Google has finally pulled back the curtain on its so-called Wikipedia killer, Google Knol. We first heard that Google was looking at launching a user-editable encyclopedia-style web services late last year. But to be perfectly honest, a lot's happened in the last 7 months and we kind of forgot about it. Now that it's here, we're not entirely sure it's fair to call it a Wikipedia-killer.
Knol provides a place to find information about topics ranging from lung cancer to toilet clogs. What makes it different from Wikipedia is that while any user can suggest alterations to articles, the original author gets to decide whether or not to include those changes. In theory, this will help prevent people who don't know what they're talking about from ripping apart an article from an authority on a topic. In practice, since anyone can write an article on any topic, whether they know what they're talking about or not, it could be even harder to find reliable information on Knol than Wikipedia.
Knol's saving grace might be that users can write multiple articles on the same topic. So if you think you know how to build a better mouse trap than the 20 other writers who have published their own methods, you can write your own article. Readers can then rank stories so hopefully only the most accurate and/or helpful "knols" will find their way to the top of the pile.
Creating a Knol is fairly straightforward. You just sign in with your Google account and start writing. You can also import documents create in Microsoft Word, Excel, PDF or TXT file.
Ever wonder which site provides a higher ratio of internal to external links, Engadget or Download Squad? Want to know if there's a hidden message in the headers of a web page? URl-info can help.
Here's how it works. Visit the site, enter a URL, and hit go. Pretty simple, eh? What you get is some basic information about the web page, including the server operating system, what kind of web analytics the site uses (although the only one we managed to detect was Google Analytics on a handful of sites), and a list of images and internal and external links on a site.
If you click the Images tab, you can scroll your mouse over the URLs of images to see thumbnail versions. The links tab provides a list of links and a nifty graphic showing the ratio of internal to external links. In other words, you can find a whole bunch of information you never really needed. But if you have nothing better to do with your day than try to dig up some stats about your favorite web sites, this is the tool for you.
Popular video hosting site Vimeo has announced that they will no longer allow videos of video games on the site. Specifically, they're going to be deleting "game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game." As of September 1st, all videos that fall under that description will be deleted.
The staff blog post on the subject lists some reasons for the decision, including the staff's feeling that these videos don't meet the standards of "creative expression" that the site tries to uphold. More importantly, though, video game vids tend to be some of the longest and most common videos on the site, slowing down transcoding times for the other content that Vimeo is apparently trying to encourage.
Debate has already fired up in the comments section of the Vimeo blog, as users wonder why the site would cut off a type of video that is evidently popular enough to take up significant system resources. There's also a fair share of relieved comments from folks who are glad to see this type of "unoriginal" content removed from the site. We can see the points that both sides are making, but what's your take?
Speechable understands that a picture is worth a thousand words, and thus a picture with words must be worth exponentially more.
Speechable provides a simple method to adding speech bubbles to your photos. Just upload a photo, select one or more speech bubbles, and place them wherever you like. You can resize both the text and the bubble to better fit the picture. When you are done adding bubbles, you are given links to add the photo to your blog, website, or email it to a friend.
We could find few differences between Speechable and Kyolo: a similar service that we recently reviewed. Most notably the use of rectangular bubbles instead of elliptical. We can't help but think that the first service to add multiple bubble shapes will win the war.
At some point you've probably used evite, either by receiving or sending an invitation. In the past the online application was great for sending invitations but it was a one shot deal - create and send an evite and when the event is over, the evite is dead.
Last year evite went mobile in an effort to keep up with all of us and on Friday, evite went 2.0. Users can now integrate photos from Flickr, videos from YouTube and playlists from Imeem. The changes should make it easier to integrate content you already have on the web into your evite options instead of requiring separate uploads of information.
The redesign also attempts to make evite easier to navigate, introducing more tabs for organizing different sections of the site. Developers have also added some custom options for the way hosts and attendees can interact with each other.
Online music sites Pandora and Last.fm do a great job of providing you with streaming music you might like based on your listening history. But what they don't do a great job of us letting you listen to any song you want at any time. That's because music labels actually want you to do things like you know, go out and buy the songs.
