At the end of a particularly insightful post on ClappingTrees, J.K. asks why the huge backlog of submitted sites can’t be opened up to everyone, Digg-style, in order to get sites approved (she’s referring to the DMOZ and Technorati backlogs here). She also points out some flaws with the Alexa ranking system (as I pointed out in my comment on that post, the reality is that Alexa’s ranking system, which they say consists of millions of users with Alexa toolbars installed, is less than perfect, and actually consists of probably around 180 000 users).

Tecnorati, in a sense, does act like a collaborative ranking system. The only problem with that collaborative ranking system is that only site owners who create a link to other sites get a say as to what blogs are popular — site readers (who don’t own a blog) don’t have any way to have their voice heard on Technorati.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to many people that Digg users pretty much hate blogs (unless you’re Smashing Magazine apparently). So on the one hand, we have Digg users who are collaboratively rating content (but largely don’t want to see blog content — and for the record, I’m not knocking Digg for that, the Digg community can decide to see or not see whatever they want), and on the other hand, we have Technorati that only ranks blog content through links (which are created by blog owners, not readers).

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Thanks to the (much-appreciated) feedback of J.K. from ClappingTrees, I’ve instituted some new features that should make searching for posts and browsing past posts much easier.

The first feature is a new refinement in search, called simply ‘Uncommon Knowledge’ (it can be found at the top of the search results page, beside the other search refinements, which are ‘Knowledge Management’ and ‘Technololgy’). Clicking on this refinement after entering a search term will allow you to search just this site — thereby allowing me to still make my knowledge management and technology search engine available, but also allow you to actually find stuff on this site.

The other features I’ve added are a list of recent posts (thanks again J.K.), as well as a listing of monthly archives, in case you want to browse through past posts that way. We’re up to around a hundred posts here, so these features should make it easier to find things I’ve written about in the past.

One other feature that’s in the works right now is a listing of recent comments in the sidebar. That way you can see what other people are commenting on without having to browse through all the posts. Enjoy the new features — and thanks again to J.K. for the great suggestions. Update: This feature is now up and working in the sidebar and showing the last 5 comments.

According to my site statistics, there are several dozen people reading this site with Internet Explorer 6. With Internet Explorer 7 being only a few months old, this is certainly to be expected (my stats also tell me that almost no one — which means around 2% — of people visiting this site are using Windows Vista). I talked a bit about information sharing and compatibility before, but Internet Explorer 6 presented a whole new challenge for me with the design of this site.

When adapting the theme of this site, I checked for compatibility (i.e. the site not looking like crap) on both Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 — but then started to get messages from people saying that things were unaligned and looking just generally messy on Internet Explorer 6. So then I had the problem of how to test on Internet Explorer 6, since I already have Internet Explorer 7 at home (I need to also state here that I am not a designer, and anyone who is a designer is probably having a chuckle at my introduction to a problem they face every day).

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Problems are like debts — everyone has them, but no one really wants to talk about them. But being specific about the problem you’re trying to solve can be a great way to get solutions to that problem. So before trying to list solutions, ask yourself: what problem am I trying to solve?

Creating a problem to solution relationship for your ideas also certainly helps to keep them grounded. But is just figuring out the problem enough? Or do you need to go a bit further than that (especially when you’re dealing with a complex or multifaceted problem).

For example, what if the problem you are trying to solve is to create a community? You might start identifying ways that you can build on the community you’re already establishing (like writing in way that attracts the people you want to attract), but what do you do when you’re having trouble even defining the problem, let alone coming up with the solution? Here’s some ideas on where to start.

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While some say that Wikipedia is actually against promoting real knowledge, it would seem that Wikipedia also promotoes simple knowledge. This may be old news to some — but I was actually quite surprised to come across simple.wikipedia.org. The idea behind Simple English Wikipedia is to provide a way for people who read little English to get the same knowledge that more proficient English readers would get from the regular Wikipedia (this is just as useful to kids, who may not understand all of the definitions on regular Wikipedia).

