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Review: JotSpot 2.0: Page 3 of 4

Creating a knowledge base, then adding articles (i.e., questions and answers) to it was as easy as pointing, clicking, and typing. The only tricky part was deciding which tags, or keywords, to add to each article, and which articles to include in the Frequently Asked Questions list. Within a few minutes I had a completely searchable database of information on my chosen topic, as well as a FAQ highlighting the most important questions and answers in my knowledge base. As with other wiki pages, the administrator can designate which users are allowed to add to and edit the knowledge base.

Once again, the polling tool made it quick and easy to create polls, but I found the implementation of the polls I'd created a bit clumsy. Instead of seeing the answer choices below a poll question, users must click the "Vote" link, then choose their answer from a drop-down list, then click "Save." It just feels like a step or two too many.



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Nevertheless, it's fun to try out the different apps that are available. You may find some to be genuinely useful, while others aren't worth your while -- but it's certainly nice to be able to experiment with them at no additional cost.

Flies In The Ointment
While it's nice of JotSpot to offer a free account, the Personal Plan isn't all that useful. I rapidly bumped my head against the plan's 10-page limit and found myself having to rethink the pages I'd created, combining separate pages and deleting others to make room for new pages I wanted to create. (With five different users trying to create pages, this could quickly turn chaotic.)



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My page-limit problem wasn't helped by the fact that initially every calendar event I created was counted as one of my 10 pages. This seems to have been a bug, however, because at some point during my testing, new events stopped increasing my page count.

To make testing easier, JotSpot upgraded my account to the top-tier Company Plan, but the rest of you will have to shell out if you want more pages. That said, the Mini Plan allows you 100 pages and 10 users for $10 a month, which seems reasonable. Paid plans also get you basic support, higher storage limits, and the ability to customize the wiki's design.

It should also be noted that certain JotSpot features work better than others. Not surprisingly, the functions that work best are what wikis have always been used for: building basic Web pages and archiving documents. Importing Word documents into Web pages (rather than simply attaching and archiving them) works smoothly as well. The photo albums, on the other hand, are a bit clunky. For example, there's no way to upload images in a batch, and while you can enter captions for the images, those captions don't appear in either thumbnail or slideshow view.