Google’s Answer to Wikipedia Now Live

in Google, Wikipedia | July 24th, 2008

Last Decem­ber, Google announced that it was test­ing a new con­tent ini­tia­tive — dubbed “Knol” — intend­ed to rival Wikipedia. The fruits of their labor are now live (in beta), avail­able for all to see.

As we men­tioned in our ini­tial piece, Knol caters to the indi­vid­ual author/expert, not to the wis­dom of crowds (à la Wikipedia). Each ency­clo­pe­dia entry is gen­er­al­ly writ­ten, edit­ed, and revised by one indi­vid­ual. The author reigns supreme here. But that does­n’t mean that Wikipedi­a’s col­lab­o­ra­tive approach is being entire­ly aban­doned.

Google’s mod­el leaves ample room for col­lab­o­ra­tive writ­ing. It keeps open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that mul­ti­ple authors will write an ency­clo­pe­dia entry. And, they allow for “mod­er­at­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion” — mean­ing that “any read­er can make sug­gest­ed edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or mod­i­fy before these con­tri­bu­tions become vis­i­ble to the pub­lic.” Col­lab­o­ra­tion is built into Google’s mod­el. It’s just not tak­en to an extreme con­clu­sion. (Get more info on the posi­tion­ing of Knol here.)

Knol is not the only con­tent plat­form try­ing to strike a bal­ance between the author and mass col­lab­o­ra­tion. In June, Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca launched a beta of a new online ency­clo­pe­dia that takes “a col­lab­o­ra­tive-but-not-demo­c­ra­t­ic approach” to pro­duc­ing knowl­edge. Users can make con­tri­bu­tions to a grow­ing store­house of knowl­edge. But whether these con­tri­bu­tions get accept­ed remains up to the experts and edi­tors. (“At the new Bri­tan­ni­ca site, we will wel­come and facil­i­tate the increased par­tic­i­pa­tion of our con­trib­u­tors, schol­ars, and reg­u­lar users, but we will con­tin­ue to accept all respon­si­bil­i­ty of what we write under our name. We are not abdi­cat­ing our respon­si­bil­i­ty as pub­lish­ers or bury­ing it under the now-fash­ion­able “wis­dom of the crowds.”)

I have lit­tle doubt that the Google and Bri­tan­ni­ca mod­els will gen­er­ate some sol­id ency­clo­pe­dia entries. That’s a safe bet. But whether these ency­clo­pe­dias will ever become as com­pre­hen­sive as Wikipedia, or as wide­ly used, is anoth­er ques­tion. And the same holds true for whether the con­tent will gen­er­al­ly be qual­i­ta­tive­ly bet­ter than what Wikipedia has to offer. When Google first announced Knol last Decem­ber, I voiced my doubts. Now that the rub­ber is final­ly hit­ting the road, we can see whether my skep­ti­cism is war­rant­ed (or not).

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The Great Dictator: A Classic Chaplin Moment

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | July 23rd, 2008

It’s 1940. The film is The Great Dic­ta­tor, Char­lie Chap­lin’s famous satire of Nazi Ger­many. In this cel­e­brat­ed scene, Chap­lin dances with a large globe with Richard Wag­n­er’s Lohen­grin Over­ture play­ing in the back­ground.

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When the Flintstones Peddled Cigarettes

in Random | July 20th, 2008

What can you say about this? A quick trip back to the 1950s… File this under Ran­dom …

(For for­eign read­ers, all you need to know is that The Flint­stones was a clas­sic Amer­i­can car­toon.)

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties

School of Life: An Award-Winning Short Indie Film

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | July 15th, 2008

Now fea­tured in The YouTube Screen­ing Room: Jake Polon­sky’s School of Life. “The film may be set in an ele­men­tary school, but it tells a poignant­ly iron­ic sto­ry that any adult will relate to. School of Life won the 2004 British Inde­pen­dent Film Award for Best Short.” A high­er qual­i­ty ver­sion can be watched here. But make sure you have a high speed con­nec­tion.

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10 New iPhone Apps for the Thinking Person

in Apple, Most Popular, Web/Tech | July 10th, 2008

In advance of tomor­row’s release of the new 3G iPhone, Apple has launched its new App Store on iTunes, which fea­tures new tools that will imme­di­ate­ly make the iPhone (and iPod Touch) a more ver­sa­tile — and, in some cas­es, enlight­en­ing — device. Below, we have high­light­ed ten apps worth explor­ing if you’re hun­gry for enrich­ing infor­ma­tion. 9 of the 10 are free. (Please note: To access the App Store, you will need to down­load the lat­est ver­sion of iTunes (here) and also the new iPhone 2.0 firmware, which has yet to be offi­cial­ly released — although you can find an unof­fi­cial release and direc­tions on how to install it here. The offi­cial release should be com­ing any time now.)

1.) The New York Times: Thanks to this app, you can read “All the News That’s Fit to Print” on your iPhone. It lets you cus­tomize the news you read, and also read arti­cles offline.

2.) AOL Radio: One down­side to the first gen­er­a­tion iPhone is that it did­n’t allow you to access inter­net radio. This app helps to change some of that. It gives you access to 150 CBS radio sta­tions across the US, includ­ing some key news sta­tions.

3.) Man­darin Audio Phrase­book: Lone­ly Plan­et, the pub­lish­er of fine trav­el guides, has pro­duced a free Man­darin audio phrase­book, which includes 630 com­mon­ly used phras­es. Via the iPhone you can hear how the phras­es are spo­ken (and also see how they are pho­net­i­cal­ly writ­ten). For $9.99, you can pur­chase phrase­books in nine oth­er lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai, Viet­namese and Czech. See full col­lec­tion here.

