A Million Little Pixels

Evers became president of Hiverworld in 2000. He left the business at around the same time that Flowers did. Evers says he took a vacation and "did something approaching nothing [in the technology field] for a while." He joined the Kozoru board largely because of his belief in Flowers. "One of the things that I like about John is that he is interested in — maybe only interested in — solving big problems," Evers tells the Pitch. "What he was setting out to solve with Kozoru was nothing less than the unfulfilled promise of search. That's really what it comes down to. That's a big challenge. I like that."

KTEC officials appear to have done little but talk to Flowers believers like Evers. A section of Kozoru's application for KTEC funding is subject to open-records laws. In the description of the management team, Flowers claims to hold bachelor's and master's degrees from Berkeley and a master's degree from the University of Texas in Austin.

The degrees do not exist.

Kathleen Maclay, spokeswoman at Berkeley, says the university has no record of a John S. Flowers attending the school in the past 25 years. Officials at Texas also could not find record of a student named John Flowers who was born in 1970.

In response, Flowers replied: "That's bizarre. I don't know what to tell you. That's pretty strange. Maybe I should give them [Berkeley] a call and figure out what's going on."

"When we started, we sort of naively thought we were going to create an Ask Jeeves that works," Flowers says.

Turns out, nobody really cared if they could.

"That ship has sailed," Flowers says. "I think people, either they don't want it or they were burned by it or they believed and then they lost faith because it didn't work the way they thought it would."

The Kozoru team regrouped and decided to create a search engine that catered to mobile devices and instant-messaging software. Flowers describes a scenario in which a cellular-phone user finds the right restaurant with Kozoru's help. "Imagine being able to say, 'I want Chinese in San Francisco that's cheap, that's good for me to bring a date to and is run by the Mafia,' and getting that kind of answer, which is way outside of 411 or even what the Web is doing for you right now," he says.

A few weeks ago, Kozoru gave a group of people in the information-technology business access to the system. Flowers says the early feedback has been "extremely positive."

Even if a launch is successful, Kozoru is unlikely to become the area's next Sprint. Flowers itches to sell the company.

Flowers spent time last fall talking to officials at Google, Apple and Yahoo. On his blog, loneronin.net, he wrote with unusual candor about his experiences as a possible acquisition target. Flowers described a visit that he and members of his team made to Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. "Everything we saw and heard and felt seemed like we were getting along great with everyone there," he wrote on December 1. "Everything, that is, until three weeks ago when — without warning — they stopped responding to e-mails or returning our phone calls."

In a December 19 post, Flowers moaned that Google had "banned" Kozoru from using its system after a demonstration in which Kozoru had improved on Google search results.

The posts shook a corner of the blogosphere that keeps watch on new computer technology. "If I were Google, I wouldn't return this guy's calls either," technology writer Nicholas Carr wrote on his blog, Rough Type. "A crank is a crank." Carr also made fun of Flowers for glossing himself as a "Futurist, Strategist, Technologist, Visionary & Polymath" on his blog. The description was later removed.

Another blogger, Scott Reynolds, called Flowers "Mr. Ego" in the comment thread on Carr's blog. Reynolds faulted Flowers for creating his own page on Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia. Showing a measure of sportsmanship, Flowers participated in the comment thread, saying he agreed with a lot of what Carr had said, "except for the part about me being a crank."

Addressing Reynolds' comments, Flowers said he edited but did not create the Wikipedia page. Logs showed that the original author lived in Missouri. "My guess is someone I know wrote it. I do — after all — have actual friends," Flowers responded.

Whoever originally authored his Wikipedia page, Flowers certainly approved of its existence. "If I ever get an entry in the Wikipedia system, I will consider myself successful," he wrote on his blog seven months prior to the page's creation.

As for Google's nonresponsiveness, Flowers tells the Pitch he learned later that a company rep he was expecting to hear from took a five-week vacation in Fiji.

Unbowed by the banned-by-Google experience, Flowers continued to negotiate in public. In January, his blog listed the 11 reasons that Apple should buy Kozoru. A few days later, Flowers shared the comment of someone named Mark who said Flowers had "hung his dick over the fence."

Flowers wrote that he was "pretty much joking" when he had entreated Apple to purchase Kozoru.