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Mahalo - We're here to help

mahalo.com — "Mahalo is the world's first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides." Jason Calacanis (of weblogs inc/engadget fame) latest venture launched today - check it out.

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  • friend18, on 10/11/2007, -57/+6Anyone else read this as "manhalo"?
    • msaleem, on 11/08/2007, -7/+61Very interesting to see that Kevin Rose would submit Mahalo (of Calacanis, ex-Netscape boss). We all know that Kevin-submitted means 100% FP. Is there something more going on here behind the scenes?
    • BigManOnCampus, on 10/11/2007, -6/+22Mahalo, Hawaiian for thank-you. So no, I did not read it as manhalo.

      Not that there's anything wrong with that.
    • GTPilot, on 10/11/2007, -10/+3"at the co-pa ... copa cabana ... "
    • MikeCampo, on 10/11/2007, -10/+3Strange, I didn't notice that it wasn't 'manhalo' until I read your comment. And I don't consider myself retarded hehe.
    • sockpuppets, on 10/11/2007, -3/+7So this is for what, people incapable of visiting about.com or google?
    • laplacian, on 10/11/2007, -2/+73sorry, http://www.chacha.com/ has been around for a while.
    • chad78, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Chacha was what I was thinking too.
    • btipling, on 10/11/2007, -7/+6I searched for a bunch of things and they all came up as "Oops! Not found" or whatever. Like "photoshop tutorial" and stuff, nothing esoteric like an ASP.NET error or something. This isn't really for use, more like entertainment. And who cares if Kevin Rose submits something. I don't. Buried as lame - one lame site, and one lame submitter. Watch me get deleted now too for modsass on this 'democratic' site.
    • coolian, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Sigh. Yet another search engine that nobody's going to use.
    • DJCult, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I dunno, I kind of like it. I looked up Aesop Rock, and it's got videos, mp3's, lyrics, in a really handy organized fashion. Dugg and bookmarked.
    • LexisNexis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Interesting to see so many tech companies named after Hawaiian words:

      Akamai
      Wiki
      Mahalo

      I can't think of any more.
    • wwwdot1jesdotus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3"sorry, http://www.chacha.com/ has been around for a while."

      Thought the same thing. Why would kevin rose submit an inaccurate description?
    • digitalarcanum, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2who else is willing to bet 4chan starts raiding this site next?
    • kitwaites, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9@wwwdot1jesdotus:

      Maybe he couldn't find it because digg's own search is so incredibly bad.
    • lokoluis15, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4The description is inaccurate. We've all heard of chacha, don't give us this "world's first human powered search engine" bull.
    • omgomgomg, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4buried as spam - this is no different than a top digger accepting money for a dig
    • ignorantcow, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@ydigitalarcanum: haha, /b raid!
    • IbnDigg, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1no wonder arrington and rose are pimping this thing, the site creators have been shrewd enough to create pages for them already.

      So i guess people are searching for those two more than "sex", "iraq", etc
  • mwsherman, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Frankly, I fail to see how this is going to be any better or more useful than, say, about.com . Which isn't especially useful at that.
    • fortressgame, on 10/11/2007, -3/+4thinking that there couldn't be something better than about.com shows a complete and utter lack of imagination.
    • kitwaites, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1It seems pretty accurate - search for "tit" and it comes up with Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales.
  • dfltr, on 10/11/2007, -8/+39no adult content? honestly, can we please get over that already? it's online, it's legitimate, and people want to find it.
    • merreborn, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15I think they might have a hard time finding employees, if they were constantly had to search the net for images and video of people's weird fetishes.

      I'd imagine that could be quite soul crushing work.
    • retral, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10It'd be pretty interesting for the first couple days.
    • Mosatii, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7That market niche is already inhabited by /r.
    • lordsandwich, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6@dfltr

      People who can't find porn on the internet need way more help than this site can offer.
  • roastedbagel, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5They have Gilmore Girls but not Scrubs in the "Everything in Television" category...Grrr.....

