Google Base

So Google are pretty cool, there's no doubting that. Today (or pretty recently at any rate) they have opened-up Google Base for general use. This is pretty nifty - a database that anyone can add items to. There are some pre-defined types such as recipes, jobs and so on, or you can add your own. There are already nearly 1,000 recipes on there, and I expect that this will grow massively.

Aside from providing a good place to dump data that you don't mind being public, Google have provided what is effectively a massive Wiki version of the Web as a whole. There are links for each item to mark it as bad, so if someone posts porn as a recipe, for example, it can be taken down. The possibilities for finding information are great. Let's say you want to find a review of a DVD player you are considering buying. If you type any model of DVD player and 'review' into Google at the moment you'll get hundreds of hits for price comparison sites and very few useful reviews. However, with Google Base you should (in theory) be able to search for that DVD player model in the 'reviews' category and get straight to useful content.

If it all works then it will be really cool. I suppose the concern is one company owning all of that data, but to be fair to Google they haven't gone for Microsoft-style evilness so far so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. If having some unobtrusive Google ads at the side of the page is the cost for getting straight to the information I want, I'm all for it.

If you usually read my blog via my Web site then you'll notice that you've been redirected to my LiveJournal. There were some storms last week and one casualty of a lightening strike on the power line was the PSU of my Web server. This is a pain but at least it's under warranty. Not only that, but it's an external PSU (being a Mac Mini) so it could all have been a lot more painful! Anyway, I put my photos on Flickr as a temporary measure but I've decided to make that permanent. Go take a look - it's a neat site.