Download Squadhttp://www.downloadsquad.comDownload Squadhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/media/feedlogo.gifDownload Squadhttp://www.downloadsquad.comen-usCopyright 2008 Blogsmith, LLC. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only.Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/Flickr finally launches embeddable slideshow widgethttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/21/flickr-finally-launches-embeddable-slideshow-widget/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/21/flickr-finally-launches-embeddable-slideshow-widget/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/21/flickr-finally-launches-embeddable-slideshow-widget/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

Image sharing site Flickr has allowed users to view attractive slideshows of search results or image sets for a while now. But for some reason, up until now you had to rely on a third party service if you wanted to embed that slideshow on your own web page. Or you could create an iFrame and figure out how to create the code yourself. But who wants to go through the trouble?

This week, Flickr finally added the ability to share a slideshow with other users. Just click the Share link when viewing any slideshow on Flickr. You get two options: a URL that links to the slideshow you're viewing or HTML code that will let you embed a smaller version on your web page.

The slideshow embedded at the top of this post shows search results for the word "compiz."

[via ReadWriteWeb]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>embedflickrslideshowBrad Linder2008-08-21T16:00:00+00:00eBay to de-emphasize auctions, lose all distinctivenesshttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/20/ebay-to-de-emphasize-auctions-lose-all-distinctiveness/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/20/ebay-to-de-emphasize-auctions-lose-all-distinctiveness/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/20/ebay-to-de-emphasize-auctions-lose-all-distinctiveness/#commentsFiled under: ,

eBay buy it nowOnline auction site eBay has two things that make it different from every other online store. First, it's a virtual bazaar where anyone can hawk their own goods rather than a traditional storefront where a company maintains and sells its own inventory. Second, as an auction site, there's a chance that buyers will get a real bargain, or that sellers will get more than an item is worth.

For a while now, eBay has been offering sellers the option of selling items for a fixed price. This way both the buyer and the seller know exactly how much money will change hands up front. If you search eBay for pretty much any item now, you'll find a ton of "buy it now" listings amidst the sea of auctions.

But now it looks like eBay wants to change the ratio a bit, by lowering seller fees for fixed priced items. This will do three things:
  1. Make it easier for customers to simply place an order for an item at a specified price instead of waiting a week to find out if they won an auction
  2. Help eBay compete with the thousands of other web stores offering items for fixed prices
  3. Kill off one of the things that really made eBay special
Now, eBay isn't really going to emphasize that last bit. But the truth is, the move sort of turns eBay into half.com (which is already owned by eBay). Sure, a few sellers might decide it's worth selling their items in auctions, hoping that some buyer will forget to comparison shop and pay way too much for an item. But if it's cheaper to just list the item for the price you hope to get, why wouldn't you? And that takes a way a bit of the excitement involved in the bidding process.

Then again, with so many people using eBay, when was the last time you really got a bargain as a buyer?
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>auctionsbuy-it-nowebayhalf.compaypalBrad Linder2008-08-20T14:00:00+00:00YouGetSignal lets you discover which web sites are sharing a serverhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/18/yougetsignal-lets-you-discover-which-web-sites-are-sharing-a-ser/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/18/yougetsignal-lets-you-discover-which-web-sites-are-sharing-a-ser/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/18/yougetsignal-lets-you-discover-which-web-sites-are-sharing-a-ser/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Reverse IP Domain Check
YouGetSignal provides a bunch of tools for looking things up. You can find the location of a phone number on a Google Map, find open ports on your internet connection, or perform a visual trace route (which traces the route packets of data make on the internet when traveling from your computer to another destination).

We recently discovered a new YouGetSignal tool: a reverse IP domain check. Just type a URL in the box, and YouGetSignal will attempt to discover other web sites using the same server. This comes in handy if you want to find URLs registered to a certain company, or if you have a shared hosting plan for your own web site and you want to see what other sites are sharing your server space.

For example, I discovered that there are 856 domains hosted on the same server as www.google.com, and 841 hosted on the same server as www.downloadsquad.com.

[via MakeUseOf]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>reverse-ip-domain-checkserveryougetsignalBrad Linder2008-08-18T18:00:00+00:00Use Tweetake To Back Up Your Twitterhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/18/tweetake-twitter-backup-webapp/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/18/tweetake-twitter-backup-webapp/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/18/tweetake-twitter-backup-webapp/#commentsFiled under: , ,


If you're a heavy Twitter user, you've no doubt accumulated a huge collection of tiny text messages. Losing all that information would be a giant pain, but how do you save a copy for yourself? Have a look at Tweetake!

