Kosmix News Roundup

It's interesting seeing all the recent press about Kosmix. Since we launched at Demo 2006 a few weeks ago, we've been getting good coverage. Some notable articles include:

Wired News
Kosmix Plays Politics With Search

San Jose Mercury News: SiliconBeat
Kosmix raises cash for a new search engine -- to compete with Google"

Demo 2006: Official Demo God Award
Demo God Award

TechCrunch
A Taste of Demo2006

PC World
More DEMO: Kosmix's Category-Specific Search

ZDNet
Demo 2006: Advancing search–Nexidia, Transparansee, Kosmix, Truveo

CNET
Trying to find end-runs around Google

Torsten Jacobi's Weblog
Interview with Kosmix Founder Anand Rajaraman

PMA 2006 - Most Promising New Digital Cameras

Well,

The PMA 2006 photography product conference is underway, and all the major camera manufacturers have made recent announcements. With such a flurry of new products, you have to do a bit of homework to figure out what's really interesting. Here's my take on the most promising new products:

1. Fuji FinePix F30 - this pocketable, compact point-and-shoot camera is the successor to the Fuji F10 and F11 boasts an amazing ISO3200 sensitivity, making it an amazing low-light, ambient light camera. Unlike other recently announced cameras that use "pixel binning", this one is likely to really give you full-resolution low light pictures.

2. Panasonic Lumix TZ1 - this is a one-of-a-kind (as of right now), an image-stabilized 10x super zoom camera that is almost pocketable. The reason this 10x zoom camera is small compared to other 10x zooms is that it uses folded lens optics, in which the lens is bent 90 degrees within the camera body with a prism. Although this technology has been seen before, this is the first one with a 10x real optical zoom.

One disappointing trend in digicams is that lenses are getting less bright. For instance, the classic Sony F717 opened as wide as f/2.0, as well as the Canon G6 and Panasonic Lumix LC1. Pretty much all of the new cameras have f/2.8 or worse lenses. Although image sensors are improving on noise, it is offset by giving up a stop in lens brightness.

Everything you need to know about investing

It's rare to find a web site that is so useful and so well done that I would recommend it to just about everyone I know. I just came across MoneyChimp, and I think it is one of THE BEST investing education sites on the web. What sets it apart is, it does an exceptional job of explaining why and how things work, using interactive calculators and graphs. It makes great use of the interactive medium of the web. It also delves into the details of how things work in a clear, concise way. If you like to know the real math behind things, or the background references behind a concept, this site also gives you those details. Some of the many topics covered include:

Index Funds
Stock Valuation
Modern Portfolio Theory


Highly Recommended!

Photo(s) of the week - Web 2.0 Logo Mosaic

This was very kool, someone designed a mosaic of Web 2.0 company logos (including Kosmix).

Web 2.0 Company Logos
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=101793493&size=l

It reminds me a bit about the Million Dollar Home Page though is quite a bit cleaner and quite a bit nicer. The Million Dollar Home Page is unfortunately full of useless spammy sites.

Photo(s) of the week- The Art Of Music

I love photography and I love design. So, what better photo album to choose for my first Photos of the Week series than "The Art of Music" by my friend Paula? This photo series shows a guitar building shop.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inkvision/sets/1634089/

Kosmix Launches New Categories and New UI at Demo

Wow, our hard work is finally realizing the light of day! Our site, Kosmix.com, just launched with a new UI and new categories for the Demo conference. Now we have Health, Travel, and Politics.

Looking through rose-colored glasses

Politics in particular shows the uniqueness of our technology. You can see your query results from different points of view (liberal, conservative, libertarian). Each point of view essentially biases the results in a certain direction. Keep in mind that since we do this algorithmically, occasionally there will be things that are not as precisely categorized as a human could do it. However, obviously, human categorization of every result for every query would require far too much person-power for a small start-up.

DBC - A New Way to Invest in Commodities

Some experts predict that there will be a long-term bull market in commodities, mainly due to rising demand from emerging markets. However, there aren't very many choices for investing in commodities. Well, FINALLY, there's a commodities index fund available, DBC, the Deutsche Bank DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund. See:
Press Release.

Assets covered by the fund include:
Crude Oil (35%), Heating Oil (20%), Gold (10%), Aluminum (12.5%), Corn (11.25%) and Wheat (11.25%).

It would have been nicer if the fund covered a few more commodities though. And, because of its lower exposure to oil, it's a nice complement to an energy ETF or fund.

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Other interesting reading:

Beyond the Headlines - Commentary on current financial news from Legg Mason

Efficient Frontier Online Asset Allocation Journal - Good articles about asset allocation.