Looks like JotSpot is getting ready to offer their software à la carte — no hosting, no appliance. The JotSpot Wiki Server can be downloaded and installed inside the firewall on your company's own hardware.
This is definitely a good direction for them, and one that seemed to me to be unavoidable. I expected something a little sooner, but now we have it. I was only off by a year. In any case, a smart move that could really open up JotSpot's enterprise sales.
Stewart Mader posts about the move, and argues that Jot should be more upfront with their pricing (while kindly referencing some of my earlier writing on the subject). In principle, I agree with him, but I'd advise that we give Jot a little more time before jumping on them. They just announced this, it's in beta, and I'm sure they haven't figured out their pricing model. They'll want to talk to the beta testers and see what the market will bear.
I was just reading the release notes for the new MovableType 3.3 and saw this:
I love that. I wish more software developers had the nerve to remove unnecessary features as their applications grew, rather than submitting to the endless spiral of accumulating cruft. Some argue that users would revolt if we spent our resources on removing and simplifying instead of on adding the totally simple feature that's been waiting two years to get done.
But it very well may be that ripping out a confusing, unnecessary or unused feature may result in the greater benefit to a greater number of users than implemented even the most requested new feature would bring. And it could result in even greater savings for your dev team: less code to understand, modify and test each time you do add a new feature.
But I'm proud of SixApart for a) actually doing it, and b) celebrating the fact that things have gotten better in their release notes. Good for them. Removing features can make it to the feature tour. I hope more people take their example.
UPDATE: See this post from Kathy Sierra for more support of this idea.
I'm breaking radio silence to report that I'll be attending SHDH OxB (upcoming) next Saturday night. Be there or be square.
And next Tuesday my company, Atlassian, is hosting the SF Web Innovators Network* (upcoming). There will be some folks demo-ing. Unfortunately, I don't know who. Feel free to drop by the office for some relatively-painless networking and some tasty beverages.
P.S. If you want to know where I'll be in advance, add me as a friend on Upcoming.org. If you want to know where I'll be right now, add me as a friend on Dodgeball.
UPDATE: Six months later, here's the real deal.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/05/10/rumor-yahoo-closed-jotspot-acquisition
http://gigaom.com/2006/05/11/jotspot-acquired-maybe-maybe-not/
I have no real info to add. My gut says no, but I'm far from certain.
IBM demo'd QEDWiki on Wednesday at PHP|Tek in Orlando. Unfortunately, I can't find much detail; no screenshots, no *-cast. But judging by the amount of search traffic I'm seeing, it's quite a hot topic. I just wish I had more to pass along. But here's the little bit that I could find:
There are a couple of CNet articles about QEDWik (1, 2) in which we can learn a little more. First, it's PHP-based. Second, it sounds like it's really after the enterprise-content-mashup concept. The article calls it 'application assembly,' which is not a bad turn of phrase. IBM wants to enable "businesspeople [to] create their own Web pages by dragging and dropping components onto a pallet. [sic. I assume they mean 'palette'.]" The example they offer is plotting sales data against a weather feed.
Here are Dru Lavigne's notes from an earlier conference where we learn: "[QEDWiki] is both an IDE and a runtime framework," "developers can create their own WikiCommands to extend the framework as they are simply PHP scripts" and "if the PHP community shows interest, it will most likely be open sourced."
So, still nothing to look at, but we know a little more about the focus QEDWiki will have. It sounds much more like a drag-and-drop application wiki than an enterprise wiki.
If anyone know where to find any screenshots, etc. please let me know. And if you happen to work at IBM, I'd love a demo.
Wow. No posts in ten days. I'm lame. Sorry about that, folks,
And this is just a quick one to say that I'm heading home to Birmingham for Easter with the family. I'll be there through the weekend, so if you want to get together, ring me up.
Just wanted to point out this very nice article from Network Computing reviewing four enterprise wikis: Jotspot, Socialtext, CustomerVision and Confluence. I say 'very nice' because they picked Confluence as the best of the pack.
You can read for yourself why. But the article is pretty thorough and seemed to be mostly accurate from what I know of Confluence and the other products.
