Google's knol project - "a way to help people share their knowledge"

The official Google blog has an interesting post about a new project that Google is calling "knol" which according to them "stands for a unit of knowledge". The idea is to identify the author of content much like a book has the author's name on it's cover. My impression is that it is a lot like Mahalo in some ways. "We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest."

The trouble with the web has always been that you have to be careful of what/who you choose to trust as a reliable source of information, these types of projects may help us to determine "the wheat from the chaff"! I for one will be interested to see how reliable the sources turn out to be. The project is currently by invitation only so you can't give it a try just yet, unless of course you were invited.

Veronica Belmont is back!

After what seemed like an eternity, Veronica Belmont has announced that her new show "Mahalo Daily" will start podcasting next Monday (Nov. 5th). In a satirical trailer posted to the site, Veronica and her new boss, Jason Calacanis, poke some friendly fun at themselves and pay homage to a number of popular video podcasts. It's been too long Veronica! I am looking forward to the new show starting and have already subscribed in iTunes.

More celebrity sightings

According to her blog, Veronica Belmont's new show will be called "Mahalo Daily" and will be launched in September. There are no further details in her post other than a few pictures of her new digs at Mahalo HQ. I have to admit, I'm more than a little jealous of all those big LCD displays! Compared to the cubical that I dwell at my day job, the Mahalo office looks much more open and inviting, though I'm not sure my work could be conducted under such close quarters... Mahalo HQ looks hip, and everyone looks relaxed! Are you sure it's not just one big LAN party Veronica? We are all anxiously awaiting the debut!

Veronica Belmont leaving CNet's Buzz Out Loud

One of the podcasts that I try to listen to on a regular basis is CNet's Buzz Out Loud. I've been tuning in to BOL for more than a year and one of the reasons I continue to listen is the on air personalities. In episode 514 the BOL crew announced that rumors of Veronica Belmont's departure were true. I am not however saddened by the departure, not that I don't enjoy Veronica's commentary! On the contrary, I was actually pleased to hear Veronica say she is starting a new video podcast for Mahalo.com, Jason Calacanis' human-powered search engine that I discussed in a previous post. The only difficulty will be in finding the time to catch all of the shows. Good luck Veronica, we'll miss you on BOL but look forward to the new show!

Yet another search engine

Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, inc. and later Netscape fame has launched the Alpha version of Mahalo (Hawaiin for "thank you") billed as the worlds first human powered search engine. The Mahalo site reports that each search result is handcrafted by their "Guides". The advantage to human recommended results is that they are free of spam and the big bonus in my opinion is the addition of warnings to the search results. The guides have included a warning symbol next to search results to identify pages that are full of pop-ups, contain flash animation, take a long time to load, are really ugly, automatically load music, etc.. Also their is a symbol representing a Guide's Choice which indicates that the human who reviewed the site was particularly fond of this site.

I like the idea and I am sure it will be a hit if the Internet is patient enough, as the results are sparse at the moment, of course they are in alpha release and hey the web is a huge space! Fear not, if your Mahalo query does not return the link you are looking for they kindly forward your request to Google at the moment. I'll keep an eye on Mahalo but think I'll stick with Google, at least in the short term.