Socialtext to distribute wiki spreadsheet tool

Social software company Socialtext will redistribute and co-develop WikiCalc, an online collaborative spreadsheet created by PC software pioneer Dan Bricklin.

In addition, the company announced on Friday that next month it will release an open-source edition of its wiki-based collaboration software.

WikiCalc is a an open-source, browser-based collaboration tool that combines spreadsheet functionality with wikis, software for joint creation of Web pages whose content can be edited by users. Its inventor, Bricklin, co-developed VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program available for the PC. WikiCalc, available under the open-source General Public License, is now in beta testing.

The software is one of several hosted Web applications that mimic the capabilities of traditional destkop applications. On Tuesday, Google launched a Web-based spreadsheet program, called Google Spreadsheets, which is designed to allow users to read and simultaneously edit information while engaging in an "in-document" chat. The program takes aim at Microsoft's desktop-based Excel spreadsheet tool.

In a blog entry on Friday, Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield said the company has partnered with Bricklin to exclusively distribute and co-develop WikiCalc.

Mayfield said that Socialtext plans to soon release a version of WikiCalc that is a "more liberal and commercial-friendly distribution."

Socialtext is one of several companies looking to take Web technologies, such as wikis and blogs, and apply them to corporate applications.

Mayfield said WikiCalc will help people avoid "e-mail volleyball," which happens when users try to share spreadsheets today.

"Spreadsheets, like other killer PC apps, were not designed for a networked world...Work is social; information can be linked; and data comes in feeds. Today, it isn't the problems of productivity kept personal, but the opportunity to build computing that is social," he wrote in the blog.

[Captain_Spock]

SOMETHING 1-2-3... What's Next!

We have had IBM's Lotus KONA way back then, GOOGLE SPREADSHEETS earlier in the week and now - WikiCalc, and one never knows - perhaps the next SPREADSHEET brand on the market could very well be CHAI LATTE 1-2-3-4. WOW!

[Captain_Spock]

SPOCK TO HOUSTON!

STAR DATE 06-09-2006. Officers of of the ship have scanned the anomaly which we now know as GOOGLE SPREADSHEET and have been unable to locate the "FORMULAS" that will enable an analysis for the likes of the ENRONS... are there any hopes or expectations from the yet to be released WikiCalc that the ships' crews on planet Earth need today for "energy" assessment viabilities planet-wide!

[kamwmail-cnet1]

Spock musta been lobotomized when he got promoted to Captain.

Babbling like he never recovered from that radiation death.

It's so sad. Spock used to be a genius and highly relevant to society. Now, it's just another illegal alien who's a waste of time, bandwidth and resources. How DID Spock (being half retarded now) sneak pass the drunken minutemen at the border?

[Captain_Spock]

CNET NEWS...

... must certainly be following the tenets of US Constitution which guarantees the "Freedom of speech and of the press"....; but, for some to be so upset and fixed in their thinking that changes to some situation cannot be so "simple" "speedy" and "disruptive" that they have to resort to such desperation must certainly be unquestionable facts that the "GOOGLE" TEAM and its admirers must certainly be target candidates for their expressions of FUD! kamwmail-cnet1 must certainly be working under duress to be so desperate when the only "chains" he has to loose are the ones that has his mind so tightly bound that it cannot be opened up to boldly go forward and explore the home and workplaces that Team Google has now offered "aliens" and all! I wonder if kamwmail-cnet1 is Native American or (of African, descent because they came before Christopher Columbus); and, Intel and Google must have been happy to have Brin and Andy G. (once Aliens) as their Captain just as California was/is with Arnold S. and India must say "no" to the six-billion IBM investment. Free your mind kamwmail-cnet1 or you will miss all the fun!

Hasta La Vista!