nPost.com Interview with Joe Kraus of Jotspot.com

What is JotSpot?

JotSpot is a venture-backed company started two years ago. It is what most people would consider a hosted Wiki, but we like to think about JotSpot in the long-term as a pioneer of do-it-yourself applications.

The industry has spent the last 10 years on do-it-yourself-publishing on the net, making it easier for a non-technical person to put words on a page that someone else can read. On the other hand, very little, if any, time has been spent trying to make it easier for an end-user to build an application online.

JotSpot is starting out in the do-it-yourself publishing arena with Wikis, but what we’re really trying to accomplish over the long-term is to enable end-users to build simple, lightweight, web-based applications.


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Archimedes Death Ray: Idea Feasibility Testing

Ancient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire. The story has been much debated and oft dismissed as myth.

TV’s MythBusters were not able to replicate the feat and ?busted? the myth.

Intrigued by the idea and an intuitive belief that it could work, MIT’s 2.009ers decided to apply the early product development ?sketch or soft modeling? process to the problem.

Our goal was not to make a decision on the myth?we just wanted to assess if it was at least possible, and have some fun in the process. Jumping ahead, you can see the result? but let?s start at the beginning of the process.

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