It’s been almost three months since I dumped on Groove. Where does the time go? Late last night, I decided to dig a little to see what Ray Ozzie and crew have been up to recently. What I discovered will shock and amaze you. [Disclaimer: levels of shock vary by individual, and actual amazement is not guaranteed.]
Special Edition Using Groove gives the reader a quick overview of what Groove is capable of. This content will be comprised of screenshots and other graphics to explain the concepts.Ignoring, for the moment, that in their first two sentences they have managed to (1) end a sentence with a preposition, and (2) misuse “comprise“, the real sin here is that they are admitting that the book is nothing but 608 pages of filler and fluff. I also liked this quote, from the same blurb: “Those who have been frustrated with Groove’s poor documentation need this book.” Been there, felt that.
The first tutorial will begin the creation of a peer-to-peer trivia game application, and will address User Interface (UI), persistence and dissemination issues. This part will require hand-coding of XML…Egads, I thought they’d come up with a development IDE by now. Regardless, this appears to be an actual technical book, as opposed to the weird geek-coffee-table-book genre comprising the “Special Edition Using…” series. I’m sure it will propel Groove to greatness in the hearts and minds of millions of developers, just like The Zope Book (Amazon sales rank: 20,928) did for Zope.
But p-to-p business solutions are popping up left and right, from Groove Networks’ eponymous product for workflow enhancement to more specific customer support solