured against it) is significant. So I did some modeling using decision trees and the finest brew of data mining mixed with a shot of machine learning and built a gigantic graphical tree to assess the risk. The results .. two employees cannot both be in the kitchen at the same time .. how simple and yet how much analysis did it take .. occam's razor .. that's all there's to it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor ). But there'a a catch though .. how can we catch all those who are not closing the jars ... if two employees can't be in the kitchen at the same time. How can we catch the culprits red handed .. catch 22 you say ... that's what we're all about .. we solve tough problems .."

"I’m a firm believer in making the best of every possible situation. We can show consumers how to use protection against staleness: always remember to close containers, use bag clips, and always carry a battery-powered vacuum sealer and extra vacuum sealing bags with you. I think our target market for this is huge. For instance, annually, 20 billion pounds of bread are produced – of which 3% (600 million pounds) is returned and an unknown additional amount is thrown out by consumers battling staleness. Assuming a price of $2/lb, we could save the bread industry over $1.2 billion annually. This is an opportunity which cannot be missed."

So I tell our krew, who needs tv when we have each other........

Kosmix Kricket Klub

Kricket is a favorite sport among the Kosmixers. They don't have to wait for the regular TGIF’s or even for a Friday. The game starts anytime in the evening and quickly catches on with everybody. People keep pouring in to join the fun. The klub has been constantly expanding and so has been the list of rules. The rules are personalized. To quote Sailesh, the evolution of rules has become rather so convoluted that players often find themselves strangling, stifling, and struggling to play their natural form of the game. A few highlights from the Kosmix Kricket Klub rulebook are:
• The over isn’t over until the bowler agrees to give the ball away.
• The batsman doesn’t leave the crease until s/he so chooses.
• Different styles of spin, “Yorker”, 90 degrees run up by Vikram
• Girls get the extra privilege of slow balls being bowled, extra batting chances and not getting yanked at on missing the catches.
• If a person is not playing and is hit by the ball, he is responsible for buying dinner for all the Kricketers.

The arrival of the ping pong table in early March transformed our common area into a frenetic scene of ping pong mayhem. A double’s tournament was organized and play began instantaneously. It was "the ping heard round the world" with players flying in from as far as India to compete against their fellow Kosmonauts.

Several controversies crept in over the course of the tournament though they didn’t mar the overall integrity of the games. Two-star or three-star balls, does it really matter? In a word: Yes! Accusations raised of team-fixing were quickly assuaged by officials but it has been ruled that match-ups for the upcoming Summer Singles Tournament will be computer generated (Calling all programmers!).

The level of ping pong talent housed in one place is almost hard to imagine. Yan’s barefooted attire and pencil-grip was oft-imitated though never matched. The Kosmix All-Women’s team (Monika and Shweta) were unrelenting in their pursuit of the title until their demise in the third round.

Team tactics ranged from carbo-loading throughout the day, using menacing facial gestures to scare opponents and practicing hours upon hours at home with Wii’s tennis game. Ankur and Bruce demonstrated that a no-nonsense approach of consistent playing, deft handling skills and a bit of good ole’ Irish luck are enough to go the distance- Congratulations to our 2007 Doubles Champions!

Dear prospective Kosmix employees:

Hi! We're excited that you are interested in working at Kosmix. In order to better prepare yourself for the battery of interview questions coming your way, we've prepared a sample list of questions that all of us had to answer. If you ace the test below, we might give you a job offer just on the basis of being a great fit (actually, wait until our lawyers sign off on that before you set that in stone).

Enjoy!

· Do you enjoy a competitive game of ping pong?
· Are you able to function effectively while Nerf pellets bounce off your (hopefully rather bulbous) head?
· Do you commit to bringing edible items back for your office mates (at great personal risk from Customs) when on overseas trips?
· Do you enjoy being lectured about wine twice a year?
· Do you use the phrases "upsell", "a-ha moment", "algos" and "higher order bit" significantly more than you should?
· Are you willing to spend several nights obsessing over your Halloween costume?
· If your costume ends up sucking - are you willing to take endless ribbing about the same?
· Do you have a MySpace profile with, ahem, entertaining photos (trick question, beware)?
· Can you deal with an expensive espresso machine that can bake lasagna and schedule meetings but not produce a decent espresso?
· Are you a connoisseur of fine ping pong paddles? Better still, are you willing to buy your own in an effort to one-up your office mates?
- Do you have a history of peering suspiciously into canned food drive bins? (Don't answer that).
· Do you recycle? Or at least pretend to?
· Are you okay with an office that is heavy on iPhones and light on Blackberrys?

Send your answers to jobs@kosmix.com.

We've recently seen a notable surge in the number of Kosmix bloggers - its hard to gauge why, but sometimes we do know how to accept a gift without questioning it (a blog is an eternal record of thoughts, opinions and expressions; in other words, we wait patiently until an opportunity arises to make fun of the blog's author).

Here are some posts by Kosmixers that you might enjoy:

If you've tired of the Silicon Valley echo chamber and have a burning desire to learn about commodity corn, look no further. We've got you covered: http://onthejohn.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/open-source-seeds/

If you are like us and can't get enough of what the echo chamber is discussing, here is an interesting take on network effects of cloud computing: http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/04/a-herald-of-rev.html

Okay, we admit it, we love linking to blog posts that link to other blog posts about search. Read about Squidoo versus Hubpages and one Kosmixer's take here: http://rembrance.blogspot.com/2008/04/less-is-more.html

We have a few more to share, but we'll try to keep this format fresh and make you want more.