    Definitely diggin the layout though (pun intended)
  • cgomez, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2So this is Jason's Project-X? Here's hoping he doesn't go all Technorati on us.
  • zaibatsu, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17I tried something simple "jobs gates meeting" You know Bill Gates and Steve Jobs onstage together for an historic meeting tonight.

    I got:

    Oops! We haven't hand-written a result page for "jobs gates meeting" yet. Why?
    Notify me when Mahalo creates a result page for "jobs gates meeting"

    Now I know it's an Alpha, but wow they better have a ton of people working 24/7 in Bangalore, India to make this concept work.

    However it might be good for botique searches, stuff you just couldn't drill down a good result set from in Google.

    But it's still a highly labor/time intensive product in my opinion.
  • DariusMonsef, on 10/11/2007, -8/+2Mahalo = "Thank You" in Hawaiian.
    • kuuhaku, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Then "Mahalo"...Mr. Repeat-a-comment
  • hiPpymIck, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4they seem to be hoping for small is beautiful
    FTA
    "Mahalo's goal is to hand-write the top 10,000 search terms."

  • jdawg, on 10/11/2007, -6/+25thanks for the submission kevin!

    this is in alpha and we're just looking to get feedback. when we hit 10,000 and 25,000 search pages it will be much better...please give us some time and tell us how to make it better.

    best j
    • snakesonasam, on 10/11/2007, -4/+1i like the use of symbols next to certain words it helps alert me
    • ricodued, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12@jdawg (#6945755)

      Automate it :)
  • Junkyarddawg, on 10/11/2007, -7/+3Brrr... I feel a disturbance in the force, as if the Ron Paul spammers just got a new spam-target to game.
  • unangst, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1Esor Nevik = "Digg Founder" in German.
  • cks3, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14Junkyarddawg: spammers cannot touch us, b/c we pay people to build and curate our search results. There's no gaming, because we have people building our search results. That's why we're here... to help fight the spam and get you the best quality search results possible. Let us know what you think what you think we're missing and what you want to see change. We're listening.
    • merreborn, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10Isn't that what yahoo did back in 1994? Hand crafted a directory of the internet?

      They ended up losing the search engine war with that strategy. How is this better? What are you guys doing that the old yahoo directory didn't?
    • eezzzz, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4@We're listening.

      Can someone cue the crickets?
    • zappo1776, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1What I think. What I think.

      "There's no gaming, because we have people building our search results."

      So only you can game the results?

  • Roger, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9I think I'll stick with Google.
  • 7000Questions, on 10/11/2007, -10/+5If you've actually been to Hawaii, "Mahalo" really means "trash can."
    • J4320, on 10/11/2007, -5/+6Actually, it means thank you. Nice try though.
    • Powerdrift, on 10/11/2007, -3/+2No, it's just by the trash cans.
    • surfing, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Psst: it's a joke
    • KennMac, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2It was bloody sarcasm folks. It's funny because it's written on the trash cans... har har.
    • ratsg, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3@7000Questions

      "If you've actually been to Hawaii, "Mahalo" really means "trash can.""

      You are correct. I lived there for several years myself. The correct state pronunciation is Hell'waii .
    • drthomasho, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1When my (30-year old) son was a little boy, that's precisely what he thought when he saw "Mahalo" on the trash cans!

      BTW, did you hear the one about "Kapu" (no trespassing) being the largest "landowner" in Hawaii because his sign is on so many plots of land? ;-) Just in case you're thinking about it, I just checked kapu.com and it's already taken along with every other tld and since the registration is private, I have no idea who registered it.

      I wonder how many other Hawaiian words have already been registered as domains by people NOT in Hawaii?
  • klept, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9First p2p search engine guide? What about cha cha? Or is there some difference in Mahalo?

