wadada
OSNN Senior Addict
- Joined
- 5 Nov 2002
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Get in the Groove for Office Collaboration
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is all the rage, but it's usually associated with illegal swapping of music files. You might be surprised to know that P2P is the latest big thing in business software.
Last week, I promised I'd tell you about a great collaboration tool that we recently discovered for sharing files, e-mail and instant messages between members of a team or workgroup. It's called Groove, and it lets you create a "virtual office space" where those working on a project can come together and work together as if you were all in the same physical location, even when you're thousands of miles apart. Best of all, there's nothing for users to configure, and your communications are secure. You can have real time online meetings, too.
You can run the Groove client on your Windows XP computer (the downside is that all the members of your team have to have Groove installed). It's a peer-to-peer program, so you don't have worry about setting up or connecting to servers. Groove's founder is Ray Ozzie, who created Lotus Notes, one of the first collaboration/groupware software packages.
What about Microsoft's collaboration software, such as SharePoint and LiveMeeting? Well, here's the exciting part: Microsoft announced in March that they were acquiring Groove Networks. That means we can look forward to seeing Groove integrated with other Microsoft products. It'll be great if a future version of Office lets you connect to your Groove workspaces directly from Word or Outlook. Some industry pundits are predicting that some of Groove's functionality will be built into Longhorn, Microsoft's next version of Windows.
You can read more about Groove and download a trial version at http://www.groove.net. The trial version is limited to 60 days for business use, but you can use it indefinitely for personal use, although you're limited to a maximum of three workspaces. It runs on Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME and XP (both Home and Pro). Note that the installation process may disable your anti-spyware software in order to install properly, so don't forget to ensure it's enabled again after installation is complete.
( source win xp news )
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is all the rage, but it's usually associated with illegal swapping of music files. You might be surprised to know that P2P is the latest big thing in business software.
Last week, I promised I'd tell you about a great collaboration tool that we recently discovered for sharing files, e-mail and instant messages between members of a team or workgroup. It's called Groove, and it lets you create a "virtual office space" where those working on a project can come together and work together as if you were all in the same physical location, even when you're thousands of miles apart. Best of all, there's nothing for users to configure, and your communications are secure. You can have real time online meetings, too.
You can run the Groove client on your Windows XP computer (the downside is that all the members of your team have to have Groove installed). It's a peer-to-peer program, so you don't have worry about setting up or connecting to servers. Groove's founder is Ray Ozzie, who created Lotus Notes, one of the first collaboration/groupware software packages.
What about Microsoft's collaboration software, such as SharePoint and LiveMeeting? Well, here's the exciting part: Microsoft announced in March that they were acquiring Groove Networks. That means we can look forward to seeing Groove integrated with other Microsoft products. It'll be great if a future version of Office lets you connect to your Groove workspaces directly from Word or Outlook. Some industry pundits are predicting that some of Groove's functionality will be built into Longhorn, Microsoft's next version of Windows.
You can read more about Groove and download a trial version at http://www.groove.net. The trial version is limited to 60 days for business use, but you can use it indefinitely for personal use, although you're limited to a maximum of three workspaces. It runs on Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME and XP (both Home and Pro). Note that the installation process may disable your anti-spyware software in order to install properly, so don't forget to ensure it's enabled again after installation is complete.
( source win xp news )
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