The interface is dead simple: enter your Twitter username and password, select what you want to back up, and press Get 'em! to release the hounds.

Within a few seconds Tweetake presents you with a CSV file containing all your valuable messages. Tweetake grabs the sender's name and screen name, their location and description, timestamp, and the tweet text, along with just about all the other info that Twitter stores.

How many of you back up the files on your PC regularly? I'd wager the number backing up online data (like Twitter) is even lower. Play it safe, and back up your tweets!
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>backuptweetstwitterLee Mathews2008-08-18T15:00:00+00:00Googleholic for August 15, 2008http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/15/googleholic-for-august-15-2008/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/15/googleholic-for-august-15-2008/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/15/googleholic-for-august-15-2008/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,



Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google.

In this edition:

  • Google apologizes for e-mail downtime
  • Docs spreadsheet gets new features
  • AdSense for Feeds is launching
  • Google Reader improves sharing
  • First Android phone to launch in Q4

Continue reading Googleholic for August 15, 2008

Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>androidgmailgooglegoogle docsgoogle formsGoogleDocsGoogleFormsgoogleholicChristina Warren2008-08-15T18:00:00+00:00Drop.io Firefox extension enables drag and drop uploadinghttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/13/drop-io-firefox-extension-enables-drag-and-drop-uploading/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/13/drop-io-firefox-extension-enables-drag-and-drop-uploading/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/13/drop-io-firefox-extension-enables-drag-and-drop-uploading/#commentsFiled under: , ,

drag and drop.io
Online file sharing service Drop.io already provides one of the easiest ways to share documents and media files. Now the company is making things even easier with a Firefox addon that lets you drag and drop files to your browser.

Here's how it works. You install the somewhat cleverly titled Drag & Drop.io extension and create a drop point by visiting Drop.io. Then you can just drag any files from your desktop to your web browser and watch while they're uploaded and in some cases converted for easy online access.

Too busy to actually create a drop point manually? Just drag your files over the little red check box in your status bar. The plugin will automatically create a drop point and open it up for you. So you can be browsing your favorite web site (like, say Download Squad?) and uploading files at the same time, without bothering to visit the Drop.io web page first.

The plugin is cross-platform and works with Firefox for Windows, OS X and Linux.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>addondrag-and-dropdrop.iofirefoxfirefox-pluginBrad Linder2008-08-13T16:00:00+00:00Googleholic for August 8, 2008http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/08/googleholic-for-august-8-2008/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/08/googleholic-for-august-8-2008/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/08/googleholic-for-august-8-2008/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google.

In this edition:

  • Olympic madness
  • Google Translate comes to the iPhone
  • New Google Earth API resources
  • Directly link to Google Mapplets
  • Get your Picasa prints at Walgreens

Continue reading Googleholic for August 8, 2008

Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>googlegoogle earthgoogle translateGoogleEarthgoogleholicGoogleTranslateolympicspicasaChristina Warren2008-08-08T17:00:00+00:00Mloovi translates RSS so you don't have to learn a foreign languagehttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/07/mloovi-translates-rss-so-you-dont-have-to-learn-a-foreign-langu/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/07/mloovi-translates-rss-so-you-dont-have-to-learn-a-foreign-langu/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/07/mloovi-translates-rss-so-you-dont-have-to-learn-a-foreign-langu/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Mloovi
I have a hard time reading some of my favorite blogs, including Eee PC News and Blogeee because, well, I don't speak German or French. Not fluently anyway. Historically, I've tried to deal with this limitation of mine by subscribing to each site's RSS feed and trying to figure out what articles are about by squinting at the headlines, scratching my head, and looking at the pictures. Every now and again I find something I think might be interesting and I pop it into Google Translate. But I'm fairly certain I'm missing some interesting stories this way.

Mloovi is a new service that makes it much easier to follow a blog or news site published in a language you don't speak. Mloovi basically takes the contents of the feed, runs it through Google Translate, and then syndicates a new feed.

There are a few limitations to Mloovi-generated feeds. First, you'll occasionally be confronted with an advertisement, but Mloovi needs to make money somehow. Second, Mloovi strips images from RSS feeds and only shows a partiel feed even if a web site's original feed was full text. But Mloovi can still be big time saver if you want to follow some foreign language sites. Mloovi works with any languages supported by Google Reader, including Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Hindi, Norwegian and English.

