Good post by Rick Segal on Writeboard and the response from geeks like myself. Language matters and "Yes. This is just a one page wiki with an edit history and a forced login to view/edit.", my description of Writeboard which works for me, does not work for everyone. So what's the invention in Writeboard? Certainly nothing in the functionality of the application which really is plain old wiki with absolutely nothing new. It's not even simplified in any way. Even Ward Cunninghams ur-wiki had all the features of writeboard, with the same stunning simplicity.
The language however is clean and maybe new. The product name and domain name, immediately descriptive and comprehensible, and the language used in the application, without cutesy tech words (wiki) that mom wouldn't know the meaning of. I'll buy an argument that this really matters. (The notion of a new product which has no novelty, except in language, is intriguing. Can user centered design really be boiled down to pure language?)
The new language does however have a bad sound of 'consumer' ringing through my years. My mom won't mind at all. She is a consumer when it comes to tech. For 2-way conversation types like myself it's kind of offputting though, so I'll take my wiki'ing elsewhere.