But in this new information age, practically any song you could ever want to hear has been uploaded to one web site or another. All you need to know is how to use search engines like Google to find them. And that's where music search engines/players like SeeqPod come in. The site doesn't actually host any audio, it just provides the means to play audio hosted on other sites. So while the music may kind of sort of be illegally hosted, SeeqPod isn't violating any laws.
Favtape combines some of the best features of Seedpod and Pandora and Last.fm, with a whole lot of muxtape thrown in for good measure. Here's how it works. You visit Favtape.com, enter your Pandora user profile or your Last.fm username and Favtape will find your favorites and/or bookmarks. It will then create a playlist out of those songs by tracking down the music from other sources online.
The upshot is that you should get a playlist with up to 10 songs that you've already said you like, and you can hit the play button to listen at any time without any of the limiations imposed by Pandora or Last.fm. The downside is that sometimes Favtape will think it found your song when in fact it found another song with a similar file name. See that BNL link above? Yeah, when we clicked play we got some song we'd never heard before and didn't particularly much care for.
Many people may not have noticed this, but it's impossible to do a global search at Craigslist.org. It sort of makes sense, doesn't it? For most of the public, we'd imagine a global search would turn up useless results, but that only makes Craigslist useful for most of us. What about thoe crazy-curious folks that just need to know all about what's being offered, asked for, etc. around the world?
Marty Orgel submitted to Wired a short-tutorial on how-to do a global search of Craigslist through Google, and it's pretty easy. Just do an advanced search, and in the "Find web pages that have... all of these words" box, type in your search terms. Make sure "directory" is entered into the "But don't show pages that have... any of these unwanted words" box, and type "craigslist.org" into the domain box at the bottom.
The method worked for our global search of "time machine", which turned up 12,700 results from several regions including: New York, Austin, Northern Virginia, and San Diego. Most of them really had to do with a time traveling machine, so, yes, there are several crazy people in the world. Don't worry, though, we're pretty sure many of the listings originated from well-humored teenagers... well, we hope that's the case.
The clock just turned 5pm, and if you are like us, everything you have worked on all day has instantly evaporated from your mind (yes, this just happens, we don't need alcohol). Luckily, we left all those papers on our desk, the scribbled whiteboard, and a monitor-o-sticky notes to help us figure out where we left off.
5pm by QG | Software is a web-based project management suite that provides us the tools needed to get back on track at 8am.
The underlying features of 5pm are fairly standard in the project management world. You create projects and assign them to one or more users or groups. The project can have a deadline, a client, and a priority level. Once you have created a project you can add items such as tasks and files. Tasks can be assigned to individual team members and emails can be sent to the group when tasks are completed. etc...
To help visualize your project over the course of its life, there is a timeline feature that shows your projects and tasks in a "Gantt" style chart. In addition, there is a reporting section that can help determine who is completing their projects on time and who isn't.
So, you spend more time surfing the internet than actually working, you met your significant other on the internet and maybe, just maybe you know what a MUD is. Whether you are a geeky boy or the more rare and exotic geeky girl you haven't lost yourself in the rabbit hole of the internet until it becomes time to plan your wedding.
MyWedding is one of the most useful (and free) wedding sites out there. You can create a "wedsite" that will be the envy of your friends even if you don't know a lick of code. The site allows guests to RSVP for the big event, leave comments, sign a guest book and more. The couple can list accommodations, directions, gift registries and even create photo galleries. Once guests have entered an email address on the site you can also easily send out a message to them all if plans change or you update the page.
The design templates vary from the simple to the ornate, cute to couture. No need to have wedding bells plastered everywhere unless that's the look you are going for. Page addresses can be a bit unweildy but that is easy enough to fix by redirecting your own domain name to your MyWedding site.
There's no shortage of music recommendation engines. Whether you want to find music from artists that sound like Madonna or Meat Beat Manifesto, all you have to do is hit up Pandora, Last.fm, or a similar site and pop a name in the box. If the web site starts playing a song you like, you give it a thumbs up, while a thumbs down should help the software avoid playing music that makes you want to throw up in the future.
But one thing that Pandora and Last.fm have in common is that most of the music they play comes from major label artists. If you want to find music from independent artists, you might want to check out StumbleAudio. The web service uses a music recommendation image engine much like the other sites. But all of the artists are independent acts, which means they're either unsigned or signed to smaller labels.
