Several of the techblogs are reporting or speculating that Google will announce at the Office 2.0 Conference next week the re-wrapping of JotSpot, acquired in 2006, as a Google Apps wiki.
No surprise here. Back in July, Dan Farber covered the announcement by Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google Enterprise, that JotSpot would be come part of Google Apps.
Two more recent Google buy ups with Google Enterprise potential are waiting in the wings to be re-launched.
Michael Arrington at Techcrunch reminds us of an April Google acquisition, the former Tonic Systems, that is presumed to be the foundation for a Google presentation app.
And Google Operating System recalls slide show software maker Zenter, also acquired in April, and also expected to provide additional capabilities to any Google PowerPoint-like application.
No word on yet another Google 2007 purchase, Gapminder’s visualization suite Trendalyzer. This graphics and charting library was used to produce the awesome “Gapminder World” in which moving spheres representing the nations of the world advance and decline in proportion to the well being of their citizens.
When Gapminder founder Hans Roslings presented Trendalyzer and the Gapminder World at TED2007, he got a standing ovation. The video is below - and it’s well worth enduring the overly dramantic 20-second TED/BMW spot at the very beginning.
Gapminder might become an add-on to a Google presentation package, but I expect to see it first as a presentation layer for Google Analytics, and maybe as a separate desktop app like Google earth for visualizing GData and other series data.
