Google’s “Knol” is now open to everyone, The Official Google Blog announced yesterday.

The idea is to help capture the expertise residing in people’s heads and provide a place for them to author a variety of articles.  For instance, early entries range from “How to Backpack” to information about lung cancer from a thoracic surgeon.  Authorship is known and those who would like to make contributions or edits may make their suggestions to the author, who retains control.  Google is calling this “moderated collaboration.”

Google also has done a deal with the New Yorker which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the magazine’s extensive repository.

Knol says it offers:

• Ease of use — All you need is an account, a name and a desire to write and we’ll take care of the rest.
• Control — You specify the level of collaboration you want with the community. Your knol, your voice.
• Community — You can connect with other experts in your area of interest to share and grow knowledge.
• Visibility — We value and promote authorship. Great content will be visible on any search engine.
• Growth — Sharing your knowledge with the world is rewarding for everyone.

Another new feature for Google Maps: get walking directions for fairly short trips and Google Maps will try to find you a route that’s direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when they know about them.

The app is in Beta since there are naturally some unknowns, such as whether sidewalks or pedestrian bridges are available.  You are reminded to use caution.  But there is an advantage in many places because driving directions will attempt to guide you the right way when one-way streets exist.  That is a factor that walkers don’t need to consider.

Google Operating System Blog offers this tip:  if you only see driving directions, copy the permalink of the page by clicking on “Link to this page”, append &dirflg=w and paste the new URL in the address bar.

Directions can be printed, emailed, bookmarked or embedded in a site.  You can also save them as a custom map,  just click on “Link to this page”, copy the link, add &output=kml at the end and then create a new map in the My Maps tab by importing the KML file.

If you’ve been watching the development of free online office suites but haven’t left your desk-top based product (e.g., Microsoft Office) yet, you’ll find Computerworld’s reviews of three popular online office suites instructive.  Office suites typically include at least word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation apps.

Three major competitors in the field — Google Docs, ThinkFree, and Zoho — have all made major moves in recent months, significantly improving the products by adding more applications, features, and functionality.

But how do they shape up against desktop suites like Microsoft Office, known primarily for Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications?

“While Google Docs, ThinkFree and Zoho vary in the breadth of the applications they offer, their features and their usability, they are all capable of doing real, useful work. They do what you expect of productivity apps — create documents, spreadsheets and presentations — in sophisticated fashion,” says reviewer David DeJean.  Developments in open source, AJAX, and browsers have helped online suites to compete.

A really big advantage is that all three are free and offer free storage space, as well. Since they work in a Web browser, they also work across different platforms.  It doesn’t matter whether you create, view, or use them with PCs, Mac’s, or a Linux box. Since they are designed with collaboration and sharing in mind, that is especially important.

Computerworld reviews the three online suites’ capabilities as word processors, spreadsheets, presentations, and how they “leverage the web.”  Each product has its strengths, although they have developed from different points of view.

There is no clear winner here, but the reviewer concludes, “Web-based productivity suites have made a transition. While at first they simply imitated desktop applications in a Web browser, the current versions add features that begin to integrate the social computing features of the Web. At the same time, they’ve begun to grow away from simply imitating Microsoft Office to developing personalities of their own.”  Check out the article for details.  [via Slashdot]

Offline support for Gmail, GCal
Gmail and Google Calendar are expected to join Google Reader and Google Docs with offline support in about 6 weeks, according to Google Operating System blog.  Offline support is achieved with Google Gears.

Google Docs adds fullscreen mode
Now there is a fullscreen editing mode for Google Docs without the need for a Greasemonkey script.  Check out the “View” menu.

Lifehacker says that combined with Firefox 3’s serious fullscreen capabilities and GDocs’ fixed-width page view, “you can turn the online office suite into a no-distraction writing environment.” Zoho Writer also has a similar “Maximize editor” function.

Google Docs templates
There are an amazing number (>300) of templates for all kinds of document needs that can be found at the new Google Docs directory.  Try the “preview” link to see what your document, presentation or spreadsheet would look like.

“Each template has boilerplate content and preset design styles that are meant to be reused. (…) You can then edit the document, replacing boilerplate text and images with your own,” explains Google.

The option to use a template is available in Google Docs when you click on New > From template and the list of templates that you’ve recently used will appear.

Google Calendar redesign
This redesign by Globex Designs (get it here) of Google Calendar looks great and it’s easy to make the change.  Found on Lifehacker.

Firefox 3 reaches Guiness World Record download day
Mozilla announced the record-setting 8,002,530 downloads for Firefox 3’s first day.

“As the arbiter and recorder of the world’s amazing facts, Guinness World Records is pleased to add Mozilla’s achievement to our archives,” said Gareth Deaves, Records Manager for Guinness World Records. “Mobilizing over 8 million internet users within 24 hours is an extremely impressive accomplishment and we would like to congratulate the Mozilla community for their hard work and dedication.”

