Which Hosted Wiki Is Right for You?

Jun 9, 2006

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Are you wiki wonky? Scott Nesbitt covers three popular hosted wiki services that are free or relatively cheap to use and provide easy tools to set up your wiki within minutes.

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Wiki Way, The: Collaboration and Sharing on the Internet: Quick Collaboration on the Web

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Thanks to the popularity of Wikipedia, more and more people are aware of and are tapping into the flexibility and power of the wiki. While wikis began life as a tool for software developers to track and maintain their projects, they’re not just a techie tool. People use wikis for personal information management, as a repository for notes and ideas, to collaborate on development and writing projects, to share information, and more.

But setting up and maintaining your own wiki can be quite a chore. With most wikis, you need to install and configure the software as well as maintain a database and a web server. You might not have the time, skills, or inclination to do all of that work.

There’s another solution: hosted wikis. Hosted wikis are web-based applications that you can access from anywhere. They’re easy to use and free (or at least low-cost). Hosted wikis are a great way for anyone—regardless of their technical abilities—to take advantage of the power of the wiki.

This article looks at three wikis: LittleWiki, PBwiki, and JotSpot. If you’re interested in a hosted wiki, one of them could be right for you.

A Little Background

A wiki is simply a web site for which you can add, change, or remove content from within a web browser. The original wiki was created by a software developer named Ward Cunningham, who took the name of his creation from the Hawaiian word wikiwiki (meaning quickly). Like a web site, a wiki is a collection of individual pages that are linked together.

Many wikis, such as Wikipedia, allow you to make changes without the need to log in with a username and password. While you can make any changes that you want, the wiki keeps track of the revisions. An administrator can undo any changes.

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Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

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Questions and Inquiries

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Customer Service

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Other Collection and Use of Information

Application and System Logs

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Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

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Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children

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Marketing

Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information

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Sale of Personal Information

Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents

California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure

Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

As required by law.
With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact

Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020

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