Finally Google has finished making the JotSpot wiki service their own, and have relaunched it as Google Sites. This is great news, as a wiki solution is something that has been sorely missing from Google’s line-up of services for some time.
This is TechCrunch’s take on it:
Google Sites looks absolutely nothing like Jotspot, other than the fact that both are hosted wikis. All of the structured data templates launched by Jotspot in July 2006 have been stripped out. Users now have a choice between just five basic templates – a standard wiki, a dashboard where google gadgets can be embedded, a blog-like template for announcements, a file cabinet for file uploads, and a page for lists of items. Instead of creating structured templates, users will now simply embed spreadsheets, presentations and word documents from Google Docs, as well as Google Calendars, YouTube Videos and Picasa Albums.
Here’s a video from Google explaining a bit about it all:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KnC2EIS5w]
At the moment though it looks like it is only available to people who use the Google Apps service, where you can have white label versions of various Google services with your own domain and branding. So you can’t start a Google Site wiki with your standard Google account, I don’t think.
I use Google Apps to handle my email and calendar and stuff, and will be implementing a Google Site as soon as it appears on my dashboard, and will make it available for people to have a play.
That’s my weekend sorted, then.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Fantastic. Looking forward to playing with that.
No problems. Just waiting for it to appear is a little frustrating!