Groove 3.0 is almost here. I haven't tried it yet, but Stowe Boyd's preview of Groove 3.0 gives a good glimpse of what to expect. I particularly like the fact that Groove 3.0 will be tightly integrated with the file system, turning folders into workspaces. I didn't like Groove 2.0's work-inside-a-box UI at all, so this is a welcome change.
I had a similar idea in my stack of Big-Ideas-I-Have-No-Time-For called Chutes. Chutes are containers for code and data that maps to a native folder. A chute folder has three area: inbox, outbox, and content. Shortcuts to chutes can be mailed or displayed on a webpage so I can share a chute I created on my desktop with my collegues or people who visit my webpage. To send me a file, you just drop the file into a chute and it will show up in the chute's inbox at my end. To access files in my chute, just open the chute to see what's there.
One feature of Chutes which I am not sure Groove 3.0 has is bots that lives in a chute. Chute Bots are little programs that processes objects within a specific area of a chute. For example, a printer bot drgagged into the inbox of a Printer chute will print documents dropped into the chute by anyone, remove the document from inbox, and drops a status report in the outbox. If the outbox had an e-mail bot, the status report can be mailed to a configured destination like sender of the original document.
I am looking forward to Groove 3.0. [Don Park's Daily Habit]