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.
Google now has a privacy policy link on their homepage.
Now, we should expect more people to be knowledgeable about Google’s privacy policy due to the new positioning.
How does privacy relate to homepage word count? Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away - keeping the “weight” of the homepage unchanged at 28. Given that the new Privacy link fit best with legal disclaimers on the page, I looked to the copyright line. There, we dropped the word “Google” (realizing it was implied, obviously) and added the new privacy link alongside it.
As a consumer of Comcast and having watched so many mind-numbing ads about “Comcastic!”, I must say I do still have to agree that most of Comcast’s services suck because they are a monopoly.
Ever wonder what happened to those dot com companies? Well, most of them went bankrupt not because they sucked but mostly their technology was 10-15 years ahead of their time. I bet WebVan would do well now, too bad they launched about 10 years early.
They were among the darlings of the first dot-com bubble: Boo, TheGlobe.com, Pets.com, Webvan, eToys, DrKoop.com, Garden.com, Kozmo, Excite@Home, and Entertaindom. Beginning in the mid 1990s, they traced a path of online innovation and IPO riches that lasted through the early part of the present decade. Billions were invested, from the biggest venture capitalist firms on Sand Hill Road down to small investors trying to latch onto the dot-com stock craze. Few of them got rich; most saw their stock and ownership stakes become nearly worthless after the bubble burst in 2000.
I’ve been really busy blogging and also working on my new ‘Blogging for Dummies” E-book. Basically, it will feature all the reasons why your company should have a blog plus how to get online visibility in months instead of years.
It’s gonna take me some time so hold on while I squeeze out some more web 2.0 info.
It’s a ring blog. Basically, we are going to cover all types of “ring” related news/products/DIYs, you name it.
Why did we make it?
Well we haven’t seen a ring blog where people can go and browse for rings on their important date. We figure making one would be way cool.
Want to sponsor us?
You can sponsor us at $5000/yr in advance for a premium 160×600 pixel Ad Spot on the left sidebar.
Now, if the site grows to 1,000 uniques within 6 months, that sidebar is going to be worth way more than our sponsor rates. (Probably around $2K/month for the same spot.)
You can let us know at zedomax [at] gmail.com.
The Ring O Blog was created to cover various different rings on the web including wedding rings, engagement rings, designer rings, amethyst rings, peridot rings, silver rings, gold rings, and etc…etc…
Due to the large number of technology we can cover on Zedomax.com, we decided to launch another fun tech site called, LaptopPimp, a laptop review site. We will be covering anything from Laptops to PMPs and anything that a laptop would need.
Yey, we just launched another new site called LaptopPimp.com. Basically, we are going to be featuring lots and lots of Laptops and anything related with laptops, notesbooks, PMPs, you name it!
China, a country known to control their citizens’ internet, has just allowed some leniency for bloggers to blog about the earthquake. Great, freedom when there’s crisis and none when there isn’t. Maybe they do care…
Almost nonstop, the uncensored opinions of Chinese citizens are popping up online, sent by text and instant message across a country shaken by its worst earthquake in three decades.
“Why were most of those killed in the earthquake children?” one post asked Thursday on FanFou, a microblogging site.
“How many donations will really reach the disaster area? This is doubtful,” read another.
China is now home to the world’s largest number of Internet and mobile phone users, and their hunger for quake news is forcing the government to let information flow in ways it hasn’t before.
A fast-moving network of text messages, instant messages and blogs has been a powerful source of firsthand accounts of the disaster, as well as pleas for help and even passionate criticism of rescue efforts.
“I don’t want to use the word transparent, but it’s less censored, an almost free flow of discussion,” said Xiao Qiang, a journalism professor at the University of California, Berkeley,
