It’s been a crazy busy week for me, so I’m only now getting a chance to write about so many interesting things that are going on…

For example, in the midst of all the Google PHR (G’PHR) hype, Google also released the long awaited Googlized version of the wiki formerly known as JotSpot (see my blog post and my podcast with Joe Kraus) — they’ve called it Google Sites and incorporated it as part of the Google Apps collection. I’ve been wondering what happened to JotSpot since the acquisition in OCT 2006 and it looks like it’s finally come to fruition. Here are some highlights and an intro video from their “official announcement” on the Google Blog:

Many of you have been waiting for JotSpot to re-emerge, integrated into Google — and now it’s happening…

We are shifting our focus from personal to team productivity. It’s less about “you” and more about “us.”…But with this explosion in collaboration, how do you bring together everything your team needs to work? How do you take information, whether it is on your desktop or online, and share it with specific groups of people — your team, the company, the public?

Meet Google Sites, the newest addition to the Google Apps product suite. It was designed to allow you to easily create a network of sites and share them with whomever you choose. Google Sites lets you pull together information from across Google Apps by embedding documents, spreadsheets, presentations, videos, and calendars in your sites. Of course, we also harness the power of Google search technology so your search results are always fast and relevant.

What does it take to start using Google Sites? Just a click of a button — that’s it. Here’s an overview with more detail:

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KnC2EIS5w
So, what’s different? Well…A LOT! I haven’t personally tried it yet, but according to TechCrunch, “Google Sites looks absolutely nothing like Jotspot, other than the fact that both are hosted wikis. All of the structured data templates launched by Jotspot in July 2006 have been stripped out. Users now have a choice between just five basic templates – a standard wiki, a dashboard where google gadgets can be embedded, a blog-like template for announcements, a file cabinet for file uploads, and a page for lists of items. Instead of creating structured templates, users will now simply embed spreadsheets, presentations and word documents from Google Docs, as well as Google Calendars, YouTube Videos and Picasa Albums…”

On the positive side, I think it’s pretty cool that they have integrated the ability for Google apps (i.e. word processor, spreadsheet, and presentations) and other cool new elements to be embeded within the wiki interface, allowing the creation of sort of a “dashboard” view. However, according to Rafe Needleman on CNET’s WebWare blog, things are not looking so pretty with this Googlized incarnation of JotSpot:

There’s only one thing about this product that really bugs me, but it’s annoying enough that I would throw the thing out the window if only it came in a box I could pick up. It’s this: The integration with Google’s productivity applications (word processor, spreadsheet, and presentations) is awful. To me, that’s the one thing I want most from a wiki, especially one from Google, which historically has put great collaboration features into its otherwise lightweight productivity applications. I want to be able to easily create a wiki and then embed a productivity document in it, so I can share the whole package with my co-workers.

Try this with Sites, though, and you’ll feel jilted. First you have to create your spreadsheet outside of the wiki, which is just weird. The real killer, though, is that your spreadsheet will only show up in your wiki if you “publish” it in Docs, making it viewable to anyone who gets its URL. It doesn’t matter if you have carefully controlled the access to the wiki itself. If you want people to be able to edit your embedded spreadsheet, you’ve got to give them permission to do so from Google’s separate spreadsheet application, even if you’ve already given the people who you’re collaborating with on your wiki permission to edit the page that’s hosting the embedded sheet.

Confused? Common-looking toolbars notwithstanding, Google Sites is clearly not integrated into Google’s other productivity applications. It feels like Sites and the other productivity applications are from two different evolutionary branches. They have similarly-colored fur, but they do not interbreed.

My biggest worry when Jot got acquired was that they would stop supporting their enterprise customers (which I am) and it looks like they do have a “Premiere Edition” for corporations, but it’s nothing like the dedicated server deal that I had with Jot. I wonder how us legacy customers will get transitioned into the G-Sites?

So, I’m really going to have to try this out for myself some time soon before I make my own final judgements about it. I had high hopes for what Google would do with what I considered to be the best wiki platform at the time (and I still do now, if it still existed as JotSpot), so I’m a little disappointed to hear what Rafe had to say.

Whatever the case, I’m just glad to see that something has finally come out of the wiki formerly know as Jot.