It seems Google will re-launch Jotspot as Google Wiki this coming week. Excellent. Finally, some competition. Since JotSpot was swallowed up by big G there has been one player innovating in the wiki space: MindTouch. If you’re new to MindTouch Deki Wiki download it and see for yourself (you can install in under 10 minutes). Or review some of our architectural videos. You will be impressed. I’m looking forward to seeing what the JotSpot guys have been up to for the last year. Are they close to competing with MindTouch’s technology? Being closed source is certainly a disadvantage.

MindTouch is a force to be reckoned with now and in the coming years. Our technology has attracted a remarkably strong community of users and developers in a very short time. We’ve done this, in part, by being open source, which means we release our source code for peer review, make our bugs public, and engage our community of users in driving the development of our products. Being open source does not guarantee a thriving community. The fact is if you’re open source it is even more important that you have a rock solid technology that’s interesting. You can not fool or dazzle developers with a flood of spin about your product. This may work in the “Web 2.0″ world for a short time, but it simply does not fly when you’re exposing your source code for peer review. You do not have to look far for a good example of this.

Deki Wiki has a ground breaking web-services extension modeled that allows users to create interesting and powerful application mashups. For example, users can compose applications from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft in a wiki page with content they author or aggregate from databases, other applications, or from across the Web. This aspect of Deki Wiki is so rich with potential that people are just beginning to realize what we’ve built. Mashups in Deki Wiki are easy to achieve and infinite in scope. To be honest, in the coming years I’m certain our users will be surprising us with what they do with our platform.

Deki Wiki is the first platform in the wiki collaboration and social media space. Not only is it the most extensible, but Deki Wiki has the first complete and open API. All the functionality of Deki Wiki is exposed through an open and REST-based API. The Deki Wiki platform is growing so fast it’s becoming a challenge just to keep up with all the extensions. In just over a month MindTouch has delivered dozens of extensions to external applications. These add almost 100 new features to Deki Wiki. Documenting these is quite a chore.

MindTouch Deki Wiki has the most versatile deployment options. It’s platform independent and can be installed from source on Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, or BSD. Or for a remarkably easy install you can use the VMware certified image and be up and running on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X (Intel-based) in under 10 minutes. MindTouch also offers a hosted environment.

MindTouch is carving out a growing niche with social media and enterprises in the burgeoning wiki space. As the use of wikis become more mainstream and widespread discerning users will look for an open, extensible, and flexible solution. Many will find MindTouch and join the several hundreds of organizations that deploy MindTouch Deki Wiki every day.

One final note, those who are using Google-powered applications would be well advised to read the terms of service carefully, especially regarding the rights to the content.