The Real-Time Wiki

JotSpot wants the wiki to move at Internet speed.

The collaboration software startup launched JotSpot Live on Wednesday, a Web-based application designed for group note taking.

JotSpotLive offers functionality similar to that of the wiki : Users can write text and edit what others write. The company said JotSpotLive works for group brainstorming sessions, virtual meetings and building agendas. Instead of several individuals taking notes, and then passing them along to one person for consolidation and distribution, people using JotSpot all store their notes in the same location.

JotSpot also offers a customizable application wiki and a blogging tool.

“We think JotSpotLive serves a very different use case than the traditional wiki,” said Ken Norton, vice president of products for JotSpot. JotSpotLive is useful for short-term projects, anything from putting together the office lunch order to taking notes at a meeting.

Norton said the software was created by Abe Fettig, a JotSpot employee who works in Maine, far from the Palo Alto headquarters. Fettig wanted a way to be able to see real-time changes made to the JotSpotWikis used at meetings. The company has used the software internally since May, and decided to release it as a standalone product to get feedback about how it could be used.

“One obvious intersection point is that people would like to publish a page from JotLive to JotWiki,” he said. “But it’s the question of how the products come together that we haven’t resolved.”

Norton emphasized that this was a full product, not a beta release. “We’re tired of the endless betas,” he said. The user interface uses Asynchronous java-script and XML (AJAX), a Web page architecture that allows certain elements of a Web page to change without the need for a new HTTP request to the Web server. “AJAX lets us do things in the Web browser that you’d historically expect only from a desktop application,” Norton said.

JotSpotLive is built on the JotSpot platform, which in turn is built on Java.

JotSpotLive participants need to be invited by the person who originates a page. The application includes a form for inviting others via e-mail; to accept the invitation, they click on the link in the invitation and are taken to the page.

There are three types of JotSpotLive accounts. Users can create up to five pages a month free; they can make up to 15 pages a month for $4.95; or they can have unlimited use for $19.95 a month.