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Google seems to be aiming its crosshairs directly towards the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, with the official launch of Knol.

Knol, the names comes from the short version of the word knowledge, is a different type of user-generated encyclopedia because every writer is identified with their photo and profile. After 7 months in beta phase, it is now open for everybody to share his or her expertise in diverse topics ranging from backpacking to molecular biology.

In contrast to Wikipedia, it does not rely on the community to add or verify information. Also, readers don’t have the right to edit the content. They can only rate them or write reviews about them. The idea is to make its content more reliable and authoritative. As a way to entice online users to contribute to Knol, Google is dangling revenue-sharing opportunities to writers via its publisher platform, Adsense.

Then again, I don’t think Knol is the Wikipedia-killer. Well, maybe not now, considering the colossal difference in terms of content. Besides, the aim of the Knol platform seems to be multi-directional since it can also hit the likes of About.com and Web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo and Hubpages once it gains traction.

Read [Knol] Read [ABC News]

In an apparent attempt to boost it’s rather floundering search presence on the Net, Microsoft announced its plan to purchase the relatively unknown company Powerset.  This startup company has developed semantic search technology based upon natural language processing.

What this type of software does is use specific linguistic algorithms to determine what certain queries submitted to the engine mean, and then formulates answers based on data existing in a knowledge repository. Wikipedia is the repository used by Powerset. Personally, I don’t know...this could be a good or bad thing considering Joe Schmoe public writes Wikipedia. Founded by CEO Barney Pell, COO Steve Newcomb and Product Architect Lorenzo Thione, Powerset is a Silicon Valley company that was first launched in 2006.

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As the ads for the drug Cymbalta say, “Depression hurts.” A new study out of the University of Bristol suggests that doing a web search for information about a certain permanent solution is not a good idea.  The search engines that were used were Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.  For each search engine, 12 searches using simple terms were performed, and the top 10 results of each search were taken for a total of 480 search results in the study.  Sadly, only 13% of the results were about suicide prevention, and the top 3 hits for each search engine were pro-suicide (the fourth was Wikipedia).  According to the researchers, it appears that safety controls by ISP’s aren’t as effective as they should be and that rather, search engine optimization is the way to go.

The 12 search terms were not given in the Reuters article, and obviously search terms make all the difference as to what results turn up.  However, since the researchers were trying to put themselves in the shoes of someone contemplating suicide, the last thing they would think about is how advanced the query is.  I could also see why they used only the four search engines and didn’t include some of the original search engines such as AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite to get some more results, because the four search engines are what people most likely use.  But of the four search engines, MSN ranked highest for suicide prevention and support sites, so to me this is saying that going with an underdog yields more responsible results.  Of course though I think everyone would agree that if you rely on the Internet for information, it’s best to go directly to a trusted health website and bypass the search engines altogether, or if you don’t know of any dedicated health websites, to get help offline the old-fashioned way.

Read [Revolution Health]

Chinese Internet users from Beijing and Shanghai are reporting that they can now access the English-language version of Wikipedia after it was blocked by the Chinese authorities a couple of months ago. However, the Chinese version and other sites which have politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square remained restricted at this time.

The decision to remove the restriction followed after an inspector from the International Olympic Committee (OIC) told the Beijing Olympic organizers that the Chinese government should remove the restriction even just for the duration of the 2008 Olympics. According to the inspector, continually blocking the access to Wikipedia might reflect a bad impression about the host country.

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Publishing 10 million articles across 250 languages is not an easy task, but Wikipedia has managed to do exactly that. OK, maybe collectively millions of volunteer workers from around the world did the job for them, but still, this is an event that cannot go uncelebrated. And to think, a lot of other web sites are struggling with just hitting their 1-millionth article mark.

Wikipedia is happy that it has reached it’s 10-millionth article with a Nicholas Hilliard write-up, made by user Pataki Márta on the Hungarian Wikipedia web site. And while it’s nice to see Wikipedia steadily increase in popularity and volume of content, one can’t help but feel bad for them knowing that they are barely able to sustain their growing business from within. If you haven’t noticed, Wikipedia serves entirely advertising-free pages, which could’ve possibly raked them millions in ad revenue every single month. But remaining true to its noble causes, Wikipedia strays away from the prevalent digital media route, and instead asks users for donations and volunteer service (which, obviously would not be enough for a multi-million page view per day kind of Web site like Wikipedia).

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It’s no secret that social networking site MySpace has become a virtual haven for um, virtual unknowns to become, well, well-known. And at this day and age of overly great amounts of information and really fast Internet connections, it’s not impossible for one thing, let’s say for example a great performing artist, to gain worldwide popularity even with just a single song. 

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As has been blown up everywhere on the internet the last few days, Search Wiki (a.k.a. Wikiasari), will be a search engine based on human intelligence, as opposed to current search engines’ algorithmic calculations. Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales on the status of current search engine capabilities:

Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken.

Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency. Here, we will change all that.

The news most often mentioned this as a move against Google, but of course, it’s really against all of the search engines out there including Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and the rest who use some sort of algorithm to generate their search results.

Amazon’s involvement in this venture is a misconception that they are participating in the development of this new engine; hence ditching their own A9 search engine. The fact is that Amazon is only an investor. Here’s the quote direct from the Wikiasari page:

Amazon?

Reporters and bloggers note: Amazon has nothing to do with this project. They are a valued investor in Wikia, Inc., but people are really speculating beyond the facts. This search engine project has nothing to do with A9, Amazon, etc.

I think this is an interesting and quite ambitious project, as it would make searching a more effective and efficient task. Instead of having to sort and find which sites actually have content I want and which ones are only there because of some money making syndicate boosting their popularity, I’d be able to get relevant results that are already filtered through other human beings.

It will not be easy trying to take on the big engines with a new concept, but I do believe it has a chance if they somehow have controls over the human intelligence that lie at the center of this. Without proper control, it’ll probably end up providing the same results as the current engines, as people with specific interests in a site or keyword can try to “cheat” and pad their results.

Read [SearchEngineWatch] Read [NialKennedy.com] Read [SearchMarketingGurus] Read [Search Wiki / Wikiasari Page]

We’re all about lists here at Gadgetell.  That’s why Wikipedia’s new list of open-source games tickles our fancy.  It looks like the list was started back in August of 2003 when Frozen Bubble and KDE were the only games included.  Since then, the whole open-source thing has kind of taken off.  Without actually counting how many games are listed, I’d say there’s about 152.  If I’m right, just call me rainmain.

Read [Wikipedia] Via [CNET Gadgets Blog]

So you are talking to your friends have 3 other programs open and really need to get some info. The normal reaction would be to open yet another program, either Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari… But why be forced to do that, your IM client is already connected to the internet, wouldn’t it be great to search within it. Kozoru, a new internet start-up, is trying to do just that. Users will select their sources in advance, Wikipedia, news sites, shopping sites, etc. Kozoru then conducts a general search on one of the major search engines, extracts the relevant links from the preselected sources, and delivers them into the chat window.

Most likely, users will primarily use this while on a Treo handheld or some other mobile device. Kozoru launched a public beta of the service on June 5. Right now, it is compatible only with AOL’s AIM service, but the company expects its technology to work with chat clients from Yahoo, MSN, Google and Jabber.

Update: Now anybody who has Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and any client that supports the Jabber/XMPP protocol (like Google Talk) can use byoms.

Read [News.com]