Google(GOOG) has just announced public opening of their new wiki-knowledge product called “Knol”.
After months of deliberation since December of last year, this project is finally open for people to use.
Let’s take a quick look:
For responding to a Knol subject such as this Lung Cancer article, the user can leave a review with a rating. This supposedly validates the experts’ writing and becomes part of Knol’s rating system.
Knol also let’s you leave comments. I believe the comments section is really for those quick comments but the review section should be used for expert reviewers of that subject.
Let’s take a look at the writing aspects of Knol. You can write a new Knol yourself but you need to stay within these guidelines:
The Knol project is a site that hosts many knols — units of knowledge — written about various subjects. The authors of the knols can take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews and comments. Users can provide feedback, comments, related information. So the Knol project is a platform for sharing information, with multiple cues that help you evaluate the quality and veracity of information.
Knols are indexed by the big search engines, of course. And well-written knols become popular the same as regular web pages. The Knol site allows anyone to write and manage knols through a browser on any computer.
Writing a good Knol can definitely boost your SEO and online visibility, especially you are good at what you write about.
Here’s a screenshot of writing a new Knol. It looks pretty simple and basically it’s like Wikipedia but easier to use.
I don’t know how popular this Knol Project will become but I am sure many webmasters will take advantage of the early SEO you can gain from writing expertise articles.
GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest domain registrar, is one of three members of a power-packed joint venture chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate the new domain extension.
In support of the new registry, GoDaddy.com, Afilias Global Registry Services and Me-Net have created a new organization called doMEn (the word for “domain” in Montenegrin) which will act as the operational body with strategic oversight for the domain extension.
A lawyer has sued Google for showing ads on parked pages. Parked pages are basically 1-page websites filled with Google AdSense ads, not so great for advertisers. It seems like there’s minimum click fraud so it’s hard to tell if the case will close or not.
The latest is that Google is being sued by a lawyer (who, of course, is trying to turn it into a class action suit) complaining that the ads he bought on Google were shown on parked domains and error pages which resulted in bad clicks.
Wow, Wordpress 2.6 is out with some really cool new features.
First of all, the new Wordpress 2.6 adds ability to edit multiple revisions, sorta like Wiki editing.
Second, the new Wordpress allows you to cut and paste text and images easily using a bookmarklet.
Check out the video for the features:
Version 2.6 “Tyner,” named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web, plus there are dozens of incremental improvements to the features introduced in version 2.5.
This is a guide to blogging your nuts out when you are traveling or
outdoors without an access to a computer. Of course, we will be using
a cellphone PDA to blog ourselves nuts.
First and foremost, you can simply use an email client to write your articles.
I highly recommend that you publish your cellphone blog post
afterwards when you have access to your computer.
In the meanwhile, your draft blog post lives in your e-mail box.
Mobile blogging is really good for those of you on the constant go.
If you find yourself stuck waiting for a flight or even if you are on
a long bus commute, you can easily turn that into a valuable blog
writing time and let your ideas fly on your PDA keyboard. Of course,
we do recommend you get a full qwerty keyboard equipped pda.
The reason I made this post was also because of the fact that I am
actually sitting at the park as I write this blog post.
With no access to my computer but good broadband access to my gmail, I
am simply writing this during an outdoor party actually.
You see, great ideas on blog posts can be very productive even outside
your home office.
Perhaps, I will take this idea even further and try to blog 24/7 on the go.
Of course, it’s a lot harder to do linking and uploading images so I
try to keep that for later when I get back to my home office.
Now, there are numerous ways to also publish live on your cellphone but I won’t get into that as I don’t recommend it.
Foundcity, a site that attempts to list favorite things to do at a metropolitan city, does a very horrible job of implementing GoogleMaps API. At best, it’s going to be a horribly designed site that no one will use.
They will really need to hire real engineers to make the site right.
Foundcity is a social mapping tool for creating a personalized map of your life on-the-fly. From your computer or cell phone, you tag locations, add photos, label them with any words you want, and plot them to your map, which you can share with friends, keep private, or publish openly.
Here’s a interesting Adobe AIR application made in about 5 minutes.
It literally took me 11 lines of code and a good 15 minutes to build. Decided to send it to Leo and was happy to hear how excited he was about the app and did a plug for it on the net@night and MacBreak Weekly podcasts.
You can use the application to watch the live video stream and see the schedule for upcoming shows. Looks like it was released just in time to see him do the 24 hour iPhone 3G launch marathon.
* Work for all webcam programs
* Add a variety of effects over webcam
* Download thousands of online effects
* Record video with effects and broadcast on YouTube or your Blog
* Share your screen with friends
* Play movie for friends or trick them with a fake video
* Select Webcam, Screen, Movie or Picture as PinP Source
* Paint on the video box directly
