MindTouch Serves Up Easier-to-Use Cross-Platform Wiki Tools for Business End-Users, ISPs and Developers

July 27, 2006, Portland, Ore.---Just yesterday at O’Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) here in Portland, Ore, this year, MindTouch—provider of wiki-based intranet solutions for the small- and medium business (SMB) market—made some announcements that created even more of a stir than the company itself expected: CNet showed up, lights flashed, cameras rolled.

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.Netting a Dream or SOA

For developers, excitement centered around MindTouch’s release of Dream, a powerful open source Web 2.0 platform and software development kit (SDK) built on Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET or on the Novell-sponsored Mono Platform—at crowd-pleaser with the OSCON developer set.

Web 2.0 application program interfaces (APIs) allow for the development of desktop extensions (added features) and mashups—those Frankensteinian applications that combine data—and now with Dream also allow program behavior to be mashed-up as well—from different source applications to create unique, customized, more powerful solutions.

The benefit of using .NET, in contrast to other frameworks for developing Web 2.0 apps is that developers can use Visual Basic, C++ or C# and can run their creations on virtually any device across the entire Microsoft platform, including servers, desktops, tablets and mobile devices. They can also create new applications for the latest Linux platforms, including SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 from Novell.

“The Mono project is focused on helping developers bring their Microsoft .NET applications to the Linux platform and speeding the delivery and development of new applications,” said Miguel de Icaza, VP of developer platforms who maintains the Mono Project at Novell. “With the release of MindTouch Dream, Mono developers can more easily take advantage of service-oriented programming options for creating flexible Web 2.0 architectures.”

For SMB end-users, the new programming tools are likely to lead to a slew of new interconnected Web applications and services.

Wicked New Wiki

MindTouch also announced DekiWiki, the first commercial open source wiki based fully on open standards offered as a hosted or an appliance-based (licensed, installed behind the firewall) solution. DekiWiki is based on MediaWiki, the engine underlying Wikipedia, and built using MindTouch’s own new Dream API tools (see above).

DekiWiki features a powerful set of on-the-fly editing tools that makes it easy to quickly create, edit and share Web pages. As with all wikis, you don’t have to be a programmer to edit pages, the palette of straightforward WYSIWYG tools makes it a simple process. DekiWiki ups the ante by also supporting advanced features such as page hierarchies (taxonomies) file attachments on any page, indexing and search for a powerful, attractive, good-to-go collaborative application.

DekiWiki info—complete with documentation--is available to the development community at www.OpenGarden.org or to business users at www.mindtouch.com

ISPs have SaaSy DekiWiki

In addition to offering DekiWiki served up on an in-house Web-appliance (called the Managed Office Server—or MOS) that provides SMBs with simple collaboration and file sharing among employees, MindTouch has also begun offering DekiWiki as a hosted application, but only through ISPs, who can charge from $0 to $500/month for hosting the service depending on the features, usage and advertising offset. The ISP private-label version, also just announced, currently has one established ISP customer—VISI in Minneapolis—but is in negotiation with a host of others. The application is available immediately online at www.viawiki.com.

“The more companies embrace open source, the more everyone benefits from accelerated innovation and transparency,” said Steve Bjorg, president and CEO of MindTouch. “Open source should be an integral part of a company’s DNA and not an afterthought or a means to an end.”

MindTouch currently concentrates on providing tools and leaves application development for vertical markets—such as sales and marketing, manufacturing, banking, healthcare, etc.—up to its channel to identify and develop.

MindTouch is privately held and based in San Diego, Calif. You can keep an eye on further developments and take a test drive of their products at www.mindtouch.com.

-- Ann M. Marcus