Rock n' Knols

At Google's, a knol is a piece of knowledge wrapped up in one webpage. Adsense and all Google Labs toys welcome. Everybody's invited, and one can easily imagine something like "tell us what you know about ABC" popping up each time you type "ABC" in Big G's search box.

At Google's, knowledge doesn't have to be checked. This ain't no wiki stuff : you can claim the Earth is flat and was invented 6,000 years ago, you can say Obama had an affair with Oprah and Osama, you can praise your sect and hire a new PR manager devoted to knols, no one will challenge it.

At Google's, volumes speak. Nevermind quality. Actually, with AdSense and Knols, Big G is bound to replace Wal-Mart as the biggest private employer.

Let's make it straight : Google Knols is the anti-encyclopedia, the mother of all hoaxes, an insult to the knowledge society. "Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing." For business, you bet.

The aim is not to compete with Wikipedia but to prevent Wikipedia from appearing all the time at the top of Google's search results. Instead of wasting the best advertising space, Big G will demultiply it and the beauty of it is everybody will do it for free.

Google is definitely not "[putting its] reputation on the line" : Google just doesn't care about its reputation.

Money can buy many things (including spectrum), but the era of a beloved Google seems over.

Facebooked up

Here they are, popping up each time I log on : friend requests, vampires invitations, werewolves invitation, zombies invitations, IQ test invitations, survey/petition/vote invitations, petrolhead invitations, optical illusions requests, movie rack invitations, bookshelf invitations, visual bookshelf invitation, brain game requests, moods invitations, music invitations, hatching eggs invitations, pillow fight requests...

I don't fell like becoming a werewolf, nor the "booze friend" of a soju addict. I don't feel like drinking that "Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster" concoction either. And I certainly don't feel like exposing my LinkedIn contacts without their approval.

I don't mind exposing part of my self, though - what is blogging all about ? But I don't feel so confortable with Facebook. Something to do with this closed face / open book thing, I guess...
What I do appreciate is the virtual answering machine function. Not the application, but the whole shebang ; Facebook's platform in itself. Now there's that virtual me taking care of incoming calls and spam. My homepage takes a break, and anyway most of the comments on my blogs are outsourced to the various media that relay them.

Lets me plenty of time to focus on the IRL / In Real Life side of existence. True food, authentic sweets and tricks, genuine friendship, and the mothers of all killer apps, love and life.

VizaOzavi and other bull's eyes

What's in a name ? With zaOza*, Vivendi decided to drop 2 "vi"s at the edge of Vizzavi, and to add a bull's eye in the middle. Like : this time, I don't want to mess around but to go for the real thing ?... Maybe they purchased Activision to enhance their eyesight and optimize their chances to hit the said bull's eye.

Vodafone and Telefonica are into better targeting too : the Anglo-saxon leader and the Latino leader took a stake in Amobee Media Systems, a mobile advertising joint.

The Shoogle application must target Parkinson disease victims, blurring the frontier between handsets and handshakes. Next time you go to the pub, don't forget to fill her up with scotch.

SMobile Systems targets the soft spot of mobile linux : the first Android app is as sexy and useful as Norton. SecurityShield is the name, paving the way for developpers the game.

Elsewhere :

- NFC takes the tube - the London Underground before a greater coming out ?
- Outdoors, the OFCOM allows UK Broadband switch from TD-CDMA to WiMAX. If they can make it, that is. WiMAX seems to be losing ground in the US, where Verizon picks LTE.
- Korea keeps migrating at high speed : HSDPA claims 3.2 M subs end of Q3 2007 (2.02 for KTF). Users are discovering the beauty of (U)SIM cards and the easyness to drop a handset or an operator for another.
- Turned down by Sprint-Nextel (while KTF and DoCoMo snatched each 17% of U Mobile in Malaysia), SK Telecom takes 38.89% of Hanaro Telecom (including a 25% market share in fixed broadband). SKT discovers true convergence even later than Vodafone - and postpones a much needed boost in internationalization.


* the commercial name of "Vivendi Mobile Entertainment : Vizzavi's Second Life ? " (20070526)