Hugh points to a fascinating screenshot of a Groove GWS client in Mac OSX ? This screenshot also seems to originate from Zalba Studio.

Somehow i missed the release of Toucan Collaborate 1.1 from Virtual Methods. This version has over 20 enhancements compared to the 1.0 version.

A couple of days ago i reported on a new Groove mailclient from Zalba Studio that would be available soon. The betaversion of Avantmail can be downloaded now.

Groove is looking for some top notch developers

SeattlePI.com : Competitor comes to aid of Microsoft in royalty case

Jon Udell : Ray Ozzie recently posted what may prove to be the single most influential weblog item ever written: Saving the Browser. As you probably already know, Ray makes a compelling argument that the 1993-era Lotus Notes should have been considered prior art for the Eolas patent filed in 1994 and issued in 1998. Ray's extraordinary essay might conceivably save Microsoft ten times what it invested in Groove, should the argument prove decisive in an appeal of the recent ruling in favor of Eolas.

Daniel Shurman picks up his blog :-)

Grossfinch reveals the availability of a new emailclient in Groove : AvantMail. This tool was developed by Zalba Studio and goes into public beta in 2 days. AvantMail has the following features :

-Multi Pop/SMTP Support
-Print Messages
-Quick Send/Receive Messages
-Windows Addressbook Contact Importing
-HTML Type Messaes with high and easy security control
-Multi Message Import source support,eg:outlook express,NS

CRN has some spicey rumors (via SB Chatterjee)

A little bird tells us that earlier this month, Bill Gates took a tour of Groove Networks' facilities and shared some face time with Groove founder and Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie. Microsoft has been a big-time financial backer of Groove, so the meeting isn't a total surprise. But neither of these men gives away their time for free, so let the speculation begin.

An interesting suggestion for Parallelspace eMail by Eurrio on the Groove Forums

One special feature we can see a lot of potential in is one where you from a large central Exchange 2003 installation, over the internet, would be able to service a number of individual users and small offices via a remote Groove based e-mail client. This would minimize the need for expensive bandwidth as you will be able to use the public internet with almost the same security as your own WAN (or it would postpone the point in time where you have to increase bandwidth). Another benefit is that these smaller user groups would not need to install their own small Exchange servers to support a small number of users, but would instead be able to access a far away ASP type of central Exchange server farm.

Two articles on "invisible" filesharing networks both with references to Groove

NY Times : Crackdown May Send Music Traders Into Software Underground

BusinessWeek Online: The Underground Internet

Ray Ozzie recommends Power to the Edge (in PDF)

This book is truly a must-read for anyone interested in decentralization and the social and organizational relevance of shifting power to the edge, whether in a commercial or a defense context. As you read about the technology enablers of the edge, it'll become clear why products such as Groove - as COTS enablers of the fully-networked collaborative environment - have such immediate relevance to the defense community.

CRN offers an overview of the products by IBM and MS for realtime collaboration including Groove.

The CRN Test Center predicts that contextual collaboration might one day become the new desktop as more functionality is driven away from productivity tools and into the server. In some ways, the technology will come full circle to the days when hosted centralized services were the only option available to users.

John Burkhardt has moved his weblog to a new location

Groove's monthly Bulletin for September was sent out last week. Too bad i couldn't find a link for an online version that i can post here. You need to subscribe to this newsletter by Email.
In this month's bulletin there are a number of references to Groove for educational purposes including a casestudy from Rick Lillie at the California State Unversity and Robert Kirkpatrick's poetry courses at University of North Carolina.