Mapstraction for Map Mashups
If you’re a developer who loves to build map mashups, then you have to check out the library provided by Mapstraction, advises Read/WriteWeb.

Mapstraction provides a common API for various existing mapping APIs which allows developers to build a mashup that supports nine of the major mapping providers including Google Maps, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps, and more.  See the demos at the RWW site.

Fires continue to flare in California as dry lightning threatens parched country.  More storms are expected.

To keep up with danger zones, visit the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection site where much information is available and where a statewide interactive Google fire map and another statewide California Wildfires fire map can be accessed.

The latter explains how contained the various fires are, how many acres are involved, and gives information about the properties threatened.

From the Google map you can select named fires in the right-hand column and a pop-up appears on the map with detailed information, including the date and time of the last update.  Another advantage of this map is that it shows highways, and therefore is particularly useful if you are traveling in the northern part of the state where most of the fire danger exists.

California fires map
Google Lat Long Blog has a map of the many fires currently plaguing California.  More thunderstorms (with potential lightning strikes) are in the forecast.  Find the danger zones here.

Web2book for offline viewing of web pages, RSS feeds
Free Windows-only Web2book helps you read web pages, Wikipedia articles and RSS feeds offline.  You can download and convert RSS feeds, Web sites, Project Gutenberg books, Wikipedia entries, Crossword Compiler crossword, Microsoft Reader .Lit files, and other sources into other formats such as  HTML, RTF, LRF or PDF files.  [via Digital Inspiration]

30+ updated Firefox 3 extensions
Mashable lists the most useful updated Firefox 3 extensions for you.  Covers social bookmarking and many more.

More real-time quotes on Google Finance
You can now get both NYSE (as of today) and NASDAQ (as of June 2) free real-time market data via Google Finance.  Search Google or Google Finance, add your stock symbols, and keep the page up to have quotes stream live.

If you add Google Finance to iGoogle, add the Google Finance portfolio gadget and monitor your stocks as they are traded throughout the day.

PDF Search Engine: find, download e-books
You can now search quickly for PDF books using PDF Search Engine.  Some results may show PDFs that are not free.

You can add the PDF search engine to your search engine dropdown menu.

Thirty-seven new locations have been added to Google Maps Street View as the service celebrates its first birthday.  They have also expanded coverage in 15 existing areas.

New cities are listed below, and below that, 10 additional parks and recreational areas.

• MA: Springfield
• NY: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse
• NJ: Newark
• VA: Virginia Beach
• NC: Charlotte, Winston-Salem
• SC: Columbia, Greenville
• GA: Atlanta
• FL: Boca Raton, Cape Coral, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Sarasota, West Palm Beach
• AL: Huntsville
• MS: Jackson
• TN: Knoxville
• KY: Lexington, Louisville
• OH: Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo
• MI: Ann Arbor
• MO: St. Louis
• KS: Topeka
• NE: Lincoln
• OK: Oklahoma City, Tulsa
• NV: Reno
• CA: Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Stockton

New parks and recreational areas:

• Everglades National Park (Florida)
• Florida Keys
• Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming)
• Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming/Montana)
• Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado)
• Joshua Tree National Park (California)
• Death Valley National Park (California)
• Lassen Volcanic National Park (California)
• Sequoia National Park (California)
• Lake Tahoe (California/Nevada)

 Street View can be seen in both Google Maps and Google Earth.

Trip planning tips with Google Maps
Have you checked out ways to use Google Maps to make travel planning easy and fun?  Before you head out the door for your summer vacation trip, search for hotels, restaurants, check reviews, and use street-level imagery. 

Want to know about weather, parks, gas stations?  Want to know what the area looks like?  Check out photos, videos, and turn on the Panoramio photo layer to see photos others have taken.  Later you can add your own photos and videos to “my maps” and share with friends.

The tip site includes a brief video.  

Have a “look around” with Panoramio
If you are not familiar with Panoramio, Google’s site for sharing geo-tagged photos, now is a good time to become aware of it.  Panoramio lets photographers geo-locate, store and organize their photographs and view them in their geographic context.

I’ve enjoyed viewing these photos as I explored locations on Google Earth and Google Maps, but now if you visit the Panoramio site itself, places with a lot of photos (typically the big tourist sites) can give you a “look around.” 

Select a locale and then a photo — in this example the Ponte Vecchio in beautiful Florence, Italy — look for and click on the “look around” link. 

In the image below, I have already selected an alternate view of the bridge.  You just need to mouse over a photo to see what slice of the original is represented in the displayed thumbnails which you can click on to “look around.”  You can move all around the area, left or right, closer or farther away, day or night, depending on the photos available.  Enjoy your arm-chair travel!