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Google is now planning to commence an innovative effort to capture human knowledge on the internet. This new initiative, “Google Knol”, is presently undergoing its testing phase. This would be an innovative ‘Web-publishing approach’ that is drawing comparisons to Wikipedia, according to Google. A “knol,” according to Google, is an individual segment of information or knowledge. This innovative concept of a new publishing platform is running in trials and tests in the hands of selected individuals who have been invited to take part in a beta version, the search giant said in a statement recently.

“The aim of ‘Knol’ is to help bring some order to the vast amount of human knowledge being shared online”, said Udi Manber, Vice President of Engineering at Google.

The internet is like an ocean of information, and Google is attempting to fathom this information by providing pretty good search facilities. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it”.

“The challenge posed to us by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt was to find a way to help people share their knowledge,” Udi Manber noted. “This is our main goal.”

Focusing On Authors

‘Knol’ will differ from Wikipedia , the open encyclopedia that invites users to submit content and then opens them up to continued editing and updating by others. The difference between the two would a focus on one key aspect, the author. “The authors of ‘knolls’ will be heavily featured”, said Google.

The basic idea behind the ‘Knol’ project would be to highlight ‘Knols-Authors’. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, and scientific articles always have authors. Somehow the web-world evolved without standard notions to keep authors names highlighted. Udi Manber says. “We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content”.

Another difference the ‘Google Knol’ would be demonstrating would also be related with the authors and this time it is related with their income opportunities. The author will have the opportunity to make money from writing ‘knols’. Displaying the Google Ads on their ‘knols’ would not be mandatory for the authors but doing so will offer them a unique opportunity to generate and share the ad-revenue.

Google will be providing a working platform, hosting and tools for designing and writing the ‘knol-pages’ to the authors and will not edit or censor the pages. The main objective is to make each knol “the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read,” added Udi Manber. Google will not endorse the content on ‘Knol’ pages but will help move pages that it deems worthy up the rankings in search results.”We do not want to build a walled garden of content. We want to disseminate it as widely as possible,” says Udi Manber. Google will not ask for any exclusiveness on any of the knol’s content and will make that content available to any other search engine.

A New Landing for Advertisements

Experts are of the view that this new initiative of Google may prompt people to question whether Google has strayed too far from its search roots. “The Knol project fits with other efforts to organize what is otherwise scattered information”, Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst Charlene Li said.

Knol would be a base project of Google and it would require making the splash in the classifieds and miscellaneous information space. If this becomes a successful venture, it will revolutionalize the web content scenario.

“More content means more places to deliver ads to and the more specialized it is, the more advertisers will be interested in it”, Charlene Li said.

Experiences Lead to Further Challenges

Google has its previous experiences of leveraging human knowledge in the search context. In the beginning of the year 2007 Google discontinued its attempts with “Google Answers”. The company accepted that it has learned plenty from the two-plus years it ran the service which required that users pay for answers and would incorporate that knowledge into future products.

This time Google has high expectations from high value creators and high value advertisers both. Users will submit pages to the new service and this would extend a potential and abundant new landscape to populate with advertising. The ‘knol’ pages will be focused on specific topics, and this in turn would certainly be a nice opportunity to attract relatively high-value advertising. Sterling Market Intelligence analyst Greg Sterling says,” “If it takes off, you can certainly see applications for local content and advertising,”

Becoming successful would be a big challenge for Google’s Knol project. Existing platforms like blogs and other websites still could be a continued choice and preference for majority of the users. People may choose to keep their knowledge and content limited to these resources only.

Wikipedia still remains one of the heavily visited web community. It is constantly trying to raise editorial standards to ensure content is accurate but it continues to roll under fire for spreading misinformation often.

Many experts and bloggers feel that Google may have to face an uphill task attempting distinguishing its new offering from its own blogging tools or the existing and already widely popular Wikipedia.

IBM recently  introduced ‘OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES)’, a semantic search engine exclusively for companies that are interested to extend their employees more advanced tools for searching their e-mails stored in ‘IBM’s Lotus Notes.

This new innovative concept of email search takes search beyond keywords by being able to make associations between the underlying concepts of words often used in corporate e-mails. IBM also intends to offer customers technology that can help them retrieve useful information hidden in e-mail databases.

IBM’s OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES) is a result of the collaborative research conducted by the IBM Research Labs in Almaden, California, in Haifa, Israel, and in Delhi, India.

