Google Knol Released Early This Week

Collaboration is the big buzzword of the year. Goolgle, that is trying to invest time and efforts on anything that has “potential”, is trying once again (after Google Docs) to tap that market.

They just released Google Knol which is a mix of collaborative authoring and community. The community aspect allows for search for specific subjects (or authors) and rating of the content. The UI is very simple (like most things Google) and discplays related content and a short author profile, for example. Users can rate, comment, email and print articles. A revision list is another interesting feature, all very well organized spatially within the User Interface.

Interesting move… and again, the question: how can we use this for learning situations? The answer seems obvious…

iPhone 2.0 Applications

Has anyone been surprised by the new iPhone apps?

Some amazing ones…

Like Loopt.com that lets you know where your friends are on a Google map…

Others like Evernote.com that let you take photo notes, audio notes, etc (all sync’ed to your profile on their website)…

One of my favorites is the Shazam app which RECOGNIZES a song when you play it next to yourt phone and tells you the title, artist, album AND lets you buy right there… Amazing… So, when you are preparing some learnign material that you need THAT song that is playing on the radio but you don’t know its name: Shazam!

Cool apps… I even use the iPhone as a book light now

Google Lively - 3D Chat/Virtual World

As if Google wasn’t already trying to be the know-it-all and the have-it-all of the Web, now they also try to compete with 3D chat rooms and virtual worlds in this new release in beta phase:

Lively - “Chat and interact with your friends in rooms you design.”

“Customize your avatar and stream personal photos and video.”

“Invite your friends to chat and help decorate.”

The look an feel resembles virtual worlds such as CyWorld, for instance. Many others are compared on this chart by TechCrunch. The Blue Book published by the Association of Virtual Worlds contains and enormous list of Virtual Worlds…

It might be worth giving it a try. I am just not sure whether we need yet another virtual world combined with a chat room capability… mmmm… All in all, It might be just another move for Google to place their ads all over the Web , this time on the 3D Web…

By the way, no Mac version as of now…

Also, take a look at Karl Kapp’s list of Alternative to Second Life.

Bike Flying over the Golden Gate Bridge

Mike shows us an interesting way of making exercising more fun and interactive. He created a bike that communicates to Google Earth by using the Sun SPOT device created by Sun Microsystems.