Kosmix vs. CoolIris

I just read a review of Kosmix.com in the NYT. It is supposed to be a new and upcoming cool thing. The author of that article compared Kosmix to google, by way of saying "do not compare Kosmix with google." I went to the Kosmix site and performed a couple of searches. It is correct not to compare Kosmix with google. All Kosmix does, so far I can tell, is parse the search results content into categories: web, video, blog, etc. Hardly novel or interesting. (Kosmix has a "new" service to allow you to specify keywords to drive the news content you want. Whoa! Cutting edge stuff. Five years ago.)

I am no fan of google. Kosmix is a fan of google, so much so that they basically return google results by category. You can "add your site to Kosmix" if you send them an email. An email? Yes, an email. On a scale of 1 to 5, that ranks as lame. So much for automated services.

CoolIris and CoolPreviews, on the other hand, are very interesting and somewhat novel. And you do not have to send them an email. If you have not tried CoolIris and CoolPreviews, you should have a look-see.

CoolIris is a sort of desktop application that presents web content in a metaphor that is as close to the "Minority Report" pre-crime application interface as I have seen. I think it is the next (or maybe current) predominant UI paradigm.

CoolPreviews is a browser plugin that displays the content of a link in a frame over the current window. You preview the content in the target by hovering over the CP icon beside every link.

CoolPreviews can sometimes get in the way, but not generally, and you can turn it on and off quite easily. CoolIris is, well, really very cool.

Score
CoolIris: 8
CoolPreviews: 7
Kosmix: 2 (for effort - it's a hard time to be a start-up)