The facility works with simplicity in search. For instance, if a person is looking for a colleague’s phone number, then he would type “Paul phone” in the query box. The search in turn would give results for Paul’s phone number. It becomes possible because the system is smart enough to make the association that the person is looking for Paul’s number, and not just any phone number in an e-mail with the word ‘Paul’ in it.

IBM designers created an index of keywords found in corporate e-mail, and then linked it with another index of associated concepts and relationships. Shiv Vaithyanathan, manager of unstructured information mining at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, USA says,  when a query is submitted, the system first matches the words with those in the keyword index, and then delivers results based on the associations. Specialists at IBM have also added rules to help the system determine what information is most likely being sought.

IBM made this software available for Lotus Notes. This smart email search tool eliminates the frustration many of us feel when irrelevant search results are returned for a simple text or keyword search. It has inbuilt common search concepts, such as dates, times and phone numbers. It also has some additional search parameters, such as meeting requests or specific locations. These parameters may be defined and used on the fly without any programming expertise. Such user-defined concepts can be shared between individuals and used to build a more personalized search system.

With gigabytes of e-mail storage readily available to nearly everyone, e-mail has evolved from a simple communication tool into a personal database where we retain vast amounts of valuable information, said Douglas Wilson, Chief Technology Officer of Lotus. He adds further, “We continue to deliver better tools to speed and improve personal mailbox search, and OmniFind Personal Email Search illustrates how IBM’s advanced technology delivers the ability to quickly and easily access the precise information we need, exactly when we need it”.

This software is based on the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA), an open source software framework that helps organizations build new analysis technologies to realize more value from their unstructured information by discovering relationships, identifying patterns, and predicting outcomes. Originally developed by IBM, UIMA is now an open source project at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). UIMA is used extensively in enabling text analysis, extraction and concept search capabilities in other parts of the IBM OmniFind enterprise search portfolio, including OmniFind Enterprise Edition, OmniFind Analytics Edition, and OmniFind Yahoo! Edition.

This new and creative search based system has enabled the IBM specialists to have developed technology that runs on top of the framework for quickly extracting words and concepts from electronic documents, comparing them to the indexes and delivering results based on algorithms developed by the scientists.

IBM Researchers have empowered this software with advanced algorithms that can interpret incomplete queries and find information such as phone numbers, people, meetings, presentations, documents, images and more.Several major corporate companies including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, are also developing more advanced search algorithms in order to deliver better answers to queries.

Shiv Vaithyanathan accepts that semantic search becomes less effective as the universe of possible concepts and relationships associated with words grows, which is why it would be difficult to implement, for example, in a huge, general purpose Web mail system.

Targeting a corporate e-mail system gives researchers a narrower set of possibilities in determining the kind of associations the system should make of words. In addition, IBM has made it possible for developers to expand the OmniFind Indexes.

The IBM OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES) plug-in is available at alphaWorks. It is an online community that gives the outside world a unique peek into the work underway in IBM labs by highlighting the company’s most cutting-edge work and providing it at no cost. As on today, more than 90 of the Fortune 100 Companies are making use of alphaWorks technologies. The company at the same time hopes that the feedback it gets from developers will help to improve the technology by finding its shortcomings. “Finding out the things we should do is precisely why we’re putting it out there,” said Shiv Vaithyanathan.

Goggle is all set to invade the realm of storage now. It may be a ‘Virtual Hard Drive’ from Google. An article recently published in the November 27 issue of the ‘Wall Street Journal’ discussed about strong possibilities of such an innovation by Google.

The ‘Wall Street Journal’ cited few people who are closely connected with the source of this information and are well familiar with the matter. On that basis,WSJ put forward a claim that Google is close to announce an innovative service that would help users store all their word-processing documents, digitized music, video clips, and photographs on its servers.

Introducing New Approach

This service will facilitate everyone to move their digital data and other forms of information on to the Google’s servers. This ‘Internet Cloud’ approach of Google will also provide a specifically dedicated ’search tool box’ in order to facilitate users to reach at their own data. The facility will be extended from multiple computers and all handheld devices with a password. This will be a new approach as the user will be able to access its own data from anywhere. It actually breaks the traditional set up where user can only access through its own machine.

Cloud Concept, the Base

The ‘Cloud Concept’ landed almost five years back along with the concept of Software as a Service (SAAS). SAS was a brainchild of the service provider ‘SalesForce.com‘ and it delivers multiple applications to the customers through internet and ‘Amazon.com‘. The service provider ‘SalesForce.com‘ is offering its dedicated servers and storage services though the internet.

“Cloud computing is going mainstream. The apps people use every day, such as e-mail, photo sharing and word processing, are moving to the Web because it’s easier to share and access your data from anywhere when it’s online in one place.” Said Google’s spokesperson to eWeek though denying confirming the facts given in the ‘Wall Street Journal’.

Google has multiple applications that are internet based and of course free for all users. It is already offering free online storage facility for its Gmail Web Mail Client and Picasa web Album Software. Paid services for online storage is also underway from Google.

Visualizing Challenges Ahead

will certainly face a consternation situation among privacy advocates when it will launch a service of data storage involving the movement of customer’s files onto its servers. Microsoft will definitely pose hurdles and stiff competition as it is also concurrently working on the concept of online file storage services called Live Folders. Another big competitor in this field would be EMC. This traditional storage company, EMC, recently acquired an online storage services provider company Mozy and is growing fast.

The online anywhere access storage concept of Google, assuming that it is coming with all these features as the ‘Wall Street Journal’ reported, would be facing some more relevant challenges and will raise some very pertinent questions regarding its sanctity. It is not going to be a cakewalk for Google.

Security and Privacy Concerns

One of the major challenges is the accessing of user’s data and files irrespective of place, machine, and individuality. Allowing the access just with a password would certainly involve the privacy and security issues. In this time when password theft has become so common, spywares and malwares are continuously hunting for such confidential and personal information of users, the idea of an access through a password seems a bit lightly taken. Considering the intentions and ability along with the strength and user friendly attitude of Google, it seems less likely that Google will not be addressing these issues with utmost care. Despite that, users will want to be doubly sure about the security of their own data on the Google’s servers.

Data Encryption

The idea generates several other related points in one’s mind. How Google will deal with the issue of ‘Encryption of data’. Who will be managing the encryption keys in such a situation? Access to the stored data and file would definitely have certain limiting factors. The ‘cloud’ may also go down at any moment and during that period users will not be able to access their data and file. If this process would be completely online and no other alternative is available for users to access their files offline, it would be an obscure situation and Google certainly have to include all possible remedial measures.

Online Backup

This online data and file storage system of Google would also require an added backup service. It is not wise enough to have distrust on Google guys as this is an almost parallel pre-prequisite.Google has an advantage of learning from the experiences of already functioning services in the market like ‘EMC’.

Geoff Bock, an analyst of repute from the Gilbane Group expressed his views on this possibility, if Google creates an online backup service, it will be thrust into competition with EMC and others who have been practicing storage for years. However, Google lacks the expertise EMC does in information management, such as backup, recovery and archiving.

Desktop Environment

Supplementing the user’s ‘Desktop Environment’ is one more relevant issue that would need Google’s attention. If the provider has any plans to make such supplements more curative and safety measures in addition to the in built affordability, it will definitely require working hard on implementing a file system in the cloud.

Collaborative Web Environment for Sharing Information

Geoff Bock favors an idea of creating a collaborative web environment. He advocates creating Microsoft’s SharePoint in the cloud. This software supplements multiple functions for users. People will certainly find this utility as immensely helpful for working in the cloud on their desktop or handheld devices, collaborative web environment that paves the way for ad-hoc information sharing among work groups, says Geoff Bock of Gilbane Group.

The idea of creating an online data storage services perhaps has a right timing in today’s business and information age. The idea however could prove a sticky one also and Google would require being doubly sure of its success.

We are on the edge of an ending year now. Few more days and we shall bid goodbye 2007 with a happy note. It is time when everyone takes a little time out and looks back on what was accomplished and what was not. Days after days, weeks after weeks, and months after months, it is the time to make lists. You will observe that almost everyone is busy making lists, lists of successes, lists of failures, lists of accomplishments, lists of tasks that could not be completed, lists of progresses made, and lists of all that we can think of.

In business world also, this is the time to check and judge various aspects and make lists. Holiday season is on the cards now. It is time that companies are looking for easy publicity. Journalists are waiting eagerly for the announcements of lists. It is basically time to announce lists and let the world know of what happened during all those previous months.

Realm of the internet is no different either. Search companies are also companies making businesses after all. It is time for the search engine experts to know how search was performed during the whole year. What people wanted this year most, how they performed their searches on the internet, what companies offered to the customers, which companies survived with most business volumes and numerous such questions will be answered this fortnight.

‘Search on the internet’ is on the agenda for this week. Search companies will be putting out their lists containing numerous data and analyses. But the most wanted information would be ‘the top searches of the year 2007′. Microsoft however, will not be bringing out its list of top searches at this time for reasons unknown.

