Unquiet Desperation

(Originally published on RefreshCleveland)

photo credit: doyoukekko

In the past few weeks, I’ve helped some of my friends move their WordPress blogs to new servers. One of them had a consistent problem with their host because WordPress was hogging cycles on the shared server. We implemented the WP-Cache plugin, and things got better in minutes.

Jeff Atwood has written a terrific article about the perils of using WordPress without caching.

I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the community around WordPress, and the software itself is remarkably polished. That’s not to say that I haven’t run into a few egregious bugs in the 2.5 release, but on the whole, the experience has been good bordering on pleasant.

Or at least it was, until I noticed how much CPU time the PHP FastCGI process was using for modest little old blog.stackoverflow.com.

(more…)

[](http://www.mahalo.com)

This is the project I’ve been working on for the last few months, which I have not been able to talk about until now. The Big Secret is now out, and we are live. Say hello to [Mahalo](http://www.mahalo.com).

From the [press prelease](http://www.mahalo.com/Mahalo_PR):
>**Human-powered search engine Mahalo.com launches with investors including Sequoia Capital, Elon Musk, Newscorp, CBS and Burda Media.**
>
>Wall Street Journal’s D Conference (Northern San Diego), May 30th, 2007: Serial entrepreneur Jason McCabe Calacanis today launched Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine, at the Wall Street Journal’s D Conference. The site is currently being launched in Alpha with the Internet’s 4,000 most popular search terms completed. The Santa Monica-based company hopes to reach 10,000 search terms by the end of the year. At that point it will enter Beta, and launch shortly thereafter.
>
>”We’re in month five of a five-year project,” explained Calacanis, “but we wanted to get some real-world feedback, so we’re launching it early here at D Conference.”
>
>The site is focused on the top English-language search terms, including verticals such as travel, products, news, entertainment, sports, food, and health. “Google’s mission is to index the world’s information; our mission is to curate that wonderful index,” said Calacanis. “It’s my belief that humans can play a significant role in the development of search results and we’re going to try to figure out exactly what that role is over the next couple of years. I am really looking forward to hearing what people think of the Alpha,” he added.
>
>..Additionally, the firm announced that it has closed two rounds of financing to date. Lead investors include Sequoia Capital, Elon Musk and NewsCorp. Additional investors include CBS, Hubert Burda Media, Allen & Co., David Bradley, Gigi Brisson, Sandy Climan, Mark Cuban, Matt Coffin, Ted Leonsis, Jonathan Miller, Mark Pincus, Ryan Scott, and Fred Wilson.

Check out the following links for some more information:

1. [Mahalo FAQ](http://www.mahalo.com/Mahalo_FAQ)
2. [Mahalo Blog](http://blog.mahalo.com)
3. [Techcrunch Coverage](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/30/jason-calacanis-launches-mahalo-today-human-powered-search/)
4. [D Conference Coverage](http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/mahalo-search/)
5. [FOX News](http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007May30/0,4670,HumanSearch,00.html)
6. [Wall Street Journal](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118056234795419124.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)