If you find an artist you like, you can flip through the tracks on their album and listen to full length audio streams. Or you can click on the links on the side of the page to purchase digital downloads or physical CDs.
StumbleAudio currently features over 120,000 artists and 2 million songs. We found the recommendations were decent, but not exactly spot on. For example, the service claims it was able to find 388 artists that sound like the Allman Brothers. As far as we can tell, it actually found about 5 or 10 southern rock/blues bands, and a few hundred artists that sound nothing at all like the Allman Brothers.
The newest version of the VLC media player isn't ready for the streets yet, but if you're they type who doesn't mind risking your precious computer for the sake of satisfying a primal curiosity for experimental software, the pre-release of VLC 0.9.0 is now available for both Windows and Mac. Unfortunately, anybody with a Windows 98/ME or OS X 10.3.9 machine is out luck since such technology is no longer socially acceptable as those operating systems are no longer supported.
It now supports Last.fm (AKA Audioscrobbler) straight out of the box disk image, so it'll update your Last.fm account as you play music through VLC. To enable Last.fm support in the 0.9.0 release, enter your username in the preferences pane under Audioscrobber, but don't forget to visit Control interfaces to check the box labeled "Submission of played songs to Last.fm."
Other changes also include better tag support, more subtitle support, improved mouse gestures, album art support, Shoutcast TV listings, and a lot more that we don't want to bore you with, but you're more than welcome to check out the whole list on the VLC forums.
BOXSTr has launched a new application, OpenDrive, which simplifies syncing files on your computer with your BOXSTr storage account. The application creates a remote drive on your computer and uploading files is as simple as a copy and paste job.
OpenDrive differs from other file syncing and storage sites in one significant way. Any changes made to files in your computer's remote drive are saved in real time to your online account, making the syncing process as simple as possible. On a slower internet connection, however, this method does have its drawbacks.
OpenDrive also comes in handy when sharing large files - allowing you to link to them directly from your desktop. Right clicking on any file in your remote drive will provide you with a link to share with friends and family. You also have the option of copying files to a public folder that can be viewed by anyone. If you place music in your OpenDrive folders, you can stream, embed and share songs directly from your BOXSTr account.
While in public beta, users are given 1GB free storage. The application runs on Windows XP and Vista, with a Mac version and direct mobile uploads in the works.
MoFuse is a service that makes a mobile version of any web site in just a few seconds. We first covered MoFuse last year, when the company was offering a two-tiered service. But last week MoFuse decided to do away with pro accounts and offer all the features to free account holders.
So what do you get with a free account now? You can still create free mobile web pages with URLs ending in .mofuse.mobi (for example, downloadsquad.mofuse.mobi). But you can also use a custom domain, use your own logo in an SMS widget, create up to 5 different mobile sites with one account, and receive up to 50 free SMS messages a month.
MoFuse allows users to place ads on their mobile web sites. Previously free account holders split the revenue from those ads with MoFuse while paid account holders would retain 100% of any revenue generated. If you previously signed up for a paid account, you will no longer be billed, but you will also get to keep 100% of your revenue, while all new MoFuse users will have to share their profits with the company.
Document-sharing site Scribd and online self-publishing service Luluhave teamed up to offer Lulu's free ebooks in Scribd's iPaper format. iPaper is designed to be a versatile cross-platform means of displaying different document types online. Key draws include the ability to embed docs in any webpage, including your manuscript in Scribd's library, and adding ads to your document.
Lulu is a popular self-publishing site, handling print versions and ebook versions of manuscripts, so getting them to start rolling out iPaper is a big win for Scribd. It's not going to be available for all Lulu books at first, just the most popular free ones. If this catches on, though, the two companies will have all the publishing bases covered, from printed books to iPaper ebooks.
At some point you've probably used 
So, you spend more time surfing the internet than actually working, you met your significant other on the internet and maybe, just maybe you know what a MUD is. Whether you are a geeky boy or the more rare and exotic geeky girl you haven't lost yourself in the rabbit hole of the internet until it becomes time to plan your wedding. 
