Jon Udell has another article raving about Groove.
When you join a Groove shared space, you get all the stuff, and it looks the same to you as it looks to everybody else. It’s no more effort to invite a colleague behind a foreign corporate firewall than it is to invite a colleague in the next cubicle. And here’s the kicker: the shared space formed in this spontaneous way is secure. Really, really secure, both on the wire, and on every hard disk to which it synchronizes.
Udell goes on to contrast the Web/e-mail/news system of collaboration that he outlined in Practical Internet Groupware with a system like Lotus Notes that did much the same thing except that it was extremely expensive (I’ve worked at places where the IT department and users fell in love with Notes, but the price made implementing it a nonstarter). Among other things Udell likes Groove because like Notes its an integrated solution that doesn’t feel “cobbled together” and unlike Notes is basically free (with Groove apparently making its money by selling server space for clients who need it).
Okay, the security model Groove has is very nice — if you’ve got high security needs it seems to solve them pretty seamlessly. But for those without such high security needs I think Udell sells his original “cobbled” solution a bit short. the first thing that hit me after firing up Groove was that it looked great but do I really want to convince my friends and coworkers to download, install and learn to use yet another application?
The e-mail/web browsers combination are not just ubiquitous, but so is knowledge of how to use them. Not that Groove was particularly difficult to use (in fact its interface was great), but I’m really to the point of where if it’s not available via e-mail and/or web browser I’m really not interested.
I was very impressed by the latest version of Qualcomm’s Eudora, which I use for e-mail, which includes automatic file synchronization which Qualcomm calls the Eudora Sharing Protocol. The press release describes a possible use for the feature,
Here are some examples of how ESP can be used
A group of reporters might all be working on a large feature with multiple sidebars. With ESP, whenever any member of the group checks his Large Feature folder, he or she will see what other members of the group have written (their notes, etc.) and saved to the folder on their hard drives. When the editor edits the copy as it comes in and pulls the story together, all members of the team will have the same version of the feature in that folder on their hard drives.
Okay, first it’s pretty limited functionality, and second I don’t want to force the rest of the world which seems to be enchanted with Outlook to switch to Eudora, but I think Qualcomm’s on the right track: I don’t really want an entirely knew application, what I want are some open protocols and organizing applications to let me do more sophisticated collaboration with the tools I’ve got.
If Groove becomes as ubiquitous as the browser, at least with the people I want to collaborate with, I might end up using it but I’d still prefer to stick with just my e-mail client and browser.