Mlovi also has a handy widget that lets web publishers offer subscription links in mulitple languages.

[via ReadWriteWeb
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>mloovirsstranslateBrad Linder2008-08-07T16:00:00+00:00Polymeme is deep when Digg feels shallowhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/05/polymeme-is-deep-when-digg-feels-shallow/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/05/polymeme-is-deep-when-digg-feels-shallow/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/05/polymeme-is-deep-when-digg-feels-shallow/#commentsFiled under: , ,

polymeme page
Some days it's all good and you're enjoying reading the news for the masses on Digg or Reddit. Other days you want something with a bit more substance. Maybe you're having dinner with your future in-laws and you need a good, solid, grown-up conversation starter. Check out Polymeme, which bills itself as the "experts' take on what's important on the web."

Polymeme tracks information in 20 areas, from Green & Energy to Books & Poetry with things like TV & Cinema and New Media thrown in for good measure. Top news stories are gathered from Polymeme's database of 25,000 blogs using algorithms that monitor the most viewed and linked to stories in each of the 20 categories.

By having the 20 different areas of news to monitor, Polymeme is able to find the hottest articles, blog posts and information from mainstream, alternative and citizen-driven media sources in each area instead of just the hottest news on the web as a whole. Site information calls it the "wisdom of clusters and not just the wisdom of crowds."

If you enjoy reading articles from places like Scientific American, MSNBC and Slate or you just need to step up your RSS feeds, Polymeme might be just what you're looking for.

[via Boing Boing]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>diggpolymemeRSSChristina Clark2008-08-05T14:30:00+00:00Private Label Custom Domains - seriously, what the hell?http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/05/private-label-custom-domains-seriously-what-the-hell/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/05/private-label-custom-domains-seriously-what-the-hell/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/05/private-label-custom-domains-seriously-what-the-hell/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Private Label Custom DomainsI've seen my share of bad web products. Some are bad because they are poorly implemented, others are bad because they are ill-conceived. The new Private Label Custom Domains product from FeedBlitz definitely falls into the latter category.

To be honest, I'm not even sure where to start here. From what I can gather, FeedBlitz wants me to pay them for the privilege of syndicating my content onto their domain. They're basically trying to sell subdomains on the feedblitz.com site at prices that are higher ($9.99 per year) than what you can pay to register your own real domain.

This is clearly a product without a market; I mean, who is this mythical customer that is out there wishing they could syndicate the content from their already-existing site onto a subdomain that they pay for at some other site? Nobody, that's who.

And I think FeedBlitz knows this. Follow me through the break for a few more thoughts on this.

Continue reading Private Label Custom Domains - seriously, what the hell?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>bad-productdomainFeedBlitzsubdomainsyndicationJason Clarke2008-08-05T12:00:00+00:00Upload, Share, and Mirror in One Step With Rapidspreadhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/04/rapidspread-rapidshare-upload-mirror/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/04/rapidspread-rapidshare-upload-mirror/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/04/rapidspread-rapidshare-upload-mirror/#commentsFiled under: , , ,


There are plenty of great places to upload and share files, so why not use a bunch of them all at once?

Rapidspread is a a simple file upload site that automatically forwards your files to as many as 10 filesharing sites. From the upload page, simply browse for your file(s), agree to the terms of service, and click share. Once the upload is complete, RapidSpread displays a URL to send to your friends as well as direct links to your file on the supported hosts it's been transferred to.

My test rar file successfully uploaded to eight of the ten possible hosts - not too shabby. When I chose to upload several images, RapidSpread was even smart enough to limit mirroring to the media-sharing services (ImageShack, Badongo, ZShare, and ZippyShare).

Anyone that uploads files on a regular basis will appreciate the simplicity and power of RapidSpread. If the developers would just intergrate a short URL service like bit.ly, this would be a truly killer service. Give it a shot, and see how it stacks up against your favorite service.

Thanks for the tip, Eran!
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>file sharingFileSharingmedia sharingMediaSharingp2ppeerrapidshareuploadingLee Mathews2008-08-04T13:00:00+00:00Google is slowly killing Page Creator, replacing it with Siteshttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/03/google-is-slowly-killing-page-creator-replacing-it-with-sites/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/03/google-is-slowly-killing-page-creator-replacing-it-with-sites/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/03/google-is-slowly-killing-page-creator-replacing-it-with-sites/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Google Page Creator dies
Google has stopped accepting new users for Google Page Creator, the company's online web site creation tool. Current users can continue using Google Pages, but the company wants new users to sign up for Google Sites instead.