    And before all you stupid haules reading this misread what I wrote, I mean doesnt cha cha do the same thing as Mahalo is suppose to do? And of course all you wizzs on Digg know that cha cha has been out there for awhile.
  • TDDM, on 10/11/2007, -0/+27What about ChaCha? You can search with a human guide, and thats been around for a while. Chacha.com
    • MasterChi, on 10/11/2007, -2/+11Yup, marked as inaccurate since its not the first search powered by humans, chacha.com is and was dugg to hell a long time ago. Kevin read your own website once in awhile.
    • Toast1185, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Not to mention that during the internet boom, there were services you could call that would have some 'professional searcher' waiting by a computer and a phone do the searching for you. Like chacha, but with a phone instead of web interface, and for something like 2 dollars a pop too (so for yuppies)
    • praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -1/+3This doesn't actually search with a human guide, as far as I can tell. A human person just compiles links for specific search terms.
  • Zarxrax, on 10/11/2007, -3/+24Buried as inaccurate. This is a total rip-off of ChaCha, which has been around for like a year already.
    • nextbigthang, on 10/11/2007, -4/+4just because its been done before does not make this story "inaccurate" in any way....it is still news
    • andyduncan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0I don't think this thing is all that special, but it's certainly NOT a chacha ripoff. It's a yahoo ripoff, if anything.
  • xtc46, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1Is the team doing this based out of Hawaii (the name would lead me to believe so) and if so, who is running it? I'm in Honolulu so im wondering who here is putting this together.
    • quellish, on 10/11/2007, -3/+0We're in Los Angeles, not Hawaii unfortunately.
  • webhitman, on 10/11/2007, -7/+1Mahalo must mean garbage because all this site is is garbage. I rather use MSN then this and thats really saying something
    • xtc46, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1the funny thing about this statement is that a lot of people do think mahalo means garbage, because in a lot of our parks and tourist areas they right "mahalo" on trash cans. its a thank you for not littering but people get confused.
  • NanoStuff, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1Google should do this.
  • ao5357, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Wasn't this how Yahoo! used to be? Human beings would index the site into categories. http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/

    Or, I'm just not getting it?
    • olddirtycr, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2This is you search, and a human searches the internet for you, returning only valid information pertaining to your subject.
    • andyduncan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0@olddirtycr Err: not really, it's Yahoo but instead of organizing the web into a hierarchy, they just look at what people were searching for anyway, and then write pages about that.
  • D3koy, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1So has anyone tried to search for porn, I mean it says you can't....but really, what if you do?

    Edit: Just tried, nothing happens...
    • pastasauce, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2"Oops! We haven't hand-written a result page for "Porn" yet."
  • MissMoist, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7to quote butthead, "this sucks more than anything has ever sucked before."
  • ryanspahn, on 10/11/2007, -2/+0umm didnt jim wales from wikipedia speak of this idea months ago..looks like some1 liked his idea!
    • tetfsu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Isn't that what Calacanis is best at/known for?
  • mal1964, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Mahalo plenty!
  • treed, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Sounds like DMOZ 2.0.
    • andyduncan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1More like yahoo 2.0, given that only staff can edit it (although many DMOZ editors are getting paid for inclusion). It's really a non-heirarchical better-designed yahoo directory.
  • mono, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6I guess all the searches for stuff like Linsay Lohan, American Idol, and Lost will be meticulously crafted. Sigh. What a waste of time. Google's results ARE crafted by humans. A site gets higher in it's rankings if more PEOPLE link to it from their own sites.
  • Dre3293, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3That's not a very good search engine, at all.
  • eezzzz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3So, when are they taking down the squatter site and putting up the real one..?
  • AngryKen, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0http://www.mahalo.com/Special:Mahaloprofile?uid=21
  • quellish, on 10/11/2007, -5/+1The tech team thanks you for the digg Kevin :)

    Now I get to see how well my load tests match reality!
  • takeiteasy2, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Does this psuedo internet celebrity remember Yahoo? They started out as a guide service and we see how well that went.
    • andyduncan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Um, pretty well, actually. Thanks for playing.
  • Aleman360, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1How is this really any different than what you get when you search Wikipedia? Seems like they're trying to accomplish the same thing in a more concise manner. With both you search for something, find a human-edited page with a relevant article and hand-picked links to related reading.
  • TannerPwnz, on 10/11/2007, -4/+0I like it, if they get any better I may use Mahalo in lieu of Google.
  • Wolfman~K, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1If you happen to hit a preloaded search terms its really kind of cool, I think its going to take them a while to get out of alpha tho.
  • alberto24, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3A review here:
    http://www.centernetworks.com/mahalo-launches-my-critical-review

