Photo courtesy Thor Swift/Wired.com

Found on the Wired blogs. Google’s Udi Manber spends endless time thinking about how search can be improved. One big reason many searches don’t succeed, he believes, is that despite the 20 billion or so Web pages in Google’s indexes — including the 2 million items in Wikipedia — the information simply isn’t there.

“The process will take 20 seconds with credit cards,” says Knol product manager Cedric Dupont. Phone checks will take a minute or so. This vetting, Manber hopes, will give knols accountability and, in the case of high-status authors, the benefit of a solid reputation.

Update: Here’s Knol from Google.

The folks from Tumblr left a post on Social Media Today about an overhaul to the Tumblr platform.

In their own words - We’re getting ready to push some major updates over the next few weeks, and we wanted to give you a heads-up on changes to our custom theme engine. We’ve tried to make Tumblr themes as open and customizable as possible, and the things you’ve created have blown our minds. But there are still things we’ve wanted to do that haven’t been easy enough.

So next Monday we’ll be scrapping our old code for a completely overhauled template engine. We’re seriously excited about this, and we can’t wait to see what you’re able to do with it.

The most noticeable improvements:

* The new engine is scoped, so you’ll be able to nest and repeat blocks and variables.
* The engine uses a new token parser that will support special syntax for API hooks.

This will let your theme call back for content, like:

{​block:Posts type=”photo” tagged=”spotlight” count=”5″}
” />
{/block:Posts}

We’ve been systematically testing the new engine to make sure it’s backwards compatible. You can test it yourself by adding ?beta=1 to any tumblelog URL [e.g. http://www.davidslog.com/?beta=1]. If it’s working correctly, you shouldn’t see a difference.

Please let us know if you see anything funny.

Incidentally I have tested the clunky old Social Space Station theme and it seems to be identical so that’s good. Still waiting on a banner to take the design to a new universe. The Social Space Station is a tumblelog dedicated to presenting, discussing, and discovering interesting things out there in the social media sphere.

As CNet reports today, Hollywood and YouTube may be edging towards their own version of Pax Romana. Meanwhile, beyond the learned walls of the law courts and Google’s battle with Viacom, we here at Social Cache have been scratching our heads over Viacom’s position.

Obviously Viacom is up in arms over what it argues is copyright infringement whenever one of its artists’ songs are used in a user-generated video. Their lawyers are even arguing that in most cases they want to set aside the notion of fair use. That in itself is ridiculous as in a lot of circumstances Viacom has stepped over the edge of copyright boundaries. In 2007 Viacom sent YouTube 100,000 takedown notices! And as this video from the EFF points out, many of those videos that Viacom had asked YouTube to remove, were not infringing anyone’s copyright.

We ourselves received a takedown notice and had a video removed from YouTube. The video was of one of our numerous snowboarding expeditions to Mt Hood and it included a clip of a song by the group White Zombie. We could have argued that under the law if we had used the music for parody, for comment, for criticism, for news reporting or for non-commercial use then we’d be in the clear. In this instance it was the latter - non-commercial use. We couldn’t be bothered, we weren’t that attached to the video and anyway, like millions of other folks, we put up videos at an alarming rate. Here’s our latest.

So here’s the Nemo and Social Cash POV. By removing our video Viacom denied thousands of people the pleasure of hearing a White Zombie song. One of its own artists! And no money was changing hands. One solution - Viacom should provide YouTube with a license from a roster of its artists who agree that their music can be used in a video for non-commercial use. In return YouTube provides its users with a simple license that allows users to add music from these artists to their amateur videos for non-commercial use for a small fee of, perhaps $3.00. Now Viacom and its artists get a share of this revenue, YouTube users won’t receive takedown notices, and Viacom can go a long way to recouping its, no doubt, millions of dollars it is spending on these lawsuits.

You’re welcome. Let me know why it won’t work….

Meanwhile over at MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has a business that’s built on the backs of thousands of unsigned musicians. Who is looking out for them?

For decades now the dream of media types and ad firms has been to convert the humble remote control from a mere volume and channel changer to a spangly ‘product buying module.’ Tivo and Amazon are announcing a partnership today that introduces a “product purchase” feature via Tivo’s DVR service.

The idea is simple - turn the Tivo remote into a tool for buying the products being advertised and promoted on commercials and talk shows. If a talk show host talks up a book, Blu-Ray disc or CD, Tivo viewers will see onscreen menus with links to buy those products.

The NYT reports that - In the months ahead, TiVo plans to begin offering this feature to advertisers and programmers, so that the chance to buy products and have them delivered will be presented to viewers during commercials and even alongside product placements during live shows.

“Just a few years ago, we were viewed with great paranoia as the disruptor,” said Thomas S. Rogers, chief executive of TiVo. “Our goal now is to work with the media industry to come up with ways to resist the downward pressure of less advertising viewing and create a way for advertising on TV to become more effective, more engaging and closer to the sale.”

Tivo is now positioning itself away from media industry disruptor - offering its customers ways to skip ads, to media industry saviour, but not without Mr Rogers sowing the seeds of paranoia - “As DVRs get more popular, “the majority of commercials in home will be fast-forwarded through,” he said. “It is critical that there be a form of advertising and a transactional solution that underpins the DVR, or the economics of television are going to be substantially undermined.”

This is serious news when it comes to business networking and social media, I see a serious win-win here for both parties. There has been some debate recently about Facebook and how seriously it can be taken when it comes to businesses using the Facebook network to extend their social media ambitions as well as advertise across it. I would argue that the LinkedIn/NYT partnership steps up the ante for both Facebook and MySpace; the NYT, one of the world’s great media institutions that has seriously embraced the internet to further its business, may be on a path to shaking off its “Grey Lady” image and LinkedIn, which, although having only 25 million registered users making it small by social network standards, is by far the doyen of social sites for serious business users. We’ll see how this one unfolds.

Kudos, once again to Marshall Kirkpatrick for breaking the story.

My Online Marketing Presentation About Radiohead from iaintait on Vimeo.