According to JotSpot (see editorial links below): "Most intranets are dead." Indeed, and to quote the Bible, specifically, Psalm 8: "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings ..."
The company points out that "Fixing errors on most intranets is a pain. You must: Document the problem / Figure out who has the power to make changes / Convince them to do it / Wait for that person to do the work." JotSpot concludes that most intranet users decide it's not worth the trouble and the result is obvious: The intranet stagnates.
JotSpot's solution is its eponymous product, JotSpot, which makes every page editable by any or all of the people who have access.
The company has created a corporate version of a Wiki, a collaborative Web authoring and editing system. The fact that the Wiki idea works is demonstrated by a number of important online tools - Wikipedia, the free-content encyclopedia, is one example.
JotSpot has made the whole process of using its Wiki technology as an intranet as painless as possible even to enabling automatic link creation. A user gives a page a title and then to link to that page, they or any other user just writes that page's title on any other page. Voila! The link is automatically created.
Editing a page under JotSpot is much like using Word - the interface supports full WYSIWYG presentation - and you can attach any file to any page.
JotSpot supports revision control, searchable full-text content indexing (which includes indexing of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel attached to pages), page access permissions, as well as collection of structured data including text, dates, and numbers with pull down menus for multiple choice questions.
Other features include the ability to send e-mail to and from any page, access a JotSpot system over the Web, use REST-style interfaces to access JotSpot from a program, and an RSS interfaces to get data in. Outgoing RSS feeds, WebDAV and SOAP support are planned additions.
JotSpot is currently in beta. If you have a big problem making your intranet work you might want to sign up for the beta test and see what a new way of working can do to energize what should be a key communication medium for your organization.
