The Living Story (as told by Google)

Google's come out with a new format called Living Story, which proposes to change the way news is received and digested.  It's kind of a cool idea which permits newsers to produce a destination rather than a story for chosen topics.  Think, "War in Afghanistan" for instance:  one horrendous subject, many small stories which put together make for many sleepless nights.  Oh, sorry!  I meant, which make for a more comprehensive story.

It's a great idea, which many newspapers and some web sites (like the old Court TV, wherever that may be these days) have done by hand, cutting and pasting stories and ensuring links don't die while the given story has currency.  Good thing they didn't have the web during the last 'hundred years' war", or who knows what an "in-depth news story" page might have looked like.

The concept is a great one, and there will no doubt be many news companies which will go out and get them some of these pages for their presentations. 

Now, if someone could just develop a truth-o-meter, fact-checking genie, or whatever clever appellation you may wish to identify situations where the facts of the event don't precisely exactly match the facts reported!

Google,Google Labs,Content Management,CM

The Grassy Knol

This morning, I had the chance to stop by knol.Google.com, a site Google's using in its quest to gather the world's knowledge on the internet (A knol is defined as a unit of knowledge, get it?)

Knols seem to be an analog to Tweets: Units of knowledge smaller in content than a full web page with links and sub-texts, Knols are 'free' and on their ownin the world, waiting for someone to sieze upon them through a Google search [someone needs to standardize a shorter verb for 'to search Google' - 'Goog?']

Anyway, Knols are pretty cool. Here's an example of one, written to describe Adsense

Knol is more international than US-Domestic, at least determined by my unscientific review of content on the FAQ pages. There appear to be more German and French speakers than English ones posting there. There are also a number of apparent Babelfish translations into English among the English submissions. Score one for the rest of the World!

A Knol has the ability to pay part of its own way in the world, through the inclusion of Adsense. How effective this is at monetizing the distribution of your knowledge will be documented by your actual mileage, since there aren't any published results specific to Knol. My guess is you would not be in it for the money.