Top Searches at Google

Google, the most popular search platform announced its 2007 End of Year Zeitgeist on December 4, 2007. Zeitgeist of the year 2007 included the most popular and the fastest-rising global search terms that people searched on Google.com. Google went deep in to the ocean of searches, search queries, and various other related aspects in order to capture what people preferred this year. Google has made its hilarious efforts public now and is available at http://www.google.com/zeitgeist

Google’s lists of Top Ten Searches (Global) include (1) iphone; (2) badoo; (3) facebook; (4) dailymotion; (5) webkinz; (6) youtube; (7) ebuddy; (8) second life; (9) hi5; (10) club penguin. Top Ten Fastest Rising Search Terms in the United Sates are (1) iphone; (2 )webkinz; (3) tmz; (4) transformers; (5) youtube; (6) club penguin; (7) MySpace; (8) heroes; (9) facebook; (10) anna nicole smith.

The Fastest Falling (US) Search Terms indicate another interesting trend. There are many more specific search lists that Google has classified for Ringtones, Music, Movies, and few others. You may have a look at these lists.

Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Google’s search products and user experience noted,”There’s a huge surge in interest in social networking. Three of the top 10 rising terms were for popular social networks (four, if you count YouTube). Social networking sites also showed up in lists of top search terms published by other search companies.

Top searches at Yahoo

Yahoo is another most popular search platform and its search lists of the year indicate varying and interesting trends. The search results analyses here are on different levels in comparison to Google. Instead of the ‘Rising’ and ‘Falling’ trend, Yahoo adopted ‘Categories’ as its basis for search listings.

‘Yahoo’s Top Ten Tech Terms‘ are (1) YouTube; (2) Wikipedia; (3) Facebook; (4) iTunes; (5) iPod; (6) iPhone; (7) Nintendo Wii; (8) Xbox; (9) Sony PlayStation 3; and (10) Guitar Hero.

Similarly, ‘Top Ten News Search Terms on Yahoo‘ are (1)Saddam Hussein ; (2) Iran ; (3) Iraq ; (4) President George W. Bush; (5) Oil and Gas Prices; (6) Barrack Obama; (7) Hillary Rodham Clinton; (8) San Diego Fires; (9) Afghanistan; (10) Virginia Tech.

There are several other categories for ‘Top Ten Searches on Yahoo’ including ‘Top Ten Environmental Searches‘, ‘Top Ten Troubled Stars‘, ‘Top Ten on Yahoo Kids‘, ‘Top Ten on Del.ici.ous‘, ‘Top Ten Send Offs‘, ‘Top Ten Sports News‘, ‘Top Ten Consumer-Call-Backs‘, You can see all those top searches of the year 2007 at ‘http://buzz.yahoo.com/toptrends2007/‘.

Top Searches at Ask.com

Big searches on another extremely popular search engine Ask.com demonstrates a different set of people’s preferences during the year 2007. ‘MySpace’ was the biggest one of all here. Surprisingly, ‘Bebo’, ‘Orkut’, and ‘Facebook’ find no place in this top ten lists. The list includes terms, (1) MySpace; (2) Dictionary; (3) Google; (4) Themes; (5) Area Codes; (6) Cars; (7) Weather; (8) Games; (9) Song Lyrics; (10) Movies.

Ask.com’s Top Ten Television Searches of 2007 highlight names as (1) Hannah Montana; (2) Family Guy; (3) SpongeBob Square Pants; (4) WWE; (5) American Idol; (6) Big Brother; (7) Gilmore Girls; (8) South Park; (9) Charmed; (10) Grey’s Anatomy.

The Top Ten Searches of Sports Teams places Boston Red Sox on the top of it. On a separate aspect, Jenifer Lopez was at the first place in the list of Top Ten Celebrity Search of Pregnant Stars of 2007. Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton stood at first and second ranks in the Top Ten Search List of Presidential Candidates of 2007 at Ask.com. It is also very interesting to note that the ‘Democrats’ searched more on the internet in comparison to the ‘Republicans’. ‘Fred Thompson’ was the only top Republican who was searched more and the reason is perhaps that he is the most video-genic of all the candidates, says Ask.com. The Omni-favorite Disney television channel series was the top in the Ask.com top television series searches.

