Welcome to Brand New Technology Update. We are a UK Gadget and Technology Blog. Great stuff for all you Gizmo Gadgeteers.

Friday 21 December 2007

Google To Launch A Wikipedia Of Its Own

Captain of the ship that is the World Wide Web, Google, has announced they are about to release their own version of the user-submitted online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

Google say that there are millions of people with useful knowledge worth sharing and there are billions more that could benefit from it but not everything is written because it is simply not easy enough to do it. I beg to differ, Wikipedia managed it easy enough, ok, its inconsistent, everything is not entirely accurate and half the content is most probably written by monkeys but it's simple to use at least. Bearing that in my mind, the point i think that Google are actually trying to make is that it is not easy enough for logical human-beings who actually have something sensible to write to get their article out there.

Googles "Knol" which stands for "a unit of knowledge" will be different from Wikipedia in a couple of ways. Knol is going to be much more author based so you will get recognition for what you've written with your name and picture and users will be able to rate content aswell as add comments, questions and edits. Google say they will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. I just hope they have a consistent way of keeping out all the hogwash, otherwise it'll be no better than Wikipedia.

Google Knol is currently in testing and is invite-only but you can check out what a full page will look like here.

Related Posts



4 comments:

Unknown said...

As one of the authors of the Cancer Encyclopedia, I am interested in contributing to write some topics for the Knol. May I know whom should I contact with? My email is williamcscho@gmail.com, thank you.

Fraser said...

Hi William,

I have emailed Google regarding writing content for Knol and am currently waiting on a reply but i will email you with details on how to get into contact with them aswell.

Fraser

Anonymous said...

Google Knol as written by you may be more useful than wikipedia as it is not much reliable as it can be edited by any one who is viewing it. There is no particular authorisation to edit the content in it.

Anonymous said...

well ....Ron s right! I even read some article a few days back that a boy has edited information about dinosaur that is being collected as a useful information by other kids for their school project.

www.vkend.com
GG