Announcing PopG's Groove Stress Tests 2005

In Christmas 2002, or was it 2001, PopG ran a global test of Groove called How many users can Groove cope with. This test started to have problems at around 50 members, and keeled over before it reached 150 space members.Well PopG is heavily involved in supporting Tsunami and it is clear that Groove is MUCH improved. There are three main dimensions to stressing Groove- space membership- frequent delta traffic- large data volume trafficSo, how many people can Groove cope with now? We intend to initiate the above tests in a controlled fashion so that we can answer these questions. In this we need your help.To consider participatating you MUST - be running the latest build of Groove Virtual Office 3.0 - that is 3.0f, build 2283- have a relatively stable Groove environment (we do not want tests skewed becaue you have problems!)- follow the Stress Test guidelinesFull test details and instructions, including space invitation are publicly available from our Support Forums.(PS you do not need to be a PopG user to participate.)

Congrats to Ellen MacArthur on sailing around the world pretty damned fast

As an owner of a little RIB myself I get fearful just going across a single bay around the coast of England and would not dream of exposing myself to the hazards of the open sea. But to do this for 71 days and break the world record - is a fantastic acheivement.

I have just been watching the news coverage as she arrived into Falmouth. And what amazed me was the obvious team "collaborative" effort required that Ellen to achieve this.

Well done.

Is thin wrong?

At http://black.typepad.com/john_blacks_weblog/2005/01/still_the_dread.html John Black refers to the Groove experience on PopG as if it was some kind of very poor brother to "normal" Groove. Whilst I would not want to say that using a Mac is the same as using a PC, I would strongly argue that both can be used very effectively for word processing and spreadsheet work. Also I don't hear that many users of one complaining on a daily basis "oh I wish I had the other type of computer." You just get on with life.

I can see where John is coming from. Groove itself has had a real uphill challenge in getting credibility. He points to the easy ride that E-mail seems to have had, no matter how poor a medium it is. In fact perhaps the primary thing going for E-mail is its ubiquitousness: no small thing of course.

And PopG has had, over time, a similar perceptual challenge to normal Groove usage. Sometimes this is a matter of prejudice, sometimes it is lack of experience. Partly it is due to PopG not having the cash backing of $m investment.

But a PopG delivery of Groove can outstrip a "normal" groove in many areas. For instance, one area is in large datasets. Groove is percieved to bottlneck on performance when a space gets to a certain size. Received wisdom is at around 1-2 gigs. John refers to the Groove EDB product as a solution for this.

Let me say right now that if your Groove project requires spaces up to 1-2gigs.. No, let's go further, exceeding the 1-2 gig limit. Let's go to perhaps 50gigs, perhaps even terabytes. Yes, that's where PopG can deliver - all possibly in fully-functioning ultra-fast performing Groove Viritual Office workspace.