Google Sites is a web site/wiki creator that Google launched a year after purchasing Jotspot. Sites allows you to create editable pages, embed videos, calendars, and documents. Later this year, Google will transition all web sites made with the Google Page Creator over to Google Sites.

Google Page Creator was never as easy to use as it should have been and I honestly don't know too many people who used it to build web pages. So I don't expect many people to cry over its loss. But there is at least one potential problem. If anyone's ever posted a link to your files at yourname.googlepages.com, that link could break later this year, because Google Sits uses a different URL structure. Hopefully Google will offer existing users the chance to transition to the new service while keeping their existing URLs.

[via Digital Inspiration]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>google-page-creatorgoogle-sitesBrad Linder2008-08-03T10:00:00+00:00Googleholic for August 1, 2008http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/01/googleholic-for-august-1-2008/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/01/googleholic-for-august-1-2008/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/01/googleholic-for-august-1-2008/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,



Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google.

In this, yes, we're alive edition:

  • Google tests automatic Blogger support for Google Reader
  • Gmail adds "never send it to Spam" filter
  • CalDAV support comes to Google Calendar
  • Multilingual Google
  • Google Maps transit directions come to more phones

Continue reading Googleholic for August 1, 2008

Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>caldavgmailgooglegoogle calendargoogle mapsgoogle readerGoogleCalendargoogleholicGoogleMapsGoogleReadericalChristina Warren2008-08-01T14:00:00+00:00Delicious boasts redesign, new namehttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/01/delicious-boasts-redesign-new-name/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/01/delicious-boasts-redesign-new-name/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/01/delicious-boasts-redesign-new-name/#commentsFiled under: ,



Yesterday, social bookmarkng site Delicious (nee del.icio.us) launched a brand new design and a much easier to remember URL. The redesign is quite similar to the preview posted last September, Nothing like waiting until your share holders stage a revolt to get your properties updated, eh Yahoo?

The new design is fluid and clean, with a much nicer display system. It's much easier to switch between your own bookmarks and the "popular" and "most recent" listings. Sorting and searching through tags is also much more efficient and intuitive.

In addition to the new design, of which I'm a fan, the site is also significantly faster, both in terms of search and overall navigation. Although the Firefox 3 plugin is fantastic, the old site design and loading time made it a chore if accessed in Safari or any other browser without a specific plugin or tool.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>bookmarksdel.icio.usdeliciousChristina Warren2008-08-01T13:00:00+00:00Apprise: RSS reader with Twitter, AIM integrationhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/31/apprise-rss-reader-with-twitter-aim-integration/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/31/apprise-rss-reader-with-twitter-aim-integration/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/31/apprise-rss-reader-with-twitter-aim-integration/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , ,

Apprise
Sure, most RSS readers give you a few button that lets you share interesting stories you're reading with friends, loved ones, and enemies via email or a link blog. But what if you want to broadcast a story to your Twitter friends, or send a story by instant messenger? Apprise is an RSS reader designed to save you the few seconds it would take to copy and paste the link.

Apprise lets you sign into your AOL IM or Twitter account and send a page to your contacts with the click of a button. The reader is built on Adobe AIR, which means it should work on Windows, Linux, or OS X. But it's worth noting that Apprise is available as a public beta at the moment, which means you might experience some bugs. After importing a few hundred feeds, I found that Apprise crashed every few minutes. The Linux version is described as an alpha.

Aside from the Twitter and AIM integration, Apprise has a few other tricks up its sleeve. For example, you can view the full web version of any feed item. You can search your feeds, and you can import and export OPML files. One things you cannot do? Email a story to a friend.

[via Sizlopedia]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>apprisefeed-readerrssrss-readerBrad Linder2008-07-31T14:00:00+00:00TweetParty Does Group Messaging for Twitterhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/31/tweetparty-does-group-messaging-for-twitter/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/31/tweetparty-does-group-messaging-for-twitter/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/31/tweetparty-does-group-messaging-for-twitter/#commentsFiled under: ,

If you're still into Twitter (and apparently a lot of you are), TweetParty offers a yet another service based on the Twitter API that you might want to check out.

To get started, just sign in with your Twitter user name and password and you're shown the "my groups" page. Enter a name for your group, click the "create" button, and TweetParty will add it to the current page.

