Near-Time, Inc. , based in Chapel Hill, NC,  is launching its hosted collaboration service of the same name today following a six-month beta period which included thousands of users in segments spanning enterprise, small business, government, NGO, and education.

CEO Reid Conrad started the company more than two years ago as a MAC-only knowledge management solution but the platform has now evolved into a hosted Web-based collaboration and team support service for all environments. 

The Near-Time pitch is that by integrating Weblogs and Wikis, the service enables groups to create a knowledge repository as they collaborate. Near-Time Wiki pages include version history, making it easy to keep up with group iterations. Institutional memory helps groups build upon experience and quickly brings new members up-to-speed. And the intuitive WYSIWYG authoring environment gives groups a familiar word-processing like interface to work within.  

"As organizations become increasingly distributed, Near-Time brings internal and external communities together seamlessly,” Conrad says.   “Email just does not cut it and most traditional platforms are expensive and proprietary. With our new hosted service we are giving organizations and dispersed groups an easy way to take advantage of the Web 2.0 technologies that have drastically changed and improved ways in which people communicate, work together and discover knowledge."