My first two Knols

To get things started, here are my first two Knols:

Judaism
Mezuzah

Creating these was a very educational experience. I found the whole thing to be pretty simple. I have to say that there are still some quarks in the interface. Sometimes it stalls up or it logs you out in the middle of a post. Overall the whole thing was very intuitive. I was very happy to find that there were already several comments on my Judaism knol very shortly after I had published it.

Here we go...

In case you haven't heard, Google has just come out with a new service called Knol. Some are calling it a new Wikipedia. Others are comparing it to Squidoo. Here is how I see it...

Knol allows anyone to create an article on pretty much anything they like. You are supposed to use your real name. This forces you to own what you put out there. Wikipedia attempts to create an honest article by way of community self editing. Knol says, "write what you want, but remember that it will be out there on the web forever with your real name attached".

Ultimately the idea is that through reviews, comments, inbound links etc, the search engines will know which Knols carry more authority. The authoritative ones will be driven to the top while the lousy ones will end up in the abyss of page 12 search results.

I am pretty excited about this whole thing. I for one, love to share what I know with others. I think this knol thing will be very good venue to do so. I also think that the openness of the whole thing will help me become a better communicaor because I will be able to see what other people have to say about what I put out there.

I am going to use this blog to highlight Knols that I find interesting either because they are great, unique or horrible. I will probably also use it to point out new features and to comment on the general development and success/failure of the whole knol endevor.