Clicking "manage" gets to the good part: a simple drag-and-drop interface to turn Twitter friends into group members. When you're done, click "update party" and you're done-- there's no limit to the number of groups you can set up.

Add TweetParty as a friend on Twitter, and you're set. Send a direct message to TweetParty with #yourgroupname in front, and they'll take care of the rest. It's a great service, especially on days Twitter is functioning properly.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>group messagingGroupMessagingtweettwitterLee Mathews2008-07-31T11:00:00+00:00Task2Gather: Online task manager with mobile clients coming soonhttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/30/task2gather-online-task-manager-with-mobile-clients-coming-soon/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/30/task2gather-online-task-manager-with-mobile-clients-coming-soon/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/30/task2gather-online-task-manager-with-mobile-clients-coming-soon/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Task2Gather
Vito Technology is probably best known for developing software for Windows Mobile and Symbian phones and PDAs. But the company has just made the jump into a new arena: web apps. First up is an online task manager called Task2Gather.

The interface is clean and easy to use, if not entirely intuitive. It took me a few moments to figure out how to name new tasks or projects, for example (you type in the Name & description box, but it wasn't immediately clear that the light blue area was a text box). You can either see a list of all your tasks from multiple projects at once, or you can browse tasks using a tree mode, which lets you pick a project and look at your finished and unfinished tasks and sub-tasks. You can also invite other users to share your task list.

Overall Task2Gather is useful if you want to keep your task list online and accessible from any computer, but there are other task managers out there that accomplish this as well or better. Vito has an ace up its sleeve though: the company plans to release a Windows Mobile and iPhone version of Task2Gather soon. These mobile clients will likely not only let you create and manage tasks while you're on the go, but also synchronize them with the web client.

Task2Gather is free to use. Eventually Vito plans to offer a subscription-based premium version with access to additional features like RSS feeds for task updates and the ability to upload file attachments for tasks.

[via My Today Screen]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>remember-the-milktask-managertask2gathervito-technologyBrad Linder2008-07-30T15:00:00+00:00Calgoo goes free: sync Google Calendar, iCal, and others for freehttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/28/calgoo-goes-free-sync-google-calendar-ical-and-others-for-fre/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/28/calgoo-goes-free-sync-google-calendar-ical-and-others-for-fre/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/28/calgoo-goes-free-sync-google-calendar-ical-and-others-for-fre/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , ,

calgoo ical google calendar sync
Since the dawn of time Google Calendar, we've been waiting for a free, easy way to fully synchronize our Google Calendar to desktop calendar clients like iCal. We'd love to be able to access the same calendar data across multiple computers, but it's always been a messy affair, not free, an incomplete solution, or PC only.

Well, Calgoo has been one of those paid options up until now, but the minds behind the program just announced that it is free from here on out. That's right, Calgoo is now the free option in Google Calendar and desktop caledar synchronization. Calgoo officially supports 30 Boxes, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, and -- of course -- Google Calendar.

Calgoo's "Chief Owl" will not employ ads in the app in order to pay for the costs of developing the program, but the team will begin to run ads on Calgoo Hub and possibly other future products. As for the software itself, it's pretty easy to use, and it provides for two-way synchonization, which means that any changes on one calendar will apply to the other.

[via WebWorkerDaily]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>30 boxes30BoxescalendarcalgoogoogleoutlooksyncsynchsynchronizationDanny Mendez2008-07-28T12:00:00+00:00Google Knol goes live, Wikipedia hardly quaking in its bootshttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/23/google-knol-goes-live-wikipedia-hardly-quaking-in-its-boots/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/23/google-knol-goes-live-wikipedia-hardly-quaking-in-its-boots/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/23/google-knol-goes-live-wikipedia-hardly-quaking-in-its-boots/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Google Knol
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.

[via Official Google Blog]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>googleknolwikipediaBrad Linder2008-07-23T14:30:00+00:00Find out useless, useful info about a web page with URL-infohttp://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/23/find-out-useless-useful-info-about-a-web-page-with-url-info/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/23/find-out-useless-useful-info-about-a-web-page-with-url-info/http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/23/find-out-useless-useful-info-about-a-web-page-with-url-info/#commentsFiled under: ,

URLinfo
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.

[via Daily Gyan]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
]]>headersurlurl-infourlinfoweb-sitesBrad Linder2008-07-23T13:00:00+00:00