4.) Tru­veo Video Search: The Wall Street Jour­nal calls Tru­veo the “best web-wide video-search engine.” And now, with this Tru­veo app, you can use the iPhone to find videos from across the web, and, regard­less of their for­mat, play them all in one appli­ca­tion. This sounds like a great addi­tion, espe­cial­ly since many videos weren’t playable on 1st gen­er­a­tion iPhones.

5.) Net­NewsWire: With this app, you can add an RSS read­er to the iPhone, allow­ing you to read RSS feeds in a neat and clean way. It also lets you “clip” arti­cles that you like and read them lat­er. Don’t for­get to sign up for our feed, and you can always add more cul­tur­al feeds by perus­ing our list of 100 Cul­ture Blogs.

6.) Google Mobile App: Let’s face it. In today’s infor­ma­tion world, Google is a must-have. And so it’s nice to have an app that makes Google and its many func­tion­al­i­ties com­plete­ly iPhone friend­ly.

7.) AppEngines E‑Books: For 99 cents, you can down­load a clas­sic e‑book to your iPhone, and read it in a quite leg­i­ble for­mat. In this col­lec­tion, you will find Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Pride and Prej­u­dice, Dick­ens’ Great Expec­ta­tions, and about 40 oth­er e‑books.

8.) Talk­ing Span­ish Phrase­book: Too busy to learn a new lan­guage? Then you’re in luck. This app will do the talk­ing for you. It takes basic phras­es in Eng­lish and then con­verts them into spo­ken Span­ish. There are also free ver­sions in French, Ger­man, and Ital­ian.

9.) Epocrates: This free app turns your iPhone into a com­pre­hen­sive drug data­base. Very handy for the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty.

10.) NearPics: If you’re trav­el­ing, and if you want to dis­cov­er great places near­by, this app lets you dis­cov­er pic­tures that have been tak­en in the vicin­i­ty. The app offers a way to dis­cov­er intrigu­ing places (or things) that nor­mal­ly fly below the radar. Also, this oth­er app lets you put Flickr on your iPhone. More ways to sat­is­fy your inner pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Ways to Make Your iPod a Bet­ter Learn­ing Gad­get

Will Google Kill Science?

in Google, Science | July 1st, 2008

Not an obvi­ous con­clu­sion, I’ll agree. How­ev­er, Chris Ander­son, edi­tor of Wired, presents the argu­ment like this: as all sorts of data accu­mu­late into a vast ocean of petabytes, our abil­i­ty to syn­the­size it all into ele­gant the­o­ries and laws will dis­ap­pear. The sto­ry is the cov­er of this mon­th’s issue of Wired but I came across it in a newslet­ter from The Edge, a group of thinkers try­ing to pro­mote a “third cul­ture” of online intel­lec­tu­al thought.

Ander­son­’s argu­ment isn’t real­ly that the sci­en­tif­ic method will dis­ap­pear, but rather that cor­re­la­tion will become as good as it gets in terms of ana­lyz­ing real-world data. Every­thing will be too messy, noisy and chang­ing too quick­ly for prop­er hypothe­ses and the­o­rems. As Ander­son puts it, it will be “the end of the­o­ry.”

The nice thing about read­ing this on Edge is that the newslet­ter comes with sev­er­al crit­i­cal respons­es includ­ed from “The Real­i­ty Club,” which includes thinkers like George Dyson, Kevin Kel­ly and Stu­art Brand. But I say that as the con­sumers and pro­duc­ers of most of these mass­es of data, the vote should lie with you, read­er: does Google’s brute force approach to data hord­ing spell the end sci­en­tif­ic ele­gance?

Looking Inside Darwin’s Room (and Also Where Virginia Woolf, Lord Byron, & Kipling Did Their Thing)

in Books | June 30th, 2008

Dar­win­ma­nia (as The New York Times dubbed it) is about to begin. Dur­ing the next year, we will cel­e­brate Dar­win’s 200th birth­day and the 150th anniver­sary of the Ori­gin of Species (down­load zip audio here) and the dis­cov­ery of nat­ur­al selec­tion. It’s pret­ty much a giv­en that the minu­ti­ae of Dar­win’s life will get thor­ough­ly reex­am­ined. So I fig­ured why not get ahead of the curve and give you this — Dar­win’s writ­ing room. It’s pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of the Guardian Book Sec­tion, which lets you take a peek at the writ­ings rooms of Vir­ginia Woolf, Lord Byron, Rud­yard Kipling, Mar­tin Amis and many oth­er impor­tant writ­ers. (You can also vis­it our piece from last year for more room pho­tos.)

Wind Powered Art

in Art | June 30th, 2008

When art meets engi­neer­ing:

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Find Any Song Online and Share. Now.

in Music | June 30th, 2008

Tinysong.com offers a ser­vice that’s rather impres­sive. You go to their home­page, search for a song, and then you can lis­ten to it online and share it with a friend (via a spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed url). Just how it all works (copy­right includ­ed), and just how deep the col­lec­tion actu­al­ly goes, I am not total­ly sure. But, the var­i­ous tests that I threw at it sug­gest that there’s a fair amount of depth there.

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Top 10 TEDTalks (and Do Schools Today Kill Creativity?)

in TED Talks, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | June 28th, 2008

Late in the week, TEDTalks named its top ten videos. Whether this is a quan­ti­ta­tive or qual­i­ta­tive judg­ment, I am not sure.  On the list, you’ll find Al Gore talk­ing about how to avert a cli­mate cri­sis, David Gal­lo show­ing amaz­ing under­wa­ter crea­tures, and Ken Robin­son describ­ing why schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty (we’ve post­ed that one below). Again the full list is here.