However, there were a few glaring errors in the article, like this one: "JotSpot is extensible, but only through 13 add-ons available in the vendor's application gallery," which completely misses the point of what JotSpot is trying to do. I'm sure that was frustrating to them.
The reviewer brings up the scalability question, but fails to address it in any meaningful way, though he does manage to call Confluence "limited."
Other interesting info: $250k/year for the Socialtext appliance? Wow. I hadn't seen that number before. Even if you figure that in typical enterprise software sales fashion, they'll immediately drop the price by 50% once you start negotiating, thats still a lot of money.
The reviewer really liked JotSpot's permissions system, I'm guessing because it is fully hierarchical as opposed to Confluence, in which only the view-and-edit page permissions are hierarchical. In practice, I think you can achieve the same results with Confluence's system (plus having the additional power of space-level permissions), but it's not as immediately obvious that this is so.
I haven't played with CustomerVision's wysiwyg editor yet, but the reviewer really liked it. Here's the only screenshot I could find. It's hard to tell much. I need to check it out in action.
This is the first non-blog article I know of that has done a real, hands-on review with all of these products. It's definitely worth a read.
Disclaimer: In case anyone doesn't know, I work for Atlassian Software, makers of Confluence.
My new phone does all sorts of cool stuff now, like IMAP, AIM and general web-surfing. And I'm happy about all of that. But the feature that I'm happiest about is a simple one: text messaging.
You see, my old phone didn't do SMS. I know, crazy, huh? Everyone at work made fun of me mercilessly for it.
I bought the Sony Ericsson T608 two years ago because it was the only phone Sprint offered at the time that had Bluetooth. Which, as a Mac owner, was very important to me: it was the only way to sync my addressbook with the phone. And Sprint, at the time, was the only provider that had moderately decent coverage at inside apartment. As this was going to be my only phone, it pretty much needed to work inside. Thus Coverage + Bluetooth = No Texting.
I'm almost hesitant go give away my secret. But after several arduous and beer-soaked nights of searching, I think I've found my local bar.
I've never really had a place I considered "my bar;" my local, my default. You know, my Cheers. Some place I could get to quickly on a whim. Or stop in on my way home from work. A place that I could just go hang out, even by myself. So when I moved to San Francisco, and into the proximity of so many interesting places, I decided that I need to find just such a place.
Living in a lively neighborhood like the Mission, I knew there had to be some great spots around my apartment. So I established a four-block radius and started my search. With the help of my friend, Alicia, (who moved to the Mission a year ago), I drank my way through quite a handful of neighborhood bars.
We tried Treat Street Cocktails (good, but a little too divey). We tried The Phone Booth (killer jukebox, too much smoke). We tried The Napper Tandy (too brightly lit, not enough room, distracted bartenders). And those were just the good ones.
And then last week I stumbled on Homestead. I say stumbled, though I actually mean 'stumbled on it while browsing around Yelp like a big internet dork.' [Quick aside: the reviews on Yelp are actually really funny. Exhibit a, b, c. Betcha won't see that sort of thing on CitySearch.] Technically, Homestead is five blocks away instead of four, but I decided to expand my circle on its behalf. So Alicia and I dropped in to feel it out, and I think it's the place.
The lighting is just right. There are plenty of places to sit. They have several good beers on draft, though nothing too exotic. The jukebox is very eclectic, but interesting. (Hopefully it will change more than the one at Dargan's ever did.) The bartenders are chatty. There are paintings of naked ladies, circa 1965, in heavy gold frames. Even the wallpaper is cool, strange as that may seem.
It's always been full, but never so crowded I had to stand. It's not too noisy to talk. I haven't been in on a weekend yet, but the weekend crowd may not matter. I'm not sure this will need to be my weekend place.
Oh, and bonus: last time I was there I had come from work, so I had my laptop with me. I cracked it open long enough to determine that there's an open wifi signal close enough to use. It's not strong, but it'll do.
Obviously, it will take a while to know for sure. I've got to settle in; spend some quality time there; really get to know it. But Homestead seems promising. The vibe feels right. You'll certainly be seeing more of me there.
Wikicities raises $4mm Series A and changes their name to Wikia. Read all about it.
Investors include Bessemer Ventures and the Omidyar Network, (who has also funded SocialText). Joi Ito joins the board.
Jonathan Nolen 
