June 2, 2007, 12:36AM
Technology
Houston entrepreneurs seek a sharper search engine
They say their system of letting users rank sites is superior
By BRAD HEM
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Four Houston entrepreneurs are launching a search engine today that they hope will challenge the likes of Google and Yahoo.
Frustrated with the results they get from other search engines, Neal Verma, founder and CEO of iRazoo.com, and three friends with technology backgrounds have spent their evenings and weekends ? and an undisclosed amount of money ? over the last eight months developing iRazoo.
Now they'll have to prove it works by drawing enough users, who in turn will attract advertisers to fund the company in a business where a handful of companies dominate.
They're betting they have a better approach to search ? a site designed to highlight the most useful sites by seeking input from users who can earn rewards by voting for, or against, Web sites.
.....
? Users can recommend sites that come up in their searches. If a link had useful information, a user can vote to recommend it to others. If not, the user can vote against it. Sites that get good recommendations will show up at the top of future searches. Sites that get more "no" votes than "yes" votes eventually will be dropped.
? Users earn points every time they vote. When they earn enough points, they can redeem points for digital cameras, iPods and other gadgets. Each recommendation earns 2 points, and an iPod Shuffle costs 58,000 points.
? When users search for a term, iRazoo puts a thumbnail screen shot of the site next to the search result, allowing users to preview the page before linking to it.
.....
Technology
Houston entrepreneurs seek a sharper search engine
They say their system of letting users rank sites is superior
By BRAD HEM
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Four Houston entrepreneurs are launching a search engine today that they hope will challenge the likes of Google and Yahoo.
Frustrated with the results they get from other search engines, Neal Verma, founder and CEO of iRazoo.com, and three friends with technology backgrounds have spent their evenings and weekends ? and an undisclosed amount of money ? over the last eight months developing iRazoo.
Now they'll have to prove it works by drawing enough users, who in turn will attract advertisers to fund the company in a business where a handful of companies dominate.
They're betting they have a better approach to search ? a site designed to highlight the most useful sites by seeking input from users who can earn rewards by voting for, or against, Web sites.
.....
? Users can recommend sites that come up in their searches. If a link had useful information, a user can vote to recommend it to others. If not, the user can vote against it. Sites that get good recommendations will show up at the top of future searches. Sites that get more "no" votes than "yes" votes eventually will be dropped.
? Users earn points every time they vote. When they earn enough points, they can redeem points for digital cameras, iPods and other gadgets. Each recommendation earns 2 points, and an iPod Shuffle costs 58,000 points.
? When users search for a term, iRazoo puts a thumbnail screen shot of the site next to the search result, allowing users to preview the page before linking to it.
.....