The Gmail blog had a terrific post on Friday that I am now blogging about primarily for my wife. She is very tech savvy and is an avid Gmail user, but it always surprises me that she deletes most of her e-mail in Gmail. I think this behavior carries over from when people used to have a limit on the size of the e-mail accounts, and therefore had to delete anything that wasn’t critical or important. It was also a much easier way to organize your e-mail inbox rather than creating folders and dragging the e-mail to them (which is what I do at work because we have limited space on our e-mail accounts). At any rate, I think archiving is essential to getting the most out of Gmail and can be a really big help in certain situations, as described in their post. I kinda wish Google would get rid of the delete key on the Inbox page, or at least make it a little harder to get to. 
April 21st, 2008
I was about to write my first new post in OVER A YEAR and noticed that I still had a draft waiting to be published. This was a post that had a lot of promise to it, but I got too busy with other things and it never happened. Now that Web 2.0 and wikis are a part of mainstream consciousness, this type of article has probably been written a million times by now. Also, some of the features/complaints listed for these wikis have undoubtedly changed, so I’d have to rewrite it to publish it legitimately. Therefore, DO NOT take this article at face value - it was written on August 13, 2006. Without further ado…
So, I wanted to have a hosted wiki so I wouldn’t have to bother installing MediaWiki or something like that on my home server, and I was curious what was out there. My first stop in my research was Wikipedia after a Google search, which took me to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_farms. I glanced at that page and found a link in the External Links section to WikiMatrix. WikiMatrix has a nice wizard that you can follow to get a list of wikis or wiki software that fits your needs based on the questions you answer. It gave me a list of 12 wikis. After looking at the HUGE feature list and checking out the front page of each site (I based my initial choice on looks and site design), I narrowed it down to 5 wikis:
PBwiki was my first stop. I really liked the minimalistic design and it reminded me of the old WordPress, which I took as a good sign. I checked out the settings and features first, and the things that stood out were:
- View page as PDF
- ZIP backup of wiki
- Add Digg, del.icio.us, etc buttons to the bottom of each page
- Promotion section that dynamically creates a nifty image with your username in it to promote your wiki.
- Themes
- Page templates
- but…No traffic or page stats.
Wikispaces was next and it had the least attractive design. Here a rundown of features/complaints:
- Very minimalistic design.
- Can’t password protect your wiki unless you pay $5/month. I think this service is more like Wikipedia in that if you are a member, you can edit any other member’s wiki.
- Visual editor was minimal, but packed a punch. There was a nice image browser, media embed tool (think youtube, google calendar, flash), and even a special character picker.
- Not much in terms of special account or profile features.
Since I need to protect my wiki to only invited people, I had to dismiss Wikispaces. Next on the list is JotSpot. This wiki is very nice looking, but I have one major issue with it after trying to log in again. You log in as username “admin”. Unless I use this wiki frequently, I will always be clicking the “forgot password” link. Here are some of its many features:
- I like the way a link to an new wiki page looks. It puts a dashed red line underneath it, with a question mark at the end. This makes it very obvious that someone wants a page here, but hasn’t created it yet.
- Very nice visual editor. The link tool is handy and pretty user friendly. It lets you browse all the pages you have created and also lets you create a new page, link to an outside page, or link to a file you uploaded in your wiki.
- Page templates (on steriods). Once you create a new page and click on the link, you can choose from web page, spreadsheet (a lot like Google’s), Calendar, File Cabinet, and Photo Page. There are also shortcuts to all pages in each category in the left nav, except for web pages. If you click “install more applications” on the bottom of the left nav, there are even more to install: Project Manager, Bug Reporter, Knowledge Base, Recruiting, Call Log Manager, Group Directory, Blog, Forum, Simple Poll, Todo List. Very nice.
- One big drawback is that you are limited to 10 pages and 5 users. You can increase it to 100 pages and 10 users for $9.95 a month or choose another pricing option to get even more.
- Preferences and settings are pretty slim.
My immediate reaction is that I’d love to stick with JotSpot, but the free version is too restricted. Next on the list is StikiPad.
Sorry to leave you hanging, but that’s it! I think at the time, I eventually decided to use JotSpot. But today, if I need to collaborate on something, I use Google Docs. Which is funny, because JotSpot was acquired by Google! Thanks for listening. I didn’t want to let all that hard work go to waste.
April 21st, 2008