Jeremy Horn of The Product Guy blog spent several weeks evaluating the various on-demand wikis available on the market.

After taking in depth looks at five different wikis, including Google Sites, he named PBwiki “The Best Free Online Wiki Experience.”

“The Best Free Online Wiki Experience is PBwiki for the reasons stated throughout this series, as well as having: (1) a firm grasp on the usability needs of a wiki user, (2) the most comprehensive feature set, and (3) providing outstanding support to its user base, not just in the form of addressing problems, but also in actively communicating status, product updates, and other helpful news via their product blog.”

Thanks Jeremy!

A hearty PBwiki congratulations goes out to the winners of our 500,000 wikis contest.  Each of these winners will be receiving a lifetime upgrade for their wiki that includes all of our premium features features like single sign-on, IP whitelisting, and PBwiki’s famous automated design customizer (just upload your logo, and let PBwiki redesign your wiki to match it).

The lucky winners are:

Samantha, a teacher in the Washington Township School District, created wiki number 499,999 (renaissanceleaders.pbwiki.com).

Mara created wiki number 500,001, the DI (Differentiating Instruction) Resources Wiki, which you can visit at http://diresources.pbwiki.com.  “This is a space for educators to gather, share, and reflect upon web-based resources for differentiating instruction.”

And finally, congratulations to Dr. Carl Binder of SixBoxes.com, who created wiki number 500,000 (sixboxes.pbwiki.com).  “This wiki is a place to collect what we know and what we are learning about the Six Boxes Approach, and how we plan to learn and develop more.”

Congratulations again to our winners, and thanks to everyone who helped us reach the 500,000 wiki mark!

Now this is one of those things that makes us feel good.

Architecture students from the University of Kansas and Tulane University are working together to help rebuild New Orleans’ 7th Ward.

One one year, the project, called “Rebuilding the Seventh” has already grown to encompass nearly 1,000 documents.

The professor leading the project, Nils Gore of Kansas, had this to say about PBwiki:

“It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it works.  When you’re looking for a tool to enhance collaboration, what more could you possibly want?”

As more universities adopt web 2.0 technology, administrators want to know exactly how students are using these tool and what benefits they bring. Campus Technology addressed this question in their latest article “Wikis, Blogs, & More, Oh My!’

Here are two different ways Universities are using wikis, and their results:

Professor Kane at Boston University encourages students to submit their own exam questions via his Exam Question Workspace wiki. In a year, students submitted a whopping 600 questions overall.

At SUNY-Delhi, CIO Patrick Masson uses wikis to assist in policy decision-making. Masson says user response to this approach has been overwhelming. Over the course of one month, the school’s president made 73 edits, the coordinator of online learning made 58, the chair of budget and planning made 31, and the vice president of student housing made 29.

Here are three more suggestions from PBwiki educators: (more…)

InformationWeek just came out with a great article on the impact of Web 2.0 collaboration tools like PBwiki on the role of IT.  Web 2.0 and Software-as-a-Service represent a major paradigm shift for IT managers, but as InformationWeek puts it:

“You can ignore Web 2.0 tools, or try to shoo users away. If you take one of these approaches, let us know how it works out for you. A better approach is to embrace new collaboration methods, whether through an in-house deployment, a software-as-a-service option, or both.”

Longtime customer and FOP (friend-of-PBwiki) Doug Cornelius also had some nice quotes about PBwiki versus SharePoint:

“It’s a classic story of enterprise 2.0,” says Goodwin Procter’s Cornelius. “We’re up and running with PBwiki in 30 seconds, and SharePoint is taking a year.” Fact is, users will find ways to make their working lives more convenient–with or without the input of IT. This is particularly true when it comes to Web collaboration tools.

Music to our ears. 

As y’all might have noticed from our Web site, PBwiki is now conducting regular webinars to help folks learn how they can use PBwiki to make their lives better: http://pbwiki.com/content/webinars

The reaction to these webinars has been so positive, that now we’d like to expand them to include PBwiki users.

If you’d like to be featured in an upcoming PBwiki webinar, please leave a comment on this post.

If you’re an expert using PBwiki in your work, or if PBwiki has made a big difference in your life, we might want you to star in our next webinar. For example, one upcoming webinar will feature a leading professional organizer, who will talk about how you can use PBwiki to organize your life.

This is especially perfect for professionals who would like a way to reach PBwiki’s loyal user base of millions.

So if you think you have what it takes to co-host a PBwiki webinar, leave a comment, or email me, Chris Yeh, at chris dot yeh at pbwiki dot com.

I’ll be looking forward to seeing your name in lights.

P.S. As I mentioned in my last webinar on templates, if you have a template that you’ve created that you think really kicks ass, let me know. We might just add it PBwiki (named after you, of course!).

P.P.S. If you’d like to be featured in a webinar and reach millions of PBwiki users — and PBwiki has made a big difference in your life — please leave a comment on this post.

Tim Ferriss is the author of The 4-Hour Workweek, a book that’s become phenomenally successful. (The book is about “lifestyle design” and working less to achieve your goals, including some provocative ideas about outsourcing your life.)

After simultaneously being listed as a bestseller on the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Businessweek lists, Advertising Age listed it as one of 2007’s best product launches.

In fact, we have a few copies of the book in our office.

For the second edition of his book, Tim decided to use PBwiki to edit his New York Times bestseller. On the 4-Hour Workweek wiki, he asked his readers to point out corrections, add ideas, and suggest examples for the newly revised 4-Hour Workweek.

The 4-Hour Work Week wiki launched last night around 11pm and already has hundreds of visitors and dozens of high-quality edits.

This is a great way to use PBwiki. By allowing his readers to add their thoughts, Tim taps into their collective knowledge. And because he has a Premium wiki, he can assign his editors “Contributor” access so anything they do is reversible (e.g., no deleting pages!).

Learn more:

• The 4-Hour Workweek wiki

• Official press release
• Tim’s blog post

If you’re interested in using PBwiki for managing a project — or writing your own New York Times bestseller! — create a free wiki at PBwiki.com.

Fortune Small Business just wrote a nice article about how Lee Rosen of Rosen Law used his creativity to drive adoption of his PBwiki.

Rosen offered a $1,000 cash prize to his 32 employees–for every page they created on the wiki, they earned a possible combination to the company safe (which contained the aforementioned $1,000).  At the end of three months, the prize went to Ben Sutton (pictured below).

But Lee had the last laugh–by switching his people over to PBwiki, he saved $25,000 per year that he had been spending on running a Lotus Notes server.  And money wasn’t the only benefit:

“The biggest reason that we’re switching is that the wiki is easier to use,” says Rosen. “If employees see a better way to organize or present information, they can just go ahead and do it with a wiki. With Lotus Notes, it required a programmer.”

Maybe you don’t have $1,000 to spare to drive adoption of your wiki, but maybe you can modify Rosen’s technique to fit your organization.  How about giving your top user tickets to the game, or a night out on the town?

If you get your entire company using PBwiki, the benefits will far outweigh the cost.

Click here to read the Fortune Small Business article.

We want to welcome Paul Singh, our newest member of the PBwiki family. As the Director of Support, he’ll be responsible for getting you the help and training you need from PBwiki.

Paul has an extraordinary background in Saas (software as a service) support. In the past, he’s built up a support organization for a $48 million dollar SaaS product.

What this means for you
Look for rapid improvements in PBwiki support coming up, including better training materials and answers to common questions.

Welcome, Paul!

We’re surprised and thrilled to see how fast our PBwiki community is growing. Today, we’re announcing some news:

If your co-workers or friends have been wondering about using wikis, point them to this post for a roundup of articles on using PBwiki to make your life easier.
1. Video: See how we use PBwiki to power our own team
2. Create pages and upload files
3. Best practices for getting others to join your wiki
4. Add interactive plugins to your wiki
5. See other PBwiki examples