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.