Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

At first glance it seems that they are looking to take on sites like Wikipedia, and Squidoo, which they likely are but I wonder if there isnt an opportunity here for authors to leverage knol as an instant part of their author platform. Google says they want to use Knol to highlight the author as an authority on the subject.

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

“But I already have a blog,” you say. Yes, I hope so, but knol may be another part of your author platform, and more importantly perhaps knol content will be featured on Google searches in the same way YouTube results, News results and other Google properties are featured. Google has not said this – it is pure speculation on my part, but it seems likely to me.

Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.

So, perhaps this is a new addition to your platform and a chance for you as an author to increase your recognition as an authority on your subject. It’s still very early, so a lot remains to be seen as to how knol will work and how it will be received by the public, but I’d say knol is a tool you must review when it’s available.

I went through several steps including 301 redirects for www.ckwebb.com, a revamped robots.txt, and an optimized Google sitemap, but the thing that finally got this site listed in Google is one you might not think of. I finally came to the conclusion that the problem with my blog was not that Google couldn’t find it – it was getting crawled. The problem was that my website was banned from Google – blackballed, shut out, ignored – non-existent as far as the majority of web searchers were concerned.

I racked my brains trying to figure out what I had done – what had I written to cause the Google Gods to shun me? It finally dawned on me that it might not be something I had done. I started thinking that perhaps my domain name was on the ban list at Google.

I purchased ckwebb.com in February 2007. A quick lesson here – don’t assume that just because a domain name is available that it has never been used before. In my case, ckwebb.com has had a varied past. According the Internet Archive, ckwebb.com has a history dating back to 1998 when it was a portfolio site for photographer Charles K. Webb. But it was the activity on ckwebb.com from 2000-2002, a weird spammy landing site and doorway page that likely caused Google to shut the door.

I resubmitted my site for reconsideration via Google Webmaster Tools, and in about 48 hours ckwebb.com emerged as a legitimate website in the Google index.

So the takeaway here is to be sure and check the history of your domain before you buy it and to be aware of it possibly seedy past.

1. On the main page I currently have excerpts from the 10 most recent posts.  Do you prefer the full text on the main page, just want to click through to posts that interest you?
2. What’s missing on ckwebb.com?  Why do you read?  How can I make this space a real resource for like-minded readers?
3. And finally, can anyone tell me why the hell this site still isn’t listed in Google’s index?

This is not a blog entry by an author who thinks that Google Books is evil because it promotes the idea of free books.

This is a blog entry by an author who sees Google Books as an invaluable research tool but who gets frustrated and enraged every time he tries to use it.

I know there’s a Feedback page on Google Books where problems can be reported. But the problems I experience are so fundamental that the Feedback page seems grossly adequate. In short, Google Books seems to have been put together with a deficient sense of bibliographic integrity, which is a real problem if you’re trying to assemble an online library.

Charles goes on to outline his frustrations in trying to use Google Books as a research tool, and points out the deficiencies that can occur when machines sort, organize and catalog content. This is a problem similar to the one I pointed out recently with the addition of a Books layer in Google Earth.

Charles sums up the problem as follows:

Google Books is not an online library. It’s a massive heap of digitized books and periodicals thrown together with a complete disregard for what these objects actually are and when they were published.

Image: Tall Chris

Luckily, the fine folks at NewsGator remembered me, and I had a new registered version of FeedDemon 2.5 up and running in minutes. I am pleased to say that the new beta of NewsGator Online is shaping up nicely, and they have added several of the features I liked in Google Reader – including simplified linkblogs.

Not only that, but FeedDemon is truly the king of RSS readers – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  With Google Reader I found myself installing GreaseMonkey scripts over and over to force Reader to work the way I wanted, or add a feature that should be in there anyway – I shouldn’t need to hack a Google application to add search capabilities.

Back in April I chastised NewsGator for wanting me to pay for a reader for my BlackBerry in addition to FeedDemon.  Well, I’ve learned that you get what you pay for, and will likely be taking Kevin Cawley up on his offer to buy NewsGator Go!

Oh, and by the way – there are some cool GreaseMonkey scripts for NewsGator too.

Well, of course they are.  In fact, I am surprised someone else hasn’t snapped them up already.  As Sam points out, many of us read blogs and other sites via RSS without ever visiting the actual website .  As a result, the RSS advertising market is becoming more attractive.

It’s funny – I used to hang out with Feedburner co-founder Matt Schobe in college.  We are fraternity brothers from Purdue. Here’s hoping this rumor pans out for Matt and the crew at Feedburner – they have a great product.

Wired: How should we think about Google today?

Schmidt: Think of it first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system — Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And a fourth way is to think of it as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, the values — all that kind of stuff.

Wow.  Remember when they were a search engine?

Having used FeedDemon for quite a while as my regular desktop reader and the integrated NewsGator as my online reader, moving to Google Reader has taken a bit to get used to. I can deal with most of the little things I don’t like about Reader (like the option of marking items read when leaving a feed) but the feature I really want from Google Reader right now is an improved mobile experience.

Like many of you, for better or worse I spend quite a bit of time with my BlackBerry, and read a lot of feeds via NewsGator’s mobile feature. For the most part the free NewsGator mobile service is very usable. I know they recently released a NewsGator Go! product for BlackBerry but I cant seem to force myself to pay another $30 for a mobile app when I already paid for a NewsGator and FeedDemon subscription and when there are so many other options available for free – which brings me to Google Reader.

Google has 2 great mobile apps which I use on a regular basis on my BlackBerry – GMail for mobile devices, and the related program for Google Apps for Your Domain. Both provide a great interface to my mail accounts, synch in real time wirelessly, keep my Gmail messages separate from my corporate mail and provide a more enjoyable experience than their standard HTML-driven counterparts.

So, where is the comparable application for Google Reader? Hey Reader Team I know it’s Beta and all, but is this something you are working on?

Same search results as Google, but the revenue generated by advertising is donated to national environmental non-profits. The more people that use it, the more money it’ll generate. It’s an example of using technology to help people make small lifestyle changes that benefit the environment.

I like that they display the current earnings for the month on the main search page. Check out greensear.ch