Jason Calacanis has launched Mahalo, a search engine with human intervention. It’s still in alpha so we must wait awhile before testing it properly.

The press release FAQ asks if Mahalo is seen as a threat to Google :

“Is this a Google killer? Nothing is going to ‘kill’ Google in my estimation. Google has an amazing search product and the world’s most efficient advertising infrastructure. We plan on partnering with Google for these services just like I did at Weblogs, Inc., AOL and Netscape. That being said, head-to-head Mahalo’s human-powered search results will be much better than Google’s machine-created results—when we do have a result. My feeling is that ultimately people will use Mahalo for popular search terms, and machine-based search engines like Google and Yahoo! for long-tail searches. ”

I searched for Syntagma and yes, it was in there. We came 2nd and 3rd on the list, below Syntagma Square, Athens, but above all the other companies called Syntagma.

What then is the idea behind the human operators? This is from the press release :

Are humans better than machines at creating search results?

Yes and no. Humans cannot possibly create as many search results as machines, nor can they go as deep on each search result. However, humans using machines can create much better search results than machines alone. Our “Guides” use Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Flickr, Delicious, and dozens of other services to hand-craft the cleanest, most organized, and spam-free SeRPs available today.

How much time do you spend building a SeRP? It takes a couple of hours to create a solid search result. However, these results need to be maintained by our Guides on an ongoing basis.

This is an interesting concept and it will be good to watch it mature. Try it out for yourself.

There’s a useful roundup of Google Apps over on the Official Google website.

“As you might have heard recently, in addition to search and advertising, we’re focused on a third key area of innovation: powerful applications that run on the web and that let you collaborate and communicate in new ways.”

They now offer email, calendaring, document creation and collaboration services for individuals, and with Google Apps, businesses, schools and other organizations can “customize these tools and use them as their own internal systems”.

It seems more than 100,000 organizations of all sizes have started using Google Apps to deliver “powerful services to employees, students and members”. The great advantage is that there’s no hardware or software to install or maintain.

The site gives info clicks for four institutional categories : small business, enterprise, school, and Family and Group.

Read the rest of the piece.