Google Knol

I stumbled across this last week, it's been advertised on Google Scholar since Friday as far as I remember. As of Friday, there was quite a lot of knol's about Medical based things and food based things. Over the weekend there seems to have been a bit of activity, and there is lots of stuff about computer science etc. (not that much though).

My initial feeling was that it was pretty much just Wikipedia reborn, but have since changed my mind, and I quite like the idea. Its a bit like blogging in that anyone can add content about any subject they please, but it is seems to be more formal, as it allows some peer review and rating. Which will hopefully weed out any stupid content.

Another thing I quite liked about it, is that you can associate your adsense account with your account, and any Knols that you write will have your own adsense ads attached! :) This means that well written and interesting articles should attract well deserved earnings.

I expect people will probably rip off Wikipedia for most content, but I did notice an indicator for "similar content on web", which may mean that anything that is already available on the web, will get less preference in search listings (on the site) than content that is unique.

I just need to spend some time re-writing things I have worked on before and I might publish them as Knols!

My profile does not have much on at the moment, and the google ads don't work yet, but watch this space..... :)