I've been reading Joe Kraus' blog Bnoopy on entrepreneurship since he started it last month. His posts recounting lessons learned as Excite's co-founder have been entertaining gems for entrepreneurs. Inovie Software, the San Diego-based business collaboration company I founded in 1997 and later sold (now at UGS), was a minnow compared to Excite. Even so, we faced most of the challenges Joe describes.
So given my background and interest in business collaboration and entrepreneurship, I was very excited to read that Joe's new company, JotSpot, is joining SocialText to bring the power of wikis to a broader audience. Nice!! Ever since I first used a wiki I've been hooked. The first thing I do now when getting involved in a new project is ensure a wiki is in place -- I don't want to work without one! A Wiki provides a type of ad-hoc, free-form collaboration we never achieved with TeamCenter. If I knew then what I know now, I... Nevermind! ;)
Dan Farber writes:
JotSpot is based on wiki technology, which lowers the barriers to creating Web-based collaborative applications. JotSpot extends the concept. "Wikis run out of steam in that they don't allow
you to add structure or build apps," Kraus said. "On the surface, JotSpot looks like Wiki and you can use as a wiki, but it allows you to start with unstructured data and add structure incrementally."
That's the stuff right there. I'm really looking forward to seeing where SocialText, JotSpot, and some in open source (e.g., XWiki) take this "Application Wiki" concept.
ps. Jon Udell has blogged a Flash Demo for anyone interested in seeing JotSpot in action.
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