I'm trying a new web service/application this morning from Stikipad. The web site and application itself has at least at first glance, the style of 37signals products. It's not much more than skin deep though.

After signing up for a free account, this web page was shown:

I noted some interesting usability issues on the welcome page:

There is no "Edit link" specifically on the screen. There is this little bar in the lower left corner:

No links though. Web users understand links. By default, they're blue and underlined. Sometimes just blue. But a gray bar with gray text with an underlined E is not a link. Moving my mouse over the Edit Page button does underline it, but only then does it seem to act like a link. It's only a link to a developer.

Next up, the second paragraph.

If you click the thumbnail to see the entire welcome screen, see if you can find the "configure" link anywhere on the screen. I couldn't. I'm not really sure what it's referring to at all. OK, I found the configure link after one of the co-founders of Stikipad wrote me an e-mail this morning. It's in the far upper corner of the screen. On my 24" monitor, I missed it completely. It's WAAAAY off to the side, not centered on any of the other features or content. I'd move it somewhere more obvious to new users (like me).

Next is the "Created" stamp (below the last paragraph, but above the button bar):

How many users care about the IP address? How many know their computer's IP address? I don't know mine -- and I don't care. More importantly, I'm sure the loop back adapter IP address of 127.0.0.1 is not my IP address.

Clicking the Edit Page button take me to a plain simple text editor where although the web site claims I should have WYSIWYG editing, I do not. It's just a big text field. I've tried IE and Firefox on a PC -- neither work. The blog says it the feature was just added for all account types from free to paid, but it's not yet available to me. The rich editing won't work on Safari at all as Safari doesn't include the necessary support built into the browser to provide a rich editing experience.

The current pricing runs from free for a limited account to US $149 for a year of use. If you're really only interested in a wiki and don't mind getting your own host (pick a web host with automated installs of common software), you'll be able to get a better deal and likely have less limitations on bandwidth and usage (and you'll have your own domain name!), instead of just a subdomain. Even $49 for a personal wiki seems way too expensive for a simple service like this. They're ripe to be squashed by competitors.