Google recently created a My Maps application that matches Wikipedia articles with places on Google Maps, and shows summary of the Wikipedia in Google Maps. It seems like Google just pulling data out from Wikipedia (or maybe used one of Wikipedia’s database dumps). Similar wiki-mapping services such as Wikimapia and Placeopedia has been around for quite bit of time, but they are more like manually add/edit (the locations & info).
On the day Knol - Google’s Wikipedia-like service - was announced, Google applied to trademark the 4-letter combination. In the application, Google describe Knol as “publishing services; information services; education and entertainment services”. Google also applied to trademark Android, OpenSocial, and Ad Blitz during the year of 2007.
[via ResourceShelf]
Wow, that’s fast, I just published “Google to Revive Google Answers” and Google already announced on the official blog that the are planning to launch a service where people can “share their knowledge” (not 100% sure whether they are related) - they call it Google Knol (yes, K-N-O-L, they are apparently out of ideas to name products).
Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. […] The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only.
There are not a lot to say about this other than calling it a more social and more topic diverse version of Wikipedia, and at the discretion of the author, fill the pages with Google ads. By more social, I mean, you can ask questions, rate the articles, have friends and among other unknown features, and by more diverse, that is, in Google’s words: “the goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions.” (e.g. “How to hack into your school network to change your failing grade”, “What’s Tom Cruise’s real height”, and all other trivia that belong to the deep Web)
As indicated from the screenshot (extra-large image) Google provided in their blog post, the contributed contents are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. which means people can freely use the work under the condition that “you must attribute the work.”
It will have a long way to go, I have to say. “Knol (no) knols for Google.” :)
Google Operating System reports that Google is going to launch a question-and-answer service again(after numerous “failed” attempts (as noted on Wikipedia). The last attempt was the fee-based Google Answers, which “retired” last year. Earlier this year, Google launched two (almost-identical) Q&A services in Russia and China.
The above screenshot from the Google Translation Console shows that Google Q&A will be the “successor for Google Answers.” According to Google Operating System, the code name of the service is Confucius.
[screenshot from Google Operating System]
Google today launched another questions-and-answers service, Tianya Wenda*, in cooperation with Tianya Club, one of the most popular Internet forum in China. Although the service is (currently) not located under Google’s domain, but it’s running on Google’s web servers and is using the very same back-end program that powers the recent launched Google Otvety - only in Chinese rather than in Russian. (though you cannot use your Google account to log in)
Quite obvious that Google is taking baby steps to compete with Yahoo! Answers and other knowledge market services. Taking the battle oversea at first to learn experience then have a final show down here in the U.S.
There’s a saying that “A battle lost, but not the war.” (I am referring the lost battle to Google Answers)
Brilliant!
*Wenda, or Wen Da, means “Ask and Answer” in Chinese.
UPDATE: It seems like that Google acquired 60% of Tianya, a few hours ago.
[via China Search Engine View]
Google today launched a new service in Russia called the Google Otvety, don’t know what that means but Google calls it “Knowledge Search“. It’s a community driven question answering website. Unlike the now-defunct Google Answers, this new service is free to all. Russian is the prefer language on that site, I suppose.
From the look of this website, I guess it somewhat clones the Yahoo Answers model where users would answer other users’ question to accumulate points. Then again, I don’t speak Russian, I could be wrong.
You can take the tour of the site here. (Google Translate)
It would be really cool of Google if they do launch a similar service in English and other languages sometime this year. :)
UPDATE: Alex Kosorukoff from 3Form has more on this… “Google encourages users to visit often. It is quite curious that Google’s reward for a visit is higher than for posting an answer. This seems counterintuitive to me and unique among similar services. Points are also assigned based on results of human evaluation.” [read more]
[via Googling Google]
Google yesterday announced that they are shutting down one of their earliest service - Google Answers. Launched in April 2002 with a small 4-person team and went out of Beta in May 2003, Google Answers was one of the very first project Google worked on.
Google Answers was just an “great experiment”, as how Google called it. Anyways, Google will stop accepting new question later this week, and will stop accepting new Answers to questions by the end of the year. Questions and Answers will be available to browser online however.
Although Google didn’t say what’s the cause to shutting it down, but here’s probably the answer from Google Answers: What has happened to Answers?(via Google OS)
It’s really sad to see Google Answers being shut down. Unlike Google X, Answers has been around for years, even though I don’t use it at all. Bye, Google Answers.
