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Dan Bricklin the creator of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet for personal computers has launched WikiCalc and given the exclusive distribution rights to his WikiCalc spreadsheet software to SocialText.

Like Google's new Spreadsheets application and other online spreadsheets, one of the goals of wikiCalc is to end the "email volleyball" issue (as SocialText CEO Ross Mayfield puts it) where spreadsheets are sent back and forth between users for editing. Most of the new online spreadsheets applications allow various levels of viewing and editing a single version of a spreadsheet, which is stored on a server instead of locally.

It provides the first real non-Microsoft alternative for companies wanting to edit spreadsheets on the network but who are not willing to have third parties like Google storing their data.

Check out the screencast of WikiCalc