Google's announcement that it will develop a rival to Wikipedia, but one where by-lined articles by experts in their field dominate, has had a mixed reception in the blogosphere.
TechCrunch argues that Google's planned online encyclopaedia, named Knol, puts Google further than ever in the content-generation space - away from its core business of content aggregation.
But who really cares? Google already acts as a major content generation platform in the form of its Blogger free weblog system.
If Google's Knol starts creating better articles than Wikipedia I'll be visiting the former more. I like the idea of more authoritative articles being featured and having more than one big collaborative online encyclopaedia will give all the players more of an incentive to get the content right.
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Back home, a decent dose of good sense has been administered to the banking sector with the BNZ's pledge to cover the losses of customers who are defrauded due to having their passwords or PINs stolen online. It follows a move by Westpac to make the same pledge.
As we discussed earlier in the year, the New Zealand Bankers' Association's Code of Banking Practice release in July, included a subclause which said you could be liable for online banking losses as a result of e-crime if "you have failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that the protective systems such as virus scanning, firewall, antispyware, operating system and anti-spam software on your computer are up to date".
That little paragraph created potential for nightmare scenarios where oniline banking customers thought they were protected, but turned out not to be well-protected enough, and therefore were left out of pocket.
Everyone should use antivirus and firewall, identity protection and secure web browsers to keep their online financial transactions safe. But moves by the banking sector to wash their hands of responsibility for losses will do nothing but discourage people from using online banking services.
Instead the strategy should be to provide easy-to-use, two-factor authentication systems, such as random key generators and text message-based authorisation. Both are currently on offer from some banks.
The BNZ will in fact make two-factor authentication compulsory from next March. This stance by the BNZ and Westpac, puts them on the same footing as Australian banks which take responsibility for the losses of customers caught in online banking scams. That's a good thing. We'll all have to get used to two-factor security measures, but that's a relatively small price to pay given the possible alternative.
Finally, it's worth checking out Kiwi Web 2.0 expert Richard MacManus' votes for the best web companies of the year and Twitter and his pick for what will be big next year - open source web technologies.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10482872
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