    (appears to be the only critical review of the product)
  • ogletree, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2The internet is too big. This will never work. The majority of searches are very specific long phrases. Even if they somehow hand pick results for all 2 to 3 word phrases they will never have something that is useful. Just searching dig.com brings up more relevant results. The only time you find spam in google is when you are stupid enough to type in a general term that could not possibly give you anything specific to what you are looking for or it is something that is not on the Internet. If Google were to somehow clean up all the spam people would just be getting stupid search result pages that don't help at all instead of spam. When you know how to search engine you will always find what you are looking for if it is on the internet. Learn how to use the advanced page.
    • fortressgame, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1"The majority of searches are very specific long phrases."

      Not for the majority of people it isn't.

  • holdie, on 10/11/2007, -2/+0Did anyone else see "Mahalo" and immediately think of Resident Evil 4, realizing in the process that they probably have a problem?
    • PacoDG, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2".. this is Adam Carolla on behalf of Dr Drew saying .. Mahalo!" is all I can think of. Been pressed into my brain after many a year.
  • Toast1185, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1After a quick glance at this, most of its features could be accomplished through any search engine with a firefox extension. I already have siteadvisor that is as good as their 'warnings'. I suppose watching click throughs for search terms would provide a 'guides choice' type feature. I don't see why this will succeed
  • istatic, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6buried as inaccurate, and lame. GG Kevin
  • cakeeating, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Can someone explain to me why searching for the word "Cat" breaks the whole thing? And has anything to do with Chloe Segivny other than the, well...obvious, but unmentionable.
  • ASSHO, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I think Yahoo originally did this a long time ago. Yahoo's search engine was actually indexed by human editors that Yahoo employed by the dozens. I think AskJeeves does something similiar as well. Both have moved off this platform, since it was too time consuming, in-efficient, and costly.

    The new idea is the WikiSaria, which holds some promise.
  • mgoblue5453, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1There have been many others like this. it just gets popular because of jason, etc.
  • johnxstone, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1If Mahalo is based on MediaWiki which is GPL software doesn't that mean that the Mahalo code must to be bound by the GPL and as such offer the full source code to anyone who wants it?
  • Icebird, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Mahalo? That's what Adam Carola says after all his shows! And what he used to say on Loveline!
  • matc, on 05/07/2008, -0/+3Incredibly lame - buried. Not only is this a cha-cha rip off, but its blatant lie about being the first human powered search engine combined with its crappy name and ugly web 1.0 interface makes it a terrible combination.
    • Ares, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I don't want to rain on your parade either, but isn't this what about.com was for and it's pretty large and useful already. Are you tossing around the idea of merging with another handcrafted site like about?

      I also would change the "first human powered" to "one of the first" since as many have pointed out, it's not.

      Good luck though, seriously.
  • holdie, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0@wisechemicals

    man i hate making bad jokes then having to explain myself, thus validating everyones initial impression that i'm an idiot...

    anyways, in RE4 those ***** zombies run around saying "matalo" everytime they see you (translates to kill him in spanish)...hearing this multiple times before getting your head nipped off by a chainsaw will earn the phrase a special place in your heart
  • eean, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1s/Guides/Spammers/
  • tetfsu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I'm not so sure I'm putting my faith into any search engine that categorizes Twitter as technology worth being mentioned in the top 3...

    It's just a wiki reskinned.
  • givinupthefight, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0Nice concept, but the problem is they only plan to write results for the top 10,000 searches. I searched for the favorite comedian, cartoon, and band. Only one of the three had a results page. Granted that's a small sampling, but something tells me I'm not the only person with these findings.

    And in case anyone is wondering how obscure my searches with no results were, comedian was Christopher Titus, cartoon was Invader Zim. I personally don't think they are that obscure.
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