Groove is a brilliant Backup solution
people really need to be made aware of the power of the Folder Share Tool to keep real-time backups of most kinds of files including some databases. With auto compression and binary diff compare, updates are extremely efficient and and bandwidth used is minimal.

once you select a folder on your PC and invite another PC - home, remote location, HO whatever that's all you as a user have to do - any files added / updated wither side will be automatically synced across one or multiple locations
very nice indeed

if you need groove 3.1 tools in a G2007 space create the workspace in 3.1 then invite G2007 - or save 3.1 tool as template and add to G2007 space - works

Societies of the future
just a thought that recurs in discussion on the society of the future - smart devices for sure, but also social networks that are smaller, closer, trust based and focussed around matters of interest from health to hobbies.

I was involved with a pilot project in Bavaria, for e-medicine, as some towns here have become intensive centres for treatment, mainly ME people. But their own communities are aging and the health of their citizens has become a serious concern for the local authorities. So some Groove colleagues and i are designing the first of such "social networks" to knit together communities.

Meanwhile some years ago i had embedded a Camera App inside groove to provide a live surveillance and interaction capability between users / groups, perfect for monitoring of the elderly. Lots of different pieces to the big picture and i am hoping your guys have some ideas for me.

It is music to our ears. A simple solution to a complex problem.

Harish Mehta

From: Ashok Hingorani [mailto:apwizard@usa.net] Sent: 23 April 2009 22:54To: Vijay Mukhi; anand.desai@dsklegal.com; Kamal.Kashyap@relianceada.com; 'Sunil Mehta'; 'Santosh Khanolkar'; brijesh_singh@yahoo.com; 'Ashok Hingorani'; 'Mr.Harish Aiyer'; mehtaashwin2007@yahoo.comCc: 'Gul Kripalani'; 'Khanapurkar, Nitin (IN - Mumbai)'; 'Harish Mehta'; 'Atul Nishar'; 'Mr Raj Saraf'; 'Trips'; skjiva@gmail.com; indushahani@yahoo.com; fc.kohli@tcs.com; 'Dr. Chirag Unadkat'; sumit.chowdhury@relianceada.com; 'Javed Ahmad'; cmd@microtechnologies.net; pramoud.rao@zicom.com; 'Som Mittal (NASSCOM)'; 'Ashank Desai'; 'Ninad -- Aptech'; 'S Swaminathan'; 'Sanjay Bahl'Subject: Re: Technology to create a Reporting Room for Police Stations

as agreed at the meeting - it is anathema to a democracy, the a citizen should fear the govt servant, police or BMc or Judge. They are ultimately servants of the people. Bringing total transparency through video / technology is vital in bringing this growing monster to heel. The police can install cameras to watch us, why can we not demand cameras to watch them ???
rgds
ashok

heh heh
going to build my first tool that leverages live mesh - note I use the word leverage - too early to build real tools for Mesh but possible to "use" mesh as part of another tool's architecture easily - more to come ....

If Groove is so great why have i not heard about it.

1. When Ray Ozzie released Groove he had a small team of just 250 people - he knew he could not support thousands of small users - so he refused to market Groove to the industry and focussed on fortune 1000 clients who had their own inhouse IT resources. No ads were ever released, he relied on the trickle down effect as well as evangelism by those who loved Groove.

2. By 2004-5 when MS was taking over Groove, the most important target was getting Groove Office 12 compliant - they gave up a lot including some tools that just couldnt make the deadline, but they gained a multi lingual platform and the branding / bundling benefits of MS Office. Once again Ray / MS decided not to promote groove seperately and widely as there was little awareness within MS itself of it's capabilities and no enhanced support structure in place. Now every week new teams at MS are adopting Groove as their preferred way of working and the word is spreading.

3. But the most significant reason is that people never talk of a product that is proving to be strategically useful to them. Real story - at a recent talk i gave to the top 50 CIOs in India, i asked about Groove and no hands went up. I knew the the MD of xzxzxzx Pharmaceutical company in the first row and pointed out that his company did use Groove, internationally. I got such a dirty look :-)

Later over drinks he came and clarified - he said Groove has had such a major impact on their efficiency and costs at xzxzxzxzx pharma, that if his CIO colleagues wanted to remain blind to it, he was surely not going to be the one to enlighten them - his company would shoot him.

Groove is not a toy or just some file sharing tool for large files only - it is the closest you can come to a real time paperless office and it's impact on any organisation is phenomenal.