If you look something up on Wikipedia (say for example, the word ‘encyclopedia’), you’ll get a definition that (including sources) is 3472 words long. That’s lots of information and detail to tell you what an encyclopedia is. Contrast that with Simple English Wikipedia’s 272 word definition of what knowledge is: if you just want to understand what an encyclopedia is, the shorter version is much more efficient. Contrast that with the dictionary.com definition of encyclopedia, which is only 57 words.

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I was discussing this site with a few people yesterday and for the first time, stopped to realize how much I have learned while creating and promoting this site. I talked about defining and differentiating your site the other day, but I wanted to take a moment to both stop and reflect on the past of this site, as well as its future.

So as of the writing of this article, we’re up to around 85 feed subscribers. To everyone reading this through the feed, thanks for subscribing! If you haven’t subscribed to the site yet in a feed reader, it’s free and easy to do. Below this paragraph is a live icon telling you how many subscribers we have so far.

So what’s next for Uncommon Knowledge? If you’ve been reading for a while, you probably know that the site has went through many, many redesigns (I like to play with designs, even if I’m not that good at it — but I’m trying to brush up on my XHTML and PHP). I’ve been quite happy with the current design, and will be further refining the details of the design in the next few weeks.

If there are categories you would like to see or topics you’d like to see covered, please leave a message below and let me know. Blogs and blog ranking have both been hot topics here, but I’d like to hear what interests you. And don’t forget — leaving a comment here gets you a followed link back to your own site through the top commentators on the sidebar. Thanks again for reading and for following along in this knowledge sharing experience!

What does the phrase ‘knowledge management’ mean to you? Unless you’re someone who works specifically in information or knowledge services, probably not very much. The concepts behind knowledge management however, can make a big difference to you and your business — and best of all, they don’t cost you any money. Here’s a few ideas on how to make knowledge management not only matter, but also to integrate it into the way you do business.

1. Stop calling it knowledge management. It’s a bit of a misnomer. While fields like records management and information management are really about managing the things they describe, ‘knowledge management’ is much more about knowledge sharing than any kind of management — and sharing makes people feel that they can and should contribute to the process.

2. Think about people, then technology. Instead of focusing on what cool technologies can do for your business, think about the basics of how people communicate and share things. I guarantee: the only technologies that will help you be successful in any kind of business have human communication at their root. If you think about people first and technology second (yes, that sounds like a cliche, but it’s true), you won’t get mired down by technologies you don’t need.

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Over the course of writing this blog for the past few months, I feel I’ve learned a thing or two along the way about what it takes to make your blog, site or brand stand out from others. I thought I’d share those ideas.

Here’s 12 ways to make sure your blog, site or brand gets noticed (especially when you’re a small fish in a big pond).

1. Imagine where you want to be. Without a plan, you’ll be lost before you know it. But before creating a plan, you need to think about why you’re doing what you’re doing — and imagine where you want to be a month from now, two months from now, and a year from now.

2. Identify your target audience. Know who you want to speak to. If you don’t have a clear understanding of your audience, you won’t know what messages will resonate with that audience. Clearly spell out who will be listening to you — think of every piece you write as if you were standing up before that audience to read it — and make sure they’ll care about what you have to say.

3. Impress your audience. It’s great to understand your audience, but how do you make an impression on that audience? Be original and be honest. Don’t try to too hard to impress your audience — because nothing impresses people like simple writing with a clear message.

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Did Google’s mail service kill another product line?

Shane Smith, CEO of Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) claims that it did. According to Smith, “Google have made a monstrous mess of their intellectual property requirements around their GMail product.” IIIR apparently had another product called ‘GMail’ before Google did — and claims that Google improperly acquired the GMail trademark.

IIIR wants Google to change the name of its email service (although they are not going to try to lay claim to the gmail.com domain). Considering all of the branding that Google has put into this mark already though, they would more than likely just look for monetary damages against Google (the GMail trademark is apparently valued at between $48 and $64 million dollars — although one has to take that with a grain of salt, considering it’s the number that IIIR has come up with).

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