Spam

Since I wrote about my sweary run-in with Captchas - those squiggly things at the bottom of forms that can only easily be read after too much coffee/beer - a week or so ago, I've been paying more attention to this technology.

Spam is still a pervasive issue and judging by a recent debate on the uk-netmarketing email discussion forum highlighted the problem isn't just a plague on inboxes, competition forms, surveys and any other web form is a target.

Knol, Google's Wikipedia beater has been in beta since December 2007. Last week we saw the wrapping come off and Knol opening up to accept new content entries. Knol, short for Knowledge, is on a steep slope to compete with Wikipedia. With 9.2 million UK users [according to Nielson], even with Google's size, trying to achieve over 8bn articles [and counting at Wikipedia] will take some time.