Dave Winer reports on our latest Groove-Radio integration experiments and reacts on Tim's question.
I'm sure there are lots of different ways to unlock the sweetspot that lies between Groove's private collaboration model and powerful publishing tools like Radio. The betarelease of Groove Web Services brings the creation of interesting hybrid environments like realtime collaborative secure weblogs or P2P intranet/extranets with RSS feeds, within reach and i guess we're just testing the waters....

I stumbled upon the weblog of Joe O'Laughlin because of a cryptic comment on Tim's weblog. On his (Trellix) blog he reports frequently about his experiences with Groove and even has been using a beta of our Bloggertool to maintain another blog from a Groovespace for over 2 months :-))
Have been browsing through his archives and found lots of interesting thoughts and observations including this convincing Groove pitch :

For myself I have been trying to summarize Groove's appeal, promise, and functionality. I took their propaganda, reworded some, re-ordered it a bit, added an observation or two...

Selective telepathy?  
Right out-of-the-box direct connections when you are ready. 
Bring remote people and information together to get your work done faster and easier. All you need to work with other Groove users is access to the Internet. 
Consultants, freelancers and home-office workers, whose value is often created in solitude NOW have also a ready means for collaboration, without heavy investment in infrastructure.With little cost and no headaches Groove Workspace puts the power of collaboration with selected collegues on the PC desktop of each. 
Original productivity from specialized applications or tool suites can be copied to a common file archive, ready for sharing. Instant or delayed messages can carry attached files with no threat of digital virus infection. Such files won't be mistaken by email filters or trashed by antivirus guardians. 

Offline availability 
Freelancers and consultants are frequently on the move. With Groove you can work in a hotel room or on a plane without worrying about saving your information or getting it to the people you work with: Groove automatically saves your work and synchronizes your changes with those of your Groove contacts when next you reconnect to the internet.This same functionality allows you to keep your work laptop and home PC(s) automatically in synch. 

Rich interactive joint functionality 
Email is fine for sending messages but for projects that require more Groove offers: real-time doc review & editing, group PowerPoint presentations, meeting management, project set-up and tracking, group scheduling, and much more including XP 11 MS Office applications. 

Superior security 
Without a corporate budget, individuals can't afford the kind of protection companies take for granted. Groove changes all that, providing industrial-strength security that you never have to think about because it's always on, protecting your content and conversations on your hard-disk and moving over the Internet. And, spam is excluded. 
Groove Workspace sits on your PC, not a Web site or server, so there's no special configuration or set-up required. You don't have to contend with crashing email servers, mailbox size limits, or snooping ISPs reading your messages. 
Your own private network running unseen over the internet, without tedium. 
Dodging firewalls and avoiding restriction by the general run of IT departments, this cyber courier service lets you OWN your communications. 
  
The Low-Cost Groupware and VPN Alternative 
A better way to work with mobile employees, remote clients and customers at a fraction of the cost of enterprise collaboration solutions. 

Looks like Matt Pope gets his Xmas present after all ;-)

A couple weeks ago John Robb suggested he'd like to see weblog publishing tied to a P2P system, specifically for the purpose of publishing links to files in peer systems to the Web.

As luck would have it, the timing happened to coincide with the arrival of the Groove Web Services beta on Tim Knip's doorstep.  Apparently, Tim's been working to demonstrate what John requested, and more.  Check it out:

Published links to files in Groove here

Blogging from Groove discussion here

Tim's Radio feature request for Dave here

Hah, this is awesome stuff; enables collaborative blogging, and get's me the multiple computer support for Radio I asked for as well.  Can't wait to see what else Tim cooks up.  Tons of possibilities. 

Sam Gentile : Got the beta of Groove 2.5 and Groove Web Services up and going. It's quite amazing to me, in the matter of minutes, to pull all the data out of my Groove space with a simple C# program.

Tim has been working on some cool Groove-Radio integration. Stay tuned, more to come......

O'reilly.net : Applications, User Interfaces, and Servers in the Soup

How Groove is used at the YMCA 

Matt Pope : GWS turns the Groove desktop client into a Web services provider, so while most people think of "servers" in the cloud as being the providers of Web services, we're suggesting that there is value in integrating data from the desktop via the same methodologies.

Sam Ruby : If there are issues, and interest expressed by Groove developers and/or users in collaboration on flattening them, then I would be willing to contribute.

Simon Fell : I got the Groove beta installed and up and running with very little fuss, and have been working on some PocketSOAP based samples. No real issues so far (other than the current PocketSOAP WSDL tools don't generate SOAP header code yet), I hope to post something soon.

Tim Knip : Complete Groove-RU interop will soon be possible...

More on Groove Web Services by Jon Udell

Infoworld : OneNote sings officetune

Also check out the new and improved Mysterian Website

Forrest Duncan and Neil Finlayson of Mysterian have started blogging. I recall some spicy conversation on Groove and weblogs during diner at the Hawthorne hotel at the recent Groove partner briefing and am looking forward on reading both their thoughts regularly. Btw check out the screenshot of their latest Groovetool.

Michael Helfrich : Decentralization of the enemy

Grrrr, still no broadband in the new house so i guess weblog updates wil be a bit irregular the coming period.

Jon Udell talks extensively about Groove Web Services in his latest  Infoworld article named : Script locally, publish globally.  Nice to see he mentions our Groove/Radio experiment and Hugh's Newsclienttool :-)

Jeff Chausse :  Don't want to use Windows to use Groove? Get a cheap Windows PC, install Groove, plug it into your LAN, and go hide it in a closet. Better yet, just set up an account on someone elses' Grooved PC. Build whatever interfaces you really need, out of .NET/Java/Perl/Fortran, and access it from your Mac/PalmPilot/WebTV/Commodore 64.

Matt Pope : Integration of Radio with Groove, using Groove Web Services, would further decentralize Radio in a way that would allow real-time blogging from machines not running Radio.  I want it.

eWeek : Groove, Microsoft tighten relationship

Alexis Smirnov : Current releases of Groove include its own notification technology. Replacing it with .NET Alerts could do wonders for further opening up Groove Platform to developers.

Interesting discussion on the current status of Groove started on the Grooveforums and extended to Vowe.net.

NY Times features an article written by Ray Ozzie : Speaking Mind to Mind

Have been offline for a couple of days and neglecting my blog because we were moving into our new house. Still haven't got broadband there but i got good hope this gets fixed soon. 
Strange feeling leaving the old house. We've been living there ,very happily, for over 11 years and the last half year with little Wolf. btw it's astounding how much stuff you collect over the years. I'm glad i left more then 50% of my stuff behind including 1 m3 of computer-magazines and roughly the same amount of architecture-magazines dating back from 1991. It's interesting to see the different pace of evolution of computers and architecture/city planning over the last decade ;-)