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Well, it was a long time coming, but you can now buy Groove, in an actual box, on Amazon.com. That’s cool. The price, not so cool. It’s a great piece of software, but without mass adoption, it’s potential is quite limited, and the $200+ price doesn’t help.
But hey, I’m still proud I was involved.
I don’t post much about Groove anymore, but Wired just ran this awesome illustration of Bill Gates & Ray Ozzie that I just had to share.
The related article, “Rebuilding Microsoft” is here.
Well well, it looks like my old boss has done quite well for himself. This is obviously huge news no matter how you slice it. What does it mean for Microsoft? Well, Ray is a visionary, no doubt about it. I’ve talked with him personally, and, of course, felt the impact of his ideas - his mind truly does seem to operate three years in the future. So, in terms of technological vision, Microsoft should excel (no pun intended).
But there are two things that worry me. One: Microsoft spends a lot of time and effort on some rather dull stuff. Not everything at Microsoft is as cool as Vista or Groove. I think Ray will get bored pretty quickly.
Also, Ray is a Nice Guy (though the details of the Groove acquisition undoubtedly left a sour taste in some mouths). This may bode well for PR purposes, but Ray will never have the cutthroat nature of Bill back in the day. And with Google supposedly getting more Evil every day, this could be a real liability. Because, as we all learned from Spaceballs, Evil will always win… because Good is dumb.
I just noticed that we (the Microsoft division formerly known as Groove Networks) are hiring for a number of development and QA positions. If you’re a software engineer who always wanted to work for Microsoft but wanted to stay in Massachusetts, we’re pretty much the only hope you’ve got ;). So, come on over!
Microsoft Completes Acquisition of Collaboration Software Provider Groove Networks.
My subcranial implant is itching…
Visual Studio developer (and thus Microsoft employee) Korby Parnell had this (and many other nice things) to say about Groove.
For end-user application designers […], Groove is like one of those folk singers that most people have never heard about but which nearly every popular musician counts among their top five role models. Groove has inspired and informed my work in countless ways.
Now, I can’t really take credit for the bulk of what Groove is, but I’ve been there for over 5 years, I’ve watched it grow, and I’ve helped drive how the Groove message got communicated to the world, and stuff like this really reminds me what it’s been all about (and hopefully what it will continue to be about).
I never thought to look, but Groove is listed in the Über-reference guide, Wikipedia. The listing does a very good job of concisely explaining just what the heck Groove really is, perhaps better then the company usually does.
For those unfamiliar, the Wikipedia is an “Encyclopedia” where you can look up practically anything whatsoever. It can be added to and edited by anyone in the world (yet somehow manages to remain unbiased and professional). Very, very cool.
Groove just had a launch party for Virtual Office 3.0, which we celebrated at a restaurant/dock in Gloucester. I took a boat ride around the harbor and blogged a bunch of pictures from my camera phone. Enjoy.
Hello, hello, everyone. It’s been almost two weeks since my last post. This has been mainly due to the mad rush to get the brand new Groove.net web site out the door. Groove 3.0 represents a HUGE technological and usability advance over the Groove 2.5 and we wanted a whole new website to go along with it. It was a LOT of work for my colleagues and I, and I hope you will go check it out. Special thanks go to Colleen for her graphic design for the site.
I will soon be disappearing yet again since I’ll be on vacation next week (to recover from the above) and not likely to be blogging.
I hope all is well out there in Blog Land.
Dying to get an in-depth look at Groove v3.0 but not eligible for the beta program? Check out this (very positive) review from Robin Good, Italy’s ambassador of collaboration. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s someone who truly “gets” the essence of Groove, but is not shy about pointing out its shortcomings. This makes his opinions more valuable than most.
Excerpts:
For now Groove v3 passes all my tests with near maximum scores.
Performance of Groove v3 is from a different planet.
The Launchpad is a little masterpiece of cleanliness, precision, simplicity and organization. UI designers pay attention please, this is reference work!
Check out this article by eWeek’s Steve Gillmor about Groove 3.0 — and its new “Groove File Sharing” functionality, which he’s declared our “killer app”.
As someone who uses three different PC’s on a regular basis, only a couple weeks into using 3.0 Beta, I don’t know how I got along without GFS. It truly changes the way you view computing. Get in on the Beta, and you can play along, too.
Well, not exactly, but check out all these articles:
Groove jumps to Microsoft beat
Groove Upgrades Virtual Office Software
Groove Lines Up New Release, VAR Program
Groove workspace makes room for oversight
Groove 3.0 Targets ‘Occupational Developer’
Groove Upgrades Virtual Office Software
For the most part, these articles are NOT just rehashes of a press release… Some people really did their homework.
It’s nice being buzzworthy again 
Groove V3 is making the rumor pages… If you’re a paid customer, you’ll should really join up with the Beta program. The last major release of Groove came out last February, and we haven’t exactly been twiddling our thumbs for the past year 
At least one person has successfully run Groove on Linux, via CrossOver Office.
Now, we just need someone to port CrossOver Office to Mac OS X Volunteers?
I’m glad news about Groove usage in Iraq is reaching the media… We are doing some AMAZING stuff over there — stuff that literally could not be done any other way. Here’s an excerpt from a recent San Antonio Express-News article. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be available online.
Teams of U.S. troops deployed to Iraqi cities assessed each town’s electrical, water and waste systems. There were 300 categories of information needed to complete the assessment. In each major city, a fleet of Humvees, all equipped with laptops, were sent to do the job.
Trouble was, [Groove Marketing VP David] Fowler said, there was no network for the soldiers to use. So the Groove-equipped laptops also were loaded with wireless networking capabilities.
As the team fanned out and made their individual reports, information leapfrogged from one vehicle to another, back and forth, crisscrossing town, so that all of the laptops were recording all of the data.
Each laptop held onto the data until a military satellite came into range. Then, during a brief window, each would upload the data and send it simultaneously to commanding officers, the U.S. State Department and humanitarian agencies working in the region.
“It’s astonishing,” [Industry observer Clay] Shirky said. “You couldn’t have done that any other way. No other software could’ve done it.”
If you’re one of the people who never “got” why Groove is different from “eRoom” or “WebEx”, do you get it now?
In conjunction with a major Groove.net overhaul (more behind the scenes than visible, though there have been some design tweaks), we’ve added an RSS feed of our “In The News” section. The RSS items are link-only entries to online articles which mention Groove Networks. I’ve been dying to do this for a while, but it was basically impossible with our old Content Management System, which shall remain nameless. Lest you think this is a “skunkworks” project, check out the good ol’ orange XML button on the homepage. The silver-haired guy in the corner office is a big RSS fan, and has been just as eager to get this up and running. Enjoy!
All students will use Groove and have poor taste in shoes.
InfoWorld pundit Jon Udell thinks Ray Ozzie’s “Saving The Browser” article “may prove to be the single most influential weblog item ever written”. I don’t know. I think my “badger badger badger badger” post on Ridiculent would at least have to be a close second.
Buzzword Alert!
First, Groove was the “Napster of Business”. Now we’re a leading provider of “darknet” software.