Learning Lessons for Bright Future

The search trends of the year 2007 have a different direction to that of the last year’s search preferences. New concepts are evolving and many more new popularity clads would be landing on the surface of the internet in the coming year also. The list certainly will not remain the same when we shall be counting one more year.

Common people, website owners, and the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts, all will find these announcements of the top searches lists of popular search engines very useful for their future preferences and plannings.Many of us who are going to enter in to the world of the internet and are thinking to establish websites of their choices and preferences would find these search preferences as the guiding lines.

We would certainly be witnessing upcoming of many more websites based on the search results and people’s preferences in the coming year of 2008.It is therefore the best time to learn our lessons for a bright future.

Here comes the world’s first ever vertical Search Engine Wiki!

Online training institution, ‘Search Engine College‘, recently launched this vertical Search Engine Wiki specifically dedicated to the ’search engines’ and ’search engine marketing’. This Wiki is based on a core concept of providing a ‘collaborative online library’ of ’search engine marketing (SEM)’ resources.

Kalena and Jerry Jordan, the founders of the Search Engine College, invested handsome ten years digging in to the ocean of web world with search engine optimization tasks, intensive industrial research and practice and could evolve a vertical concept that is extremely innovative and beneficial to common internet users, the expert professionals, and the businesses equally.

“Search Engine Wiki actually began life as a massive collection of bookmarks, tools and site links that we’d gathered over the past 10 years as search engine optimization consultants”, says Kalena Jordan.

Kalena Jordan further narrates the experience, “As I was constantly referencing these within the SEO courses that I teach at Search Engine College and in my Search Engine Advice Column, I realized that the collection would make fantastic starter content for a community-driven wiki. Last year, we discovered that the perfect domain (SearchEngineWiki.com) was available and it seemed like serendipity. We’ve been growing the Wiki ever since”.

Advancing the existing concepts of Wikipedia and some more Wikis, the Search Engine Wiki also has an interactive design base. It is now in its BETA release and anyone can contribute for its enrichment.

“Search Engine College” is an online training institution and it offers a variety of courses in “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)” and “Search Engine Marketing (SEM)” concepts. Search Engine College (SEC) is owned by Jordan Consulting Group and managed by well-known search engine optimization industry expert Kalena Jordan. The college conducts training courses and programs of different durations in conjunction with experienced professionals and teachers specialized in various aspects of search engine marketing (SEM). These courses are well-respected in the industry.

Wiki users can suggest resources and definitions to be added or sign up to become editors and add these resources themselves. Search Engine College students are also encouraged to collaborate and contribute to the Wiki during their training and beyond.

Salient Search Engine Wiki Features

The Search Engine Wiki would be facilitating users with plenty of resources. Several of these resources exist on the website and many more are expected to be added in times to come.

Lists of numerous search engines are an interesting resource base that has been categorized in accordance with the country, type and industry specifically.

There exists a “Glossary” for commonly used and applied terms in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and the Pay per Click (PPC).

The Wiki also contains a library of search engine marketing articles. Many more articles on various other related aspects will be added in near future. This is a unique source of employment resources listings concerning the SEO, PPC, and SEM job vacancies. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of the Wiki site has answers to many of the common queries and provides clarifications.

Webmasters will find the lists of popular search engines as well as the search engine marketing tools and various times saving software’s extremely useful for their help. The lists will be updated constantly.

Latest info about the upcoming search industry conferences and several other events would be of immense help to all the professionals and companies who are looking forward to imbibe current advancements in this sector.

There exists a dedicated section on this Search Engine Wiki that contains introductions to all the well known search industry personalities. Search Engine Wiki has a plan to have a large variety of other resources relating to the exciting and fast-paced world of search engine marketing.

Identify Yourself and Derive Numerous Advantages

You may be a webmaster or a small business owner having a desire to learn various innovative marketing strategies and approaches in order to market your own web site with the help of search engines. You could be a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) or Search Engine Marketer (SEM) and willing to enhance your industry skills and derive more profits. People may be identifying you as marketing executive who has been entrusted with the task of promoting a company or client’s web site with higher search engine rankings. In case you are a web site owner then you might be interested in making a little more extra cash by promoting a product or any services with the help of search engine friendly techniques. You may be developing your business as a website designer or you may be running an advertising agency and you must be looking for various beneficial search engine services that you would like to offer to your clients. You may be simply an expert associated with multifarious functions related to the internet technology or just a novice or an amateur internet lover expressing yourself and looking for more popularity.

This latest innovation called Search Engine Wiki is for everyone’s advantage.

Welcome Search Engine Wiki !