Knol – Let's Rethink the Way We Handle Knowledge Bases | Hacker News Reader

Knol – Let's Rethink the Way We Handle Knowledge Bases

knol.io

30 pointsjevin29 comments

"We are in no way affiliated to the discontinued Google Knol."

Google trademarked Knol back in the day (2007). A USPTO search shows it is still live:

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4809:9wz...

Electronic publishing services, namely, publication of text and graphic works of others in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge; providing education, entertainment and information services, namely, providing information via the Internet in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge.

I will also point out that one does not need a registered trademark to have trademark rights in many countries, and this is certainly the case in the US: the issue is that trademarks are a protection not just for the owner, but almost more primarily for potential consumers; it is effectively a protection against people using familiarity and naming to confuse users into affiliations that don't exist. The concept of a trademark then only requires demonstrating that in your field (as trademarks are always scope limited: if one came across a laundry-mat named Knol it would not be the same issue) the name carries expectation: that people would recognize it and associate it with a specific party.

It also must be stressed that it is not sufficient to have a disclaimer: the user even getting to your website to even see the disclaimer is effectively already under false pretenses, and not everyone reads those messages anyway. If anything, that you feel the need to have such a disclaimer is good evidence that people are, in fact, being confused by your naming. I, for a concrete example, am only on this comment thread because "oh, I remember Knol... I am surprised they are trying to reboot/revitalize that project", and would have read a ton of these comments under that vague premise had it not been for this top one making it clear "no, this is not Knol". This is just such an egregious example of what you can't do with identity :(.

That's really helpful. Thanks. Sounds like we'll have to check this issue in details.

Oh, thanks for the heads up. I wonder if this applies to us, since we're not a US based company.

IANAL, but I was also able to find Knol from Google on the UK IPO search:

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU006911796

and the OHIM website, which as I understand it covers Europe-wide trademarks:

https://oami.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/006911796

But like I said, I am not a lawyer, do your own research, consult an expert etc etc...

Of course, I'll have that checked out! ;-)

You don't want to pay the ton of money it will take to have that question answered by a court. Change the name - it's demoralizing and embarrassing, but way way cheaper than trademark litigation.

And there's yet another company that's spelled differently, but one could argue is phonetically identical to your URL: http://www.ca.com/us/content/integration/nolio.aspx

Phonetically it does sound identical. I've started documenting myself on the whole naming and trademarking aspect of online services. If I have a nice list, I'll post the links in a thread here.

This looks very cool. My company (http://periscope.io) is just now getting to the point of putting documentation online, and -- surprise! -- it's a huge pain and products in this space all seem mediocre.

One deal-breaker for me is that it has to feel like it's on my website. This means templates are not enough: I need full CSS customizability (statuspage.io does a good job with this) or iframe ability. The lack of a great, fully customizable product in this space is why I am currently fucking around with Markdown pages.

It's certainly fair to charge a lot more than you're apparently charging in order to get this customizability -- needing it probably predicts a real business that cares about its brand. (If knol.io becomes a big business I bet you'll end up charging a lot more in general.)

Anyway, awesome job with this! Looks like a great product solving a real problem.

Thanks for these kind words!

Theme customisation is definitely something on our future features list. But maybe we should move it up on the priority list. ;-)

just took a quick look at your site, are you using D3 for the charting?

CanvasJS, which we're really pleased with. Very fast to develop with, very fast to render (some customers have hundreds of charts per dashboard).

thanks, hadn't heard of canvasjs, I'm assuming it is relatively new?

could you explain a little about why you chose it? and how you compared and determined the other options out there?

I'm in the same boat and looking at several possible solutions (for example DC.js which is based on D3) so would appreciate any help.

thanks

OP here. Thanks for the huge support! I can already see a good amount of requests. I'll be sure to get back to you shortly.

Let me know if you have any questions. I'll be glad to answer them!

Are there any demos of a knol instance/site running?

Unfortunately, the website is still under development. Hopefully, we'll have the first version online in a few weeks.

I'm intrigued, but I have nearly no idea how to link what appears to be a sales landing page to "Let's Rethink the Way We Handle Knowledge Bases". I don't see anything about "rethinking" there, just that I can buy 10, 100, or 300 of them. Is there a better link that more clearly represents "rethinking"?

Maybe the page doesn't represent the "rethinking" properly. Our vision is that knowledge bases should not be on a separate website. For example, if you're a web agency and you sell a Wordpress website, your knowledge base should be inside the Wordpress adminstration. If you're selling a custom solution, you should be able to use an API to plug your documentation there.

I hope the examples explain better what we are trying to achieve here.

"No image storage limit (as long as it's fair)"

Personally, I've never liked seeing this in ToS and the like - it usually means "unlimited until you hit the limit we didn't tell you about"

I see exactly what you mean. Maybe it's clearer if we go with "XX GB of storage space".

Aside from getting a few examples up, I'd clarify the pricing. It's not clear if that's $ per year or per month.

Ohh that's a nice find. It's actually per month. I'll have that modified right away.

What does "20 Knowledge bases" mean? Is it 20 articles, or 20 independent sets of articles?

It means 20 sets of articles.

Typo on your front page:

"Import your existing documentation, create new ones or choose from our exsiting library!"

Edit: tone

Ouch. So ashamed of this! But I fixed it. I'm verifying all the text again. Thanks for he heads up.

http://www.boxuk.com/upload/2014/02/Relaunched-Ultimate-Webs... someone on here posted it the other day and I've used it, snagged a bunch of stuff so far.

I like the idea of what you are doing I'll be sure to keep an eye on it :), Good Luck.

That's a pretty exhaustive list. Thanks. I used this one (which is not too bad): http://www.clickminded.com/seo-checklist/

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