Wiki apps

Google Sites, a solid - but a bit oversimplified - jab at marrying an online collaboration app with a simple website creator, was initially available only as part of Google Apps for companies and organizations. Now, it’s open for everyone. Google Sites lets you create a simple webpage, and embed documents, photos, videos into it with ease. After you’re done with your page, you can invite other users to see or edit the page, with the ability to change access privileges at any time. It’s not exactly Basecamp, but it’s free and it works well.

Last September, Yahoo acquired Zimbra, an enterprise Web email company. Zimbra is an impressive product. It does e-mail in a browser better than you"ve ever seen it. The company also makes a business-class e-mail server, and many of its services interconnect to Microsoft"s e-mail products--the Exchange server and the Outlook client. Nonetheless, it is hard, at first glance, to see how Zimbra fits into Yahoo"s business. ***

The launch of Google Sites has spurred closer examination of the Google Apps suite and of some of the claims or innuendo from Google executives regarding the enterprise fitness of its cloud-based applications. Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb compiles a dossier from recent posts on ZDNet and other sites that strip bare the Google Sites bride. ***

Jotspot, the wiki service that was acquired by Google nearly a year ago, looks to be moving towards completion in the process of becoming a Google Application. As of yesterday, JotSpot is a Google Apps service code name, and its help and support pages moved to Google earlier this spring. Google Apps users with a hosted domain will also notice the logo for Google Wiki. While this service isn’t yet activated, it indicates that Jotspot is nearly fully integrated with Google Apps. Announcements regarding Jotspot’s integration are expected to come out at the Office 2. ***

Last week brought us news regarding Google’s future plans for their online application suite. At the Web 2.0 Expo CEO Eric Schmidt said Google will release a PowerPoint-type presentation application, slated for this summer. Then, VP Douglas Merrill announced on the official Google blog that the company has acquired videoconferencing software from a Swedish startup. What else is in the works? Phil Sim of Squash makes some guesses after his participation in a survey of Google Apps Premier users. In that survey, Google explored his interest in a variety of applications. ***

Egnyte is a new business groupware application that"s rolling out at the Web 2.0 Expo. It"s entering a very crowded market--the product is can be put in or near the same buckets as business wikis, groupware apps such as Groove, Sharepoint, and Collanos (review), and pure Web 2.0 apps such as Basecamp--but at its most basic it"s a file synchronization engine. By the way, it"s pronounced like "ignite," not like "egg night." ***

A new article in The Economist details a transition by Arizona State University IT director Adrian Sannier from the school’s application infrastructure to Google’s “Apps for your domain:” For Mr Sannier, however, a bigger reason than money for switching from traditional software to web-based alternatives has to do with the pace and trajectory of technological change. Using the new Google service, for instance, students can share calendars, which they could not easily do before. Soon Google will integrate its online word processor and spreadsheet software into the service, so that students and teachers can share coursework. Eventually, Google may add blogs and wikis—it has bought firms with these technologies. ***

Online applications company Zoho has launched Zoho Wiki, a Web-based wiki tool that integrates with Zoho"s entire suite of productivity applications. Zoho Wiki lets you create three different wikis, each with a custom URL and unlimited pages. What"s a wiki? Well, it"s an information repository that anyone with the right permission can read, write, or edit. The most famous, of course, is Wikipedia. (Credit: CNET Networks) Wikis have lots of uses, especially in small businesses. Creating casual documentation for projects, or a knowledge base for products and services is easier to navigate in a wiki than a spreadsheet or large document. ***

On Tuesday, JotSpot, which provides a hosted service mainly to corporate customers for building wikis, announced that it had been acquired by Google. Executives aren't saying how much Google spent on the 3-year-old company, but they were, not surprisingly, eager to say how well the two company's online offerings dovetail. "We watched them acquire Writely and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online," JotSpot co-founder and CEO Joe Kraus wrote in a blog announcing the deal. ***

Notions of Web 2.0 are creeping inside corporate firewalls, but companies still lag consumers in adoption of those technologies because of system complexity and concerns of control, said speakers at the New New Internet conference here on Wednesday. Technologies such as AJAX-style Web development, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and blogs are being used within businesses, typically in small-scale or experimental deployments. The social aspects of wikis, tagging and Web-enabled social networking can also improve collaboration among workers, speakers said. ***

Social software company Socialtext will redistribute and co-develop WikiCalc, an online collaborative spreadsheet created by PC software pioneer Dan Bricklin. In addition, the company announced on Friday that next month it will release an open-source edition of its wiki-based collaboration software. WikiCalc is a an open-source, browser-based collaboration tool that combines spreadsheet functionality with wikis, software for joint creation of Web pages whose content can be edited by users. Its inventor, Bricklin, co-developed VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program available for the PC. ***

Yesterday I had a chat via email with Aaron Levie from Box.net. Box provide 1GB of storage for $2.99 per month, which I think is pretty darned good! What’s more, they don’t charge a cent for bandwidth! There’s a great podcast interview with Aaron over on Odeo. Online storage is becoming massively important, especially with the growing use of mobile phones, so it’s interesting to see where we are right now. My belief is that thin clients and cellphones are the future, with all our apps running server-side ala Salesforce.com, and all our files being stored on the network. So how do the players stack up in the online storage arena, Pete? I’m glad you asked… Box. ***