Jason Calacanis, the former founder of Weblogs Inc (and former CEO of Slicon Alley Reporter, where I worked back in the days), has launched his new company and site: Mahalo.com. It is a “human-powered search engine”, a bit like a new Web 2.0ish version of About.com. People sort through and organize the information in various sections and categories ... the company has taken top 10,000 search terms. The company has 40 full-time employees ... we raised two rounds of funding: CBS, Burda Media, Sequoia, News Corp, Mark Cuban, and others. (That last group includes Ted Leonsis and Jonathan Miller.)

Staci adds: We’ve been told the funding totals $16 million on a $100 million pre-valuation. One more note: that News Corp. funding is a Jeremy Phillips investment from corporate a la Roo , not Fox Interactive Media.

All the pics from D on the Flickr stream here.