D3 - Devise Design Develop

Last month Google announced the development of a new free tool called ‘Knol’ [stands for a unit of knowledge]. The goal of Knol is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. Using it is by invitation only currently but based on their screenshot example it looks to be a lot like Wikipedia with a few rather significant differences. In their announcement on their blog, Google noted that this tool would highlight the author, which in my opinion is a feature that is sorely needed. It gives the information found on these pages at least some basis of credibility. Also introduced in the beta of knol is common social networking tools such as an area for comments, questions, edits, additional content and even ratings, giving the content even more credibility if you ask me. Check out the knol screenshot and the Google blog post about knol for even more information. I think this is just the latest in a long and successful string of Google taking a basic idea and adding a little Google magic to it to make their version a major competitor in that market.