It has been 5 weeks since we launched the beta of the Minekey recommendations service.

Over 500 bloggers have actively participated in our beta program so far and we have clocked an aggregate CTR (Click Through Rate) of 6.35%.

Apart from a small launch event back at IIT Kharagpur, we have kept a low profile to make sure we fine tune the service based on the feedback from the Beta customers. Before we start getting the word out, we want to ensure we resolve all the critical issues and be confident that our service and infrastructure can scale. Interestingly, some of the bloggers have already discovered us and have posted reviews on their blogs. Here are some of them:

http://www.killerstartups.com/WebAppTools/Minekey–Content-Recommendation-Widget-1/

http://startupsquad.com/2007/05/21/minekey-more-details/

http://startupsquad.com/2007/05/18/minekey-tries-contextual-recommendations/#comments

http://www.widgetslab.com/index.php/2007/05/17/minekeycom-recommendations-widget/

Also, we have received some very interesting feedback from the bloggers who have tried our product and the bloggers who would like to try our product but saw some limitations. We are working hard to address several of these issues in the next release that we are putting out in the next few days. Of course, we’ll continue to make more improvements in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

Indeed it sounds like a fairy tale!

It all began 18 months ago when an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley went in search of solving the Information Overload problem and ended up teaming with his alma mater to bring to market some of the academic research and innovations. Over the past 18 months we have devloped some cool technology that would help Internet users navigate through the Information Jungle easily.

In a few hours from now Minekey technology jumps out from the exotic jungles far in the east (read “IIT Research Labs” :-)) into THE REAL WORLD. Over the past 18 months we have conducted extensive tests in the Lab with our limited data and the data from a few early pilot customers. Now we are ready to take this forward and serve real customers in real time.

It is indeed a moment of excitement and deep gratitude for all of us at Minekey that every thing fell in place in time! Past 2 weeks have been very hectic for all of us at Minekey getting our production set up ready, completing the last minute tweaks and refinements etc.,

Today we are rolling out a FREE content recomendations service targeted at content rich web sites and blogs. Yes, indeed it is free! Bloggers and webmasters can deployMinekey’s Recommendations Widget on their web site or blog in 2 easy steps and in less than 5 minutes. We will continue to keep this service free. We may serve ads in the Recommendations Widget and we will also offer a premium service targeted at the Large Publishers. So why hesitate? Try It Now.

While we are quite confident that our technology can deliver content recommendations that are most relevant to the users in the context of the web pages or blog posts they are viewing; we are still not promising you the world yet. As we continue through the Beta phase of our Journey, we would like to work with the customers like you to improve the Quality of our Recommendations and the Quality of our Service over all. Please feel free to email us at feedback@minekey.com. Happy Minekeying.

Twas the night before Minekey, when all through the lab
every mouse was clicking, even a keyboard;
The servers were set by the table with care,
In hopes that St. Delip soon would be there;

The coders were seated all snug in their chairs,
While visions of fatal errors danced in their heads;
And Gaurav with his VAIO , and I with my headphone,
Had just settled down for a long summer’s night,

When out on the datacenter there arose such a ping,
I sprang from the chair to see what was the matter.
Away to the terminal I logged in like a flash,
Tore open the firewall and view the logs .

The daemon on the top of the newly-forked Shell
Gave the signal of kill to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature file, and eight tiny links,

With a little old driver, so buggy and slow,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nilesh.
More rapid than firefox his downloaders they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and got them by name;

“Now, Categorizer! now, Clusterer! now, Aggregator and SearchEngine!
On, Backend! on Frontend! on, Webservice and Widget!
To the start of the MySQL ! to the top of the apache!
Now serve away! serve away! serve away all!”

As empty RAM that before the wild clickthrough came,
When they meet with an obstacle, write to the log,
So up to the internet-backbone the packet they flew,
With the widgets full of information, and St. Nilesh too.

And then, in the speaker, I heard from my comp
The insert and delete of each little record.
As I drew in my mouse, and was minimizing all,
Down the stairs St. Pravu came with Ruffles Lays.

He was dressed all in jeans, from his head to his foot,
And his hairs were all set with bryllcream ;
A bundle of drinks he had flung on the sack on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes — how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His smile was like a tubelight, his laugh like a speaker!
His droll little ipod was hung around his neck,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the ipod;

The butt of a cigarette he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And sent all the mails; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his keyboard,
And giving a nod, up the code he scrolled;

He sprang to his chair, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all walked like the end of a process.
But I heard him exclaim, while he drove his bike out of sight,
“Great work you all, and to all a good-night.”

- Robin

Well, this is not a April Fools Joke. We are indeed working hard to launch the service later this month. Beacuse of our close connection with IIT Kharagpur (we have been incubating Minekey there); we have decided to do a small Beta Launch there on April 17th.

We just got some racks and bandwidth at Level 3 Datacenter in St. Louis. Minekey’s extended Operations/ Support team is working hard to set up IBM Production servers, Firewalls and Loadbalancers. We have indeed given a lot of attention to the availability, performance and scalability of the Infrastructure. Our extended Operations/ Suport team based out of US and India will monitor the systems on 24X7 to ensure high availability, performance and security.

We are indeed eagerly looking forward to serving you soon.