by Maggie Biggs

Review: SnipSnap 1.0’s a bliki for the budget-conscious biz

analysis
Oct 16, 20062 mins

In enterprise settings, wiki and blog software is often used to document projects, form a departmental community, or perhaps keep everyone across the enterprise informed and engaged. The SnipSnap project blends wiki functionality together with blogging tools to form a "bliki" that can easily address these enterprise requirements. SnipSnap, free and licensed under GNU-GPL, is a Java-based solution that can easily

Sites seeking a wiki, blogging, or bliki solution should consider SnipSnap a work in progress. Its developers have a roadmap, but some features, such as categorization, are only partially implemented. Moreover, SnipSnap text editing is rudimentary when compared to other solutions, such as Confluence.

Like other solutions, SnipSnap offers the capability to attach documents. Therefore, you might use SnipSnap to organize your content, since it includes a linking feature, and actually house the detailed content in organized attachments, such as PDF files. In this way, users could create content in an editing tool of their choice.

Most blogging and wiki solutions offer a content change notification feature – usually via e-mail. In the case of SnipSnap, notifications of content changes are provided via instant messaging and this works well. However, I’d like to have the ability to receive a daily digest of SnipSnap content changes added as a feature in the future.

SnipSnap includes many of the same useful tools that are on par with its rivals. For example, a calendar function is included as an aid for locating content. Moreover, the SnipSnap search function is on par with rivals and it provides a fast way to find related content – referred to as “snips” in SnipSnap-speak. If you are evaluating wiki or blog solutions, SnipSnap is worth test-driving.

Bottom Line

SnipSnap 1.0

Platforms: Any Java-capable (tested on Windows 2000/XP, Linux, MacOS X 10.2, Solaris 9)

Cost: Free under GNU-GPL

Bottom Line: SnipSnap combines blogging and wiki functions to form a “bliki.” Most sites will find it useful for departmental-level documentation projects and the like though it could be more broadly applied. While SnipSnap provides core collaboration and editing capabilities, it is not as feature-rich as some other wiki and blogging solutions. Still, SnipSnap does provide an easy way to organize content at a budget-minded price: free.