And so as Strong Angel comes to an end it goes into Hotwash. What this term means we can only guess at. My vision is the end of some team-playing sports match with everyone in the washroom unwinding. And certainly considering the climate a hot or even cold wash would probably be very welcome, I guess. Hotwash actually means, I gather, an immediate post-event analysis.

Early feedback includes comments such as "PopG was an effective and valuable service." That means a lot to us. We have been part of the Groove Humanitarian Space for some time and have been itching for the opportunity to prove our worth. We really believe we have something unique to offer and are pleased to have been of service during SA2.

On a personal note throughout my computing career if someone had said to me that one day my technology might be able to make a potentially significant positive difference in a strife-ridden place such as Iraq then I would have laughed. I laugh no more.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 3:26

Oops forgot to tell you how old this was... Windows 3.1 was dying and Windows 95 was in the ascendent.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 18:14

Groove is deepening its abilities by partnering with Casahl Technology to enable back-end enterprise integration. Read CNN news at http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarchives.jhtml?articleId=23904843 for more info.

Now a number of years ago I contracted for Information Builders on the EDA product, which in-house was described as a glue because of its ability to take data from many back-end financial systems and bring it to the desktop. In those days the jargon was relational databases and 4GLs.

Well, it was a great contract - with some great times in New York, which was just fine and dandy for this Yorkshire Tike! I remember (very dimly - and not because of passage of time) being introduced to some heavy beers by one Alfonso. Wierd but great guy - I wish I had been able to keep in touch. His goal in getting be drunk was to see if he could get me (a vegetarian) to eat meat. I got as drunk as I can remember (?!?) and ate salad at one of New Yorks hottest meateries. Oops we are supposed to be talking computers... sorry for the digression...

Anyway beside different technology jargon their goal was bring hard numbers from financial databases and presenting these via their GUI to the "end-user". My role in this game was creating a comprehensive regression test harness from the GUI right back to the wide variety of Windows and Unix boxes, including boxes from locations across the globe. Great fun.

At the time their product was sort-of what Groove is today. Sort of. It did not operate at the Edge. It was not sexy. It required huge manpower and servers to justify its exicstence. And it cost loads-a-money. But it shared, sorry distribuuted, data around to their GUI "FOCUS" which was old fashioned even in those days: But the power of what it delivered in conjunction with their middleware EDA was - phenomenal - providing you are dealing with numbers.

And so today we see Groove moving into more structured and therefore harder forms of data - via their forms tool which has been signifincatly upgraded, and my guess will continue to be upgraded. It seems the Groove forms tool has probably had more visible effort put into it than any other tool in the Groove armoury. And now we begin to see the value of that investment bringing partnerships such as today's announcement.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 18:12

Slanderous Trolls be warned...

I have just read Dan Gillmor's column http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010613.shtml#010613 end to end. In it I saw some serious justification for my continued opinions on Groove's positive values for improving relationsships. Dan runs a blog of almost undisputed high quality. And what happens? He starts to get flamed, to the point where there is undisputed support asking him to libel the purpotrators of the slander. It all hinges, in my opinion, on one thing. Without it there would be no problem and Dan would be able to sleep easy.

A tremedous and fundamental weakness of blog is that you never know who the person who is commenting on a blog actually is. They could be anyone, they could be several people or one person. The best pieces of evidence you can get are username, style of writing, an IP address and an email address. All of these might spoofed, changed, withheld or just entered incorrectly.

So I am going to change this blog. From now on comments will NOT be possible from the http://popg.blogspot.com. However I do welcome comments - from anyone. So how can this be done? Use Groove, ask me for an invitation to the Groove space that drives this blog. (actually if someone can help me upload an open groove invitation file to this weblog I will do that!) Then you can comment away to your hearts content.

And what then happens if you flame me, or anyone else? Warning. I've got you. I will have your Groove vcard, your digital signature and an auditable log of activity that could have you paying a fine or in prison before you can say "jack rabbitt". Not only that your whole Groove communitity credibility will collapse in an instant.

And who said there "stupid idea, there is no value in a Groove blogging tool".

Tim Knip of www.Suite75.com. ARE YOU LISTENING. Get your blogger tool into first class order - and you could have the whole blogging community at your feet!

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 7:36

In case some of you think I am mad, which I am, let me just say that Groove-junkie freely admits that Groove is not good for everything, not by a long chalk. It is not a panacea.

What Groove is good for is very intensive computer-enabled & enhanced relationships. That sounds awful! It sounds as if I am talking about enhanced imagery, which is a complete antithesis of what Groove engenders. It brings about truthfulness: it is difficult to keep up a lie for a long time in Groove. Getting into Groove exposes you for what you are. If you live a lie - stay away from Groove. Could Groove be used as a lie-detector? Perhaps that is pushing things too far.

What Groove is bad for is general dissemination of information to large groups. It is not good for intensive file-sharing. It can do file-sharing, and is excellent at what it does - but acting as some kind of FTP server, well use FTP instead.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 20:08

Just in case you're interested, a couple of third party tools that we find indispensible for Groove life... We use AvantMail by Zalba (www.zalbazone.com) for all email. Using AvantMail allows us to automatically share email for things like support requests. The current edition is in need of maturing and we cannot wait for the next release.

The next tool is Gxcel from www.gtoolbox.com. As a person who considers himself a latter day Excel junkie this is like manna from heaven. How anyone could ever consider writing in Excel without using Gxcel is beyond me. Who wants to spend their life creating an Excel workbook - for their own exclusive and private use?

Thanks Ashok & Jirong....

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 17:05

What platform(s) does the latest version of Groove 3.0 Virtual Office run on?

Well confusion reigns. Firstly let's talk about Windows computers. Has support for dropped for Win98 et al? In http://www.groove.net/support/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=16&threadid=9718&STARTPAGE=1 I queried this and it seems that support has dropped. Just during the launch some documentation went squiffy. Let's hope no harm is done.

Much more fun can be seen when one realises that Groove now runs on Apple Mac! If you don't believe me check out the laptop image on many Groove web pages... Being a Windows geek myself I would not have recognised the faux-pas. It takes my Mac colleague Nick to point out the image of a user running Groove on a Mac Powerbook G4 throughout whole sections of the Groove website. Pay a visit http://www.groove.net/index.cfm?pagename=Products_Overview & enjoy. Of course what we are really seeing is a great collaboration between Groove & PopG!

(PS: I just hope that no-one pays any attention to our own website which I am sure is also full of holes...)

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 16:43