Knol

Google has now launched it's own alternative to wikipedia - knol. A Knol appears to be an encyclopaedia article, written by a named 'expert', as opposed to the anonymous collaboration that goes between wikipedia articles. However, anyone can write one - you do need to sign up with a google username. I bet google give prominence to this source in their search results, much as they have with wikipedia for the last couple of years, so you probably can't avoid it. You may find it a useful alternative, but you may want to wait a while. Why?

Obviously, today's the first day of it going public and there seem to be, umm, hundreds of articles (compare with nearly 2.5 million in the English Wikipedia). Hopefully, as it grows, it will keep the focus of a well edited encyclopaedia, rather than the free for all of trivia in many of the wikipedia articles.

However, they do need to check the copyright. I went to the article at the top, on Type-1 diabetes. Appears to be written by an expert in the field, though the term 'moderated collaboration also appears'. It has a creative commons licence attached, but all the photos have copyright/all rights reserved under them. So, can we use this information freely or not?