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.

The New York Times is reporting today that Amazon is about to take on a new venture, introducing an online store of TV shows and movies called Amazon Video on Demand.  The service, which will allow people to stream entertainment to their computers without long waits for file downloads, will be rolled out to a selected group first for testing, then given wider release later this summer.

Amazon customers using the new store will be able to start watching any of 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them because they stream.

“For the first time, this is drop dead simple,” said Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president for digital media. “Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can’t help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button.”

Amazon is also pursuing the technology and media world’s “holy grail” — an Internet pipeline to the TV.  It has struck a deal with Sony Electronics to place its Internet video store on the Sony Bravia line of high-definition TVs.

In the meantime, if you want to curl up on the couch with your laptop — or watch on your big screen monitor — you will soon be able to catch a show from Amazon’s collection.  It will be interesting to see how this venture competes with Netflix’s “watch instantly” movies, and its recently introduced set-top box.  Currently Netflix’s collection is much smaller than what may be available from Amazon, but is available as a free addition to many subscribers.

A study released by a Library of Congress digital information program reviewed the impact of various laws on digital preservation of copyrighted works, reports Library Journal.  Proposals were offered for legislative reform, as well as suggestions for non-legislative solutions.

Suggestions included:

• That countries establish “laws and policies” to encourage and enable the digital preservation of at-risk copyrighted materials and that these apply to “all non-profit libraries, archives, museums and other institutions,” provided they do not seek commercial advantage;
• That preservation laws and policies apply equally to all categories of copyrighted materials, including “literary, artistic, musical and dramatic works, as well as motion pictures and sound recordings;”
• That laws cover all copyrighted materials in all media and formats, “hard copy or electronic, born digital or digitized for preservation;”
• That “preservation institutions” be allowed to actively harvest publicly available content (such as web sites) for preservation purposes;
• That “preservation institutions” be permitted to “proactively preserve at risk copyrighted materials before they deteriorate, are damaged or are lost.

The need for more significant research and discussion was also identified in order to form policies and best practices, including research “on the national level” to determine “whether and under what circumstances access to digital preservation copies can be provided without harm to right holders,” and “to reexamine the interaction between copyright and private agreements as it relates to digital preservation.”

Solutions in the digital preservation arena are increasingly urgent.  LJ notes that although the report recognizes that copyright and related laws as just one obstacle to digital preservation activities, it clarifies that “there is no question that those laws present significant challenges.”

CrunchGear reports that an Amazon insider leaked the news that two new Amazon Kindle models will be ready for the holiday season, possibly as early as October.

One model is expected to be an updated version of the current Kindle, but with a vastly improved interface.  According to the source, the interface improvement leaps ahead 3 or 4 generations.

The second new Kindle is considerably bigger than the current one, more along the size of an 8 1/2″ X 11″ piece of paper.  Expect both models to come in a choice of colors.  No word on price.  Amazon fairly recently reduced the cost to $359.

Hott Notes: Sticky Notes for Desktop and USB
Hott Notes is a free, Windows-only, sticky notes tool you can easily add to your arsenal on both desktop and usb drive.

It allows sticky notes, check lists, alarms, and supports hot-keys to quickly create a new note or bring all notes to the front.

After you download Hott Notes, you can select colors and transparency settings.  You can even attach an alarm to your notes to get a reminder.  [via Technology Bites]

Gmail Superstars
Flag your email messages with a variety of icons.  In your gmail account, choose “settings” from the upper right corner, then enable Superstars.  Save your settings then complete your icon list.  Mouse over the icons to see their names and move them to and from “in use” as you wish.

Experimenting with how this works for you is the best way to learn.  For instance, you can open a message and click on the star; type “s” to go through your selected icons to find the one you want to use.  [via Google Operating System blog]

Idee Multicolor Search Lab has a color matching search engine for 3 million “interesting” Flickr images, as well as a front end for Alamy Stock Photography if you are in need of royalty-free images.

Check out the FAQ for more information.  [via Lifehacker]

The new wiretapping bill, H.R. 6304, just posted about was quickly signed into law by President George W. Bush, and the ACLU and other civil liberties groups immediately filed suit, according to a Yahoo News report.

Statements from the two camps highlight their differing opinions.  “This law will protect the liberties of our citizens while maintaining the vital flow of intelligence,” Bush said at the White House ceremony marking the bill’s signing.

The ACLU and others said, “The lawsuit asks the court to stop the government from enforcing the new unconstitutional wiretapping law, which will give the Bush administration unfettered power to spy on Americans without warrants or judicial oversight.”

The bill, which authorizes U.S. intelligence agencies to eavesdrop without court approval on foreign targets believed to be outside the United States, has been opposed by many who believe it allows warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of Americans who communicate with them. The bill is supposed to minimize such eavesdropping on Americans, but critics say the safeguards are inadequate.

H.R. 6304 was especially controversial because it provides protection to telecom companies that took part in a warrantless domestic spying program Bush began after the September 11 attacks, as reported in my previous post.

Senator Barack Obama’s perceived flip-flop on the bill disappointed and/or angered many of his supporters. It was believed he would support efforts to block legislation with a telecommunications immunity provision, but Obama voted for the overall bill after casting a losing vote for an amendment that would strip the immunity provision.

“Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I’ve chosen to support the current compromise,” Obama said on his campaign Web site.

Photo by stargazer95050.  Creative Commons license.