If you haven't been notified, Groove 3.0beta has been announced. I'm still covered under a Non-Disclosure Agreement about what 3.0 can do fully, but next week I'll post here how much more awesome 3.0 is from even 2.5j. Let me assure you that this is not the same 'leap' of technology as MS Office was from Office 2000 to XP. There are substantial, vital and exciting improvements to Groove. More later.
My current rant about email or what I'll call "Why Email is for Lazy People." As my organization takes baby steps in getting Groove out to the masses I'm seeing a slight (oh so slight) shift to putting stuff in Groove for projects. And each time I see that I rejoice. Email is so cumbersome to me because I must place the message in context for the sender. Its DOUBLY painful if there is an attachment. And maybe it's just me, but sending attachments via email is increasing. No floppy drive? No problem, I'll email you the file.
I take the email and must file it according to whatever organizational schema I have developed. This is because I have a finite limit on my storage capacity for emails + attachments. I could file it by name, general topic, date, etc. And anybody who tells me that it's easier to do this than using Groove is plain wrong. I have a-gazillion Personal Folders in Outlook and create a new folder more often than I like because an email doesn't fit a category already created.
Groove is soooo much better for a guy like me. With Groove, the 'sender' of the content is providing context for me. And can do so on several levels. Excluding some sort of Groove-Uber Space arrangement content is put away by project type or some other contextual arrangement. And within the space the content is further broken down into type of content.
Email is too broad: send a web address, send a file, send an calendar event, etc and its all buried into an email that I have to sift through. Using Groove I still get the link but it's pasted to a browser the other person and I co-share. Send an event and we both see it. A picture document can be placed in a tool that lets me see it. We can co-view PowerPoint presentations. And the list goes on. When you consider TeamDirection's Project Manager tool there is no way to see how email can compare with the capability. Manage a complex project with meetings, file attachments, deadlines, etc etc using email and you WILL feel the pain. Sure, you don't feel the numbness right away because you don't know any better (it's like my chronic knee pain...always there but I don't notice until I pay attention to it).
Do yourself, and me, a favor and save me some extra work. Try out Groove (http://www.groove.net/) and compare it to email. You'll wish everybody switched to Groove-only interactions.
8:37:58 PM 
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