Full Circle Associates

When Groove first came out, I jumped for joy. It offered a collaboration toolset, with some really cool features, that could be used offline and online. So many of my colleagues around the world did NOT live in an "always on" world.

Still, Groove presented challenges of synchronization because my network not only often had limited online time, but also limited bandwidth AND the members had diverse cycles of coming online. This created havoc with the older versions of Groove. I called it synchronization hell. I know this is something that they have been working on, but Groove then also floated into the more costly range. Most of my network looks for tools that have the word 'free' attached! That said, Groove was one of the few offerings that even paid attention to offline work and synchronization. I was a Ray Ozzie fan and I think he has brought some good sense/ideas since Groove was gobbled up by Microsoft. (Oh, and you can no longer buy Groove standalone. In 2007 you can by Office Groove, so alas, that will probably fall even farther out of cost availability for my networks.)

Anyway... I was happy to see Brady Forrest blogging that Zimbra Adds Offline Use of Their Productivity Apps. EDITED LATER: I was also happy to see that Anne explains how they do that magic synchronizing! Time to go check it out, particularly noting that they appear to have separate pricing options (but not posted on their site - grrr) for non profits/NGO and government. And they have an open source base. Have any of you used it with a group? Have stories to tell?

Recently I have been thinking about this dichotomy of online/offline life. It is not always a useful split. I'm interested in thinking about bridges that allow online tools and "stuff" to be more seamless with our offline lives. Are tools one way?