Weekly News Digest
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July 28, 2008 — In addition to this week's NewsBreak(s), the editors have
compiled the Weekly News Digest, featuring stories from the week just past that you should know about. Watch for additional coverage to appear
in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view all of this week's Weekly News Digest items.
Google Opens Knol to the Public
Following months of testing, Google has now made its Knol product available to everyone (http://knol.google.com). The Knol project is a site that hosts many knols—units of knowledge— written about various subjects. Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. A feature called "moderated collaboration" lets any reader make suggested edits to a knol, which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public.According to the announcement in the Official Google Blog (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html), "Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements." Google also announced an agreement with The New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from The New Yorker’s extensive cartoon repository. Google first announced Knol back in December 2007 (see our newsbreak at http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=40548). It was available for invitation-only testing. At this point, the Knol homepage lists some featured knols—on migraines, pediatric sports injuries, eclipses, and buttermilk pancakes—plus a seemingly random list of titles labeled "Plain old bag o’ knols." There is no organization or categorization. Clicking on a "Browse" link leads to another random list (http://knol.google.com/k/knol/directory-001#). Knols are reportedly findable through Google and other search engines. Source: Google
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Paula J. Hane
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