Viviti, based out of Parksville, BC, (that's central Vancouver Island) is a new free, hosted content management/blog system currently in beta. After a slight delay due to this week's downtown Vancouver power outage, they've launched a new build adding a new toolbar, status bar, social bookmarking links, improved editing modes, and widgets for Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter.
Large hosted services such as WordPress.com have brought the price of simple blog/content management hosting down to free. Viviti is also free, though the site hints at premium services for extended functionality. Despite being only four months old, Viviti stands fairly solid beside WordPress with a comparable and growing featureset. Its interface keeps things simpler and is perhaps more accessible to novice users with fewer options, and the ability to edit, drag, and rearrange content live on the site. Viviti comes will a selection of professional themes that will stand out beside your friends' standard WordPress themes, and allow the creation of custom themes.
The Viviti team is keeping on top of user requests through their forum and IRC channel (they were quick to respond to a question I posed in IRC), and have put out new builds monthly. They're already "eating their own dog food", as the whole team runs their personal blogs on Viviti. They've also been generous enough to give us 200 beta keys, so if you'd like to get in early and give Viviti a try, just leave a comment in this post and we'll send it your way.
It's now several weeks since your initial post and so you may have no Viviti beta keys to distribute, however I'd appreciate one if you have some. I am in the midst of trying out several apps for use by my first year students at Portland State University. The sort of tool Viviti looks to be can be very helpful to students who do not have the time to learn (or the money to purchase) commercial website apps (e.g., Dreamweaver). Thanks for pointing to Viviti and providing a glimpse of what it does.
