ReadWriteWeb

Thanks to successful projects like Wikipedia or Wikitravel, wikis have quickly become a standard tool on the Internet, but in academia, the anonymity often associated with publishing in wikis is a key factor that works against them. Tracking down the exact history of changes in a wiki entry can be a convoluted process, yet being able to exactly attribute a certain statement to one writer is at the heart of the academic enterprise. Mememoir aims to provide a wiki that is heavily focused on authorship and can help to dispel the prejudices scientists have against publishing in a wiki-like format.

Atlassian Confluence, makers of one of the most popular enterprise wiki solutions, has just announced Microsoft Office and SharePoint integration in their latest release, Confluence 2.9. With these new tools, users no longer have to know the technicalities of wiki markup or even how to use the included rich-text WYSIWYG editor in order to make changes to the wiki - they can simply open up a Microsoft Office document instead.

Also, with the addition of the SharePoint connector, Microsoft's well-known collaboration and document sharing platform gets a big dose of Enterprise 2.0 goodness, which is sure to please the end users. However, Confluence makes I.T. happy too, thanks to their inclusion of tools - like LDAP integration and administratively controlled permissions - that are designed just for the needs of the enterprise.

Google just opened up Knol, its Wikipedia competitor, to the public after announcing a private beta of the service last December. Unlike Wikipedia, Knol puts a stronger emphasis on authorship and even encourages users to start different 'knols' for the same subject. Google is also serving up AdSense advertising on the site, whereas Wikipedia stays away from any advertising on its site.

Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we explored Yahoo's ongoing troubles, reported on Firefox 3's record-setting week, covered a new "universal edit" wiki offering, and checked out some Mobile Web apps. On the trends side, we looked at what could disrupt Google search, explored the issue of 'info overload', analyzed lessons from Flickr, polled you about IM clients, and interviewed VC Brad Feld.

We weren't kidding when we said Wikis are now serious business. For music, WikiAudio is providing a new way to educated music fanatics. While music fans visit sites like Last.fm, Imeem, and Myspace for their music fix, musicians and producers can head over to one of the largest and most comprehensive audio wiki's ever.

The Rock Hard Times is a music search engine and database where you can perform searches or browse by artists, genres, places (countries), and labels. Each page on the site is filled with content like album listings, photos, videos, and links to lyrics, tabs, fansites, shopping sites, and more.  The Rock Hard Times' creator, Mime Cuvalo, envisioned the site as an IMDB of music, but really the site is more of a mashup between IMDB and Wikipedia, since every page of TRHT is editable by anyone.

TradeVibes, which has up until now been operating in stealth mode, is soon-to-be-public wiki focused around company information. TradeVibes combines an informational wiki with a number of community features aimed at using the wisdom of the crowds to create a company database similar to Hoovers. Though the company is still in closed alpha testing, ReadWriteWeb readers can access the site through this invite link.