MindTouch updates its open-source enterprise wiki

Computerworld - MindTouch Inc. today unveiled updates to its open-source enterprise wiki aimed at making it easier for users to integrate enterprise applications and mashups into the wiki.

The company said that it added a built-in scripting engine to the free, programmable Deki Wiki, eliminating the need for companies to use a separate programming environment to add enterprise applications, widgets, external services or JavaScript libraries to the wiki.

MindTouch said that the upgrades are part of what it called a substantially improved 1.8.3 release. The wiki is already being downloaded 30,000 times per month, according to MindTouch CEO Ken Liu's blog. The company says its customers include the Mozilla Foundation, BP PLC and The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The new version also features integration with Dapper.net, a free Web-based service that allows users to create feeds from different Web sites. The integration will allow Deki Wiki users to create "dapps," or queries that treat the Internet as one big database that can be queried from directly inside the wiki, MindTouch said.

The company also added native support for Amazon S3, which automatically stores all file attachments online, as well as multi-tenant support, which is designed to allow companies to run thousands of wikis from a single host. Moreover, the new version of the wiki is available in nine languages, with the additions of Japanese, Polish and Spanish, MindTouch said.

Finally, the new version features a new merge engine designed to ease editing conflicts when one user attempts to edit a page after another user has already changed it. The engine handles word-level analysis to merge edit conflicts, and formatting changes to help eliminate corrections.

MindTouch is projecting that, from July 2007 to June 2008, it will tally 300,000 downloads of the wiki, up from 10,000 in its first year of its release, Lie noted.