Filed under: Fun, Internet, Social Software
Mahalo: A new search engine says 'Hello World'
When human-powered search engine Mahalo launched in alpha earlier this month, comparisons to Google Search were inevitable. In reality, Mahalo is to Google like pie is to brussels sprouts. They're both food, but pie is much more fun to eat. Mahalo is the brainchild of uber-entreprenuer Jason Calacanis (the founder of Weblogs, Inc. and, by extension, this blog) and could position itself to become a viable alternative to the stodgy-but-familiar Google behemoth. Though it's not ready for prime time just yet, we took a walk through the site and snagged a few screen shots along the way.
Gallery: Mahalo
Mahalo is an extremely comprehensive site that culls the best features of About.com, Wikipedia, and, yes, even Google, to bring users a wide array of results that include video, images, text, and more. For example, a query of English rock band The Cure brings up results that include MP3s from iTunes and Rhapsody, videos from You Tube, images from Flickr, and even a link to Ticketmaster to see if they're touring (unfortunately, no). As an added touch, some pages even offer "criticism and controversies" related to the topic, to give it a well-rounded feel.
Armed with a team of "guides" who are laying the data input groundwork, Jason Calacanis says his vision is to catalog 10,000 of the Internet's most popular search terms by year's end. To help achieve such a daunting task (they're currently hovering around 4,000 pages of terms), Mahalo harnesses the power of Interwebs by encouraging visitors to recommend sites and links, which are then reviewed and posted by topic guides.
Though always great for research and information gathering, search engines really show their mettle when it comes to digesting current events and breaking news. Mahalo was put to the test recently when news reports of a terrorist plot at New York's JFK Airport began to emerge. Mahalo guide Lon Harris had a page up on the site within minutes. While other search engines simply aggregated links to news sites, Mahalo's page displayed links to blogs, message boards, and related searches on terrorism.
Since Mahalo is still working out some kinks, it's a little early to tell how well it will it do in the long run, but folks are already creating widgets and badges for it so it seems the site is gaining traction fairly quickly. The optional registration process is quick and painless so head over to Mahalo to search your favorite topics and recommend some links of your own -- but check out some screen shots in the Download Squad Gallery first.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zeno Davatz said 9:32AM on 6-11-2007
A modern search engine needs to recognize the content of the documents. There are to many documents out there with the same content (i.e. today I read 10 different sites about the leaked iPhone Manual). These documents still get individually listed by Google. This may be good for Googles Business Model but not for the Users who search for fresh information.
In a multi-cultural world Cross-Language-Search is also very important.
Cross-language Search: What’s it all about?
The term “cross-language search” is used in many different senses:
1. Some search engine providers claim to support multilingual or cross-language search if they can handle and index documents written in different languages. They search for the exact appearance of the entered search terms, e.g. “war” finds English documents referring to military actions and it finds German documents containing “war” in the sense of “was” (i.e. a meaningless glue word).
2. Other search engines (see, e.g., http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/translate_20070523.html) provide a tool for the translation of a query into a selectable other language, and then, the query is submitted with the translated query text. This is certainly a progress and can be useful in some specific situations, e.g. if one is looking for a hairdresser in Paris.
Shortcomings:
- If one is looking for “member of the board” and “SAir Group” (Swissair) and searches for German documents, the translated query “Mitglied des Brettes” und “SAir Gruppe” won’t provide any results. If “member of the board” is replaced by “Aufsichtsrat” some documents are found but they do not correspond to the commonly used terms “Verwaltungsrat” or “Verwaltungsräte” in conjunction with the Sair case.
- For information research and intelligence services the above-mentioned method does not help because it is not able to compare and rank documents written in different languages.
3. A true cross-language search is possible only if the search engine is able to recognize the thematic content, i.e., if the system realizes that the English translation of a French (or a German etc.) document is equivalent to the original document. This advanced technique is implemented in http://www.infocodex.com. It simultaneously finds documents in all supported languages, without the need for a cumbersome (and arbitrary) translation into each other language. Because of the cross-language content recognition and a well-founded similarity measure, the documents can be ordered by their relevance with respect to the query.
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NSIBulls said 11:20AM on 6-14-2007
I just learned of Mahalo from WorldStart.com. How do I download the Alpha version of same? Do I need an icon on my desktop or tool bar?
Danke.
Gene
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Lisa Hoover said 11:26AM on 6-14-2007
Gene,
Nope, you don't need to download anything. Mahalo is web-based so you can just search right at the site, although some videos and MP3s may require a media player on your computer to view/hear. If you'd like the extra functionality of a widget on your dashboard (Mac) or a badge to display on your website, clicking on the links in the article will tell you what you need to know about downloading those optional tools.
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Microbe said 8:06AM on 7-02-2007
Will try it today. Thanks for the "review" of Mahalo & bringing it to our attention. Sounds like a useful site.
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