Wiki model of shared writing and editing goes mainstream

[mandy]

Buoyed by the growth of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the wiki model of shared writing and editing is spreading into surprising new realms, from accounting, real estate and academic research to cake design and even intelligence gathering.

"Wikis are finally becoming mainstream," said Newton, Mass., technology pioneer Dan Bricklin , who plans to release WikiCalc, a next-generation spreadsheet that lets multiple users simultaneously log and update numbers via the Internet by the end of November...

A wiki -- the word comes from a Hawaiian term for "rapidly" -- is a type of computer software that allows people to create and change Web page content using their browsers, enabling the kind of open editing model employed by online communities like that behind the five-year-old Wikipedia. While new wiki projects have cropped up in recent years in technology labs and college dorms, the concept is now being adopted in business, education and government, often on the public Internet but sometimes behind firewalls restricting participation to employees or customers...

full article: http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/54378.html