Mahalo is more about being an index to Jason's life than an actual tool.

Seriously though, what idiots thinks the world needs not only a new search engine, but a bad one at that. Only Jason I guess.

I grew up surrounded by car salesmen. Whenever I hear the phrase, "trust me, what you really want is..." I head for the door.

This is Conrad, author of the iPhone Problems page. You failed to note that I linked to the comments thread of Jason's blog, which was full with debate about iPhone problems.

By the way, did you know Mahalo has a system for people to recommend links? It's conveniently located up on the right hand side of the screen.

Thanks,
Conrad
Mahalo.com

Yes, there is a system for recommending links, but as an esteemed Mahalo guide, shouldn't that be your responsibility to include such obvious links as apple.com/support/iphone on an iPhone Problems page?

Has anybody told Mr. Calacanis that he's building a really ugly, obviously incomplete, poorly organized version of Yahoo! Directory?

You guys need to let up on Jason a bit, if only for a little while, just so he'll start reading again. These posts are way better when his "rebuttals" are appended in the comments section.

@pseudonym: They should obviously rename it 'Jason's Guide to the World Wide Web.'

Mahalo, Hawaiian for a "giant train wreck" and "burn through VC money fast."

You are looking at a static picture of a dynamic system. I am sure that Jason does not mind the traffic however.

I'm coming up with a new term "the valleywag stretch". Thats where you take a small story and stretch it into what we have here. Lets look at this:

1. Google - The god of search engines, if I search iPhone problems I should receive the official site support options right?

[www.google.com]

Well its not there, can I contact someone at Google at this? Yea right... Also Jason's page you mention is on the 2nd page of results so it must have some value to even Google. Shocking!

2. Mahalo - Like Conrad said you could also suggest this. However there is no need now since the page has been updated already to include these. See VW, even you can make a difference.

3. Understanding the English Language - This is a page for iPhone Problems, not iPhone support. Even if you were to call Apple about some of these issues its not like they could do anything about it. These are as designed problems like the Copy Paste issue.

If anything is going to fail its this fucking iPhone, thing is more walled off then a bank vault. Have you tried getting under the hood of it or making your own changes? I have and its almost as painful as reading some of the posts here.

"Have you tried getting under the hood of it or making your own changes?"

Yeah... I'm running a terminal (including SSH client, etc), file browser, package manager, NES emulator, voice recorder, and a few games...

@cheesy how much time total did you have to spend on all those goodies? Also do you have a gf or wife?

With respect to the iPhone, success or failure is determined by the "mass market". Average Joe does not need an SSH client. Average Joe likes shiny things, and has basic needs.

Mahalo absolutely infuriates me. My name happens to be Steve Baldwin and when I type in my name into Mahalo the only pages that appear are pages about the actor. This behavior is completely unlike the way that real search engines function (I may not be top-listed in Google for my own name but at least I appear on the first page of the SERP).

Yes, I suppose I could log in, open up a Mahalo account, and try to fix things. But I'm unwilling to work for Jason and his VC buddies for free. At least I don't have to pay Google with my time to get reasonably accurate results!

@GhostSites: Working for free is my basic problem. I like the theory behind Mahalo, and if it were a non-profit, I'd be cool about contributing. But this way it's just a bad version of Wikipedia.

Mahalo for the feedback... couple of things:

1. If this is the best you can come up with to demonstrate some kind of bias we're in amazing shape! That being said, I'm going to ban my own domain from Mahalo just so you have nothing to do on slow august days. :-)

2. Pointing out any kind of issue in our index gives us the ability to instantly fix it. Compare that to machine search where you have to go "tweak an algorithm" to fix something two months from now. That's our strength.

3. NickD: Actually, 99% of our editorial is not done for free! We have 1,000 folks in the Mahalo Greenhouse and they are getting paid to do search results. That is why we are NOT like Wikipedia. 100% incorrect analysis... which means you must write for Valleywag! The only thing we don't pay for is people suggesting sites or discussing the SERPs... and trust me there are plenty of siteowners with an interest in doing that.

4. Ghostsites: Steve... if at some point you become notable in any way we will make a page for you. Until then folks can find you on Google after Steve Baldwin's epic work. :-)

Seriously, we're doing the top terms and we're in alpha. If we ever get to the point of doing your SERP (i.e. if it makes the top 25,000 searches) there would be disambiguation on the which search was the most popular. You can take a look at the Apple or Rome pages on Mahalo for examples on the POWER of humans in this regard. [www.mahalo.com]

best j