JotSpot Opens Wiki APIs To DevelopersJotSpot Opens Wiki APIs To Developers

Wiki application developer JotSpot Inc. plans on Monday to open its workspace collaboration system to third-party developers. Through its JotSpot Developer Connection, the company intends to offer developers access to tools and resources for extending the JotSpot wiki platform.

Wikis are collaborative Web applications, similar in concept to blogs, but intended for multiple contributors and less constrained by the chronological post structure that's common among blogs. The best-known example of a wiki is the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia.

JotSpot is pushing a more expansive view of the role of wikis. CEO Joe Kraus sees them as platforms for application development. He suggests that just as desktop-publishing technology made printing accessible beyond professional publishing circles, wiki-based applications will make custom software development available to those who aren't skilled programmers.

Kathleen Romano, co-founder of IT software development company Knowesys Inc., says that JotSpot's wikis offer a great baseline for portal development. "Now that they're opening the APIs, we can get applications up much more quickly," she says.

"JotSpot solves a lot of basic problems for our clients," she adds. The advantage wikis offer over traditional software-development platforms is that the resulting applications require far less expertise to maintain and modify.