Groove 3.0 is on the way

Groove 3.0 is on the way.

You can now sign up to receive a beta version of Groove 3.0, Ray Ozzie's collaboration tool. I've long had a love-hate relationship with Groove: The peer-to-peer, zero-management, automatic security architecture is very impressive.

Creating a Groove space and inviting others is effortless and automatic and does not require a server. We've been using Groove internally at Sax.net for many years. Groove really shines for on-the-fly team collaboration. Everything is automatically synchronized accross all members, and it doesn't matter whether members are inside or outside your company's firewall.  Best of all, Groove works really well when you're disconnected.  It automatically resynchronized the changes that you and other people made while you were offline.

On the flip side, Groove 2.5 (the current version) has some very rough edges.  The user interface is sometimes confusing, and many of the tools don't let you do some very basic tasks, such as printing and copy & pasting. That seems inexcusable for a company that has been working on this product for more than five years and has raised more than $150 million in venture funding. Groove 3.0 promises “greater ease of use” and “a more familiar, consistent and intuitive user interface”. Groove has incredible potential and has generated much hype.  It looks like the third major release just might live up to all of it!  [Live @ Sax.net]

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