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Last night on the official Google blog, Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, announced that Google is testing a publishing platform called Knol.
It\'s being compared to Wikipedia and Mahalo. While it\'s a somewhat different take on knowledge collection, these comparisons are apt.
From what we know so far, Knol is a wiki-like platform. Authors can create topics, and there are tools to interlink articles and content, but as Manber says, an article, or \"knol,\" is \"just a Web page.\" Where it differs from a wiki is its focus on the author. All knols will highlight who wrote them.
Knol should make it easy to create nicely formatted reference pages.
(Credit: Google) That small difference becomes dramatic when you put Knol alongside Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a collaborative system. There is no author listed on a wiki page because a page may have many authors (if you want to, you can divine who said what on the history pages).
Since Knol pages will be authored, users won\'t, presumably, be able to dive in and edit another page. They\'ll be able to submit edits to the author for approval, though. So much for open collaboration. But as a platform for authors who might want to make some money from their work, it\'s a better bet (Knol will allow authors to monetize their pages as they see fit).
Purists may think that since Google is in the business of monetizing content via advertising, it should not compete with other publishing platforms. However, this is not the first time that Google has gotten into this business.
Blogger, of course, is Google\'s biggest success in text-publishing platforms. But Google also experimented with its own database, Google Base, in which it not only indexes the information but also stores it. And then there\'s YouTube.
It\'s being compared to Wikipedia and Mahalo. While it\'s a somewhat different take on knowledge collection, these comparisons are apt.
From what we know so far, Knol is a wiki-like platform. Authors can create topics, and there are tools to interlink articles and content, but as Manber says, an article, or \"knol,\" is \"just a Web page.\" Where it differs from a wiki is its focus on the author. All knols will highlight who wrote them.
Knol should make it easy to create nicely formatted reference pages.(Credit: Google) That small difference becomes dramatic when you put Knol alongside Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a collaborative system. There is no author listed on a wiki page because a page may have many authors (if you want to, you can divine who said what on the history pages).
Since Knol pages will be authored, users won\'t, presumably, be able to dive in and edit another page. They\'ll be able to submit edits to the author for approval, though. So much for open collaboration. But as a platform for authors who might want to make some money from their work, it\'s a better bet (Knol will allow authors to monetize their pages as they see fit).
Purists may think that since Google is in the business of monetizing content via advertising, it should not compete with other publishing platforms. However, this is not the first time that Google has gotten into this business.
Blogger, of course, is Google\'s biggest success in text-publishing platforms. But Google also experimented with its own database, Google Base, in which it not only indexes the information but also stores it. And then there\'s YouTube.
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Wow, google is taking over the internet, one step at a time. This is a good idea and from the looks of it is is pretty damn good. Don\'t know how its going to stand against the mighty open-edited Wikipedia though. Personally i like the whole author moderation thing as more often than not i have entered stuff onmto wiki[pedia and its been edited to hell and back - more than a bit annoying. Thew wiki code is also a bit 2 time consuming for me and i don\\t borther writing up complicated formatinng into it as a result.
This looks good and i\'m eagerly waiting to check this out
Some Links If You Are Interested
Google Blog
NEWS.COM
Search Engine Land
Reason For Edit: Added additional links to post
BTW; Sorry for the spelling mistakes, this keyboard is very stiff and needs to be replaced