The new hot topic on the internet is the announced Google Knol which is meant to be a Wikipedia “killer”. Wikipedia has been announcing a search service that would be able to compete with Google in most categories since most people already look in Wikipedia for “accurate” information and homework. But they have had a long time developing it and we still haven’t seen anything. Another plausible reason why Google wants to do Knol is because Wikipedia doesn’t have advertisement in their site. If they would Google would of probably be used or would of made an offer to put their adds in their site.
Because of all of this and maybe some other reasons Google has announced their project Knol. It’s supposed to be better than Wikipedia in terms of finding content and creating content. Users who post content can make a profit out of what they write. This is a great motivation for Knol to get content quick. But not only will the users make money by putting add on what they write but Google would make a profit because it’s its ads that it’s showing. It is a small monopoly where Google is the winner no matter what. So read some more info about Google Knol and then take your personal decision of what Google is doing and how it’s working.
The rumors of a Google Phone (GPhone) are back and say that it might be ready in 2 weeks. According to a post in TechCrunch the GPhone might be ready to release in two weeks but Google hasn’t said anything about and they have denied rumors previously. But with Google looking interested in the airwaves and cellphones with the struggle of trying to buy some airwaves, anything is possible. And here is the image of what the GPhone might look like according to TechCrunch…
The rumors are starting to appear, is Google going to be part of the telephone wars and battle against Apple’s iPhone ? Google bidding on some wireless network s from the goverment and the Google text messaging service are a few of the things that back up these rumors. I doubt that Google would invest in creating a phone, it just doesn’t seem something that they would do. They are more of an online market, no hardwares. The rumored Gphone is said to be launched next year under T-Mobile which means something is in motion already. It will be a good battle, Gphone vs iPhone.
YouTube has officially gone Hip-Hop/Rap with a new contest called YouTube OnTheRise Rap Edition. It’s a competition for DJ’s and rappers, if you can mix, do beats and rhyme then this is for you. The judges for this will be 50 Cent, Common and Polow da Don. The winner of the contest gets to record one song with G-Unit and some other prices. People have until August 17 to submit their video at YouTube and the winner will be announced in September. This seems like a great way to give more publicity to YouTube which will soon become almost an online Tv Channel.
As I mentioned in my previous post, CNN had the power to censor videos. And I just read online what of been the most popular question. This popular question was about impeachment and president Bush and future presidents. This is a legit question and a very good one. This wasn’t the only video censored, as shown during the debate; a group of people posted the same question over and over again to get better chances of being asked and it was shown but not asked to the candidates. I believe that is a bit unfair. Here is that popular question posted on YouTube:
Today was the Democratic CNN/YouTube Debates. Anderson Cooper from CNN was showing videos submitted by users on youtube. I think this was a great idea that people had a better chance of being heard right from their home. The only small issue with this was that CNN was the one picking the videos which basically means they’ll show what they want to show. Hopefully in the next elections which I hope the CNN/YouTube will happen again; users should be allowed to vote online to see what videos are shown. It is kind of unfair that you give “power” to the people but then you edit them out.
The debate went pretty good. Some interesting questions showed up, some funny and silly things were also asked. John Edwards rephrased almost every question as he usually does. And he did that best when asked not to use religion as an excuse for not supporting gay marriage, which he denied using it but fliped floped around it. Hillary Clinton got the most questions because she is the celebrity. Obama was not called “real black” and talked a bit about everything. Dennis Kucinich did a very good job answering questions. Bill Richardson still needs practice with his speaking abilities. Mike Gravel got a bit more of air time and still tells people the truth about the other candidates no matter how much people ignore him. Christopher Dodd and Joe Biden…. well they were just a bit boring.
It was a usual debate. Questions asked and different answers were given.
I was looking through Technorati and found this really nice website from google called GoogleTalks. Google has this mini interview sessions in their headquarters with different type of people: authors, candidates, women (no men section), etc. It is really important to know about your politicians and these video with a couple of the candidates shows a different view of them. It is a really nice studio type of place where they do the interviews. I could see a great future, Google hosting their own interview/talk show on Youtube. Take a look at it, specially the candidates running for president interviews.
Thanks to Google, hackers have it alot easier to find things. The famous website Johnny I Hack Stuff shows different tricks on how to find certain things. Since google finds everything that people let it, people are also able to find certain files that aren’t really ment to be seen by everyone. The latest Google Hack is using YouTube to find users and passwords for ftp sites. With this query we can find many ftp users, passwords and the address for the ftp.
The “flaw” is that if you click on a YouTube video from your ftp, logged in, then YouTube will record the refferal with it’s full address which includes the user and password for the ftp. The simple solution would be to not click on YouTube links from your FTP. The other solution would be Google filtering the refferals so it wouldn’t capture users and their passwords.
Google has this new toolbar thing where you can send a message to your phone or someone elses phone with part of the text of a website. Im not really sure how it works because I dont have Google’s toolbar but that is what I have read so far. Here is the link to send your free text messages to anyone, no matter what company: http://www.google.com/sendtophone .
The other cool thing I just learned from google is that now they have a quick “query” device for phones. You send a text message to Google (466453) and they would answer you back with a couple of answers. You could practice with their online demo. This comes in very useful for when you’re in the streets and cant find something or need movie times.
Another Google project makes it out of the beta stage. Recently Gmail made it out of the beta stage and now the Google Analytics. For everyone who doesn’t know what Google Analytics is; it’s a tool for webmasters to keep track of their website statistics: traffic, refferals, visits, etc. It is a pretty easy tool to use, you just add a javascript just like every other program of theirs.
The new features of Google Analytics are:
* Hourly reporting - view stats daily/hourly
* Clickable URLs - for external pages referenced in the reports
* Cross segmentation by Network Locations -
* Increased number of data rows per page - view 500 rows of data goodness
* Bounce rate increase/decrease - red for increase and green for decreases
* Adwords integration - wish I had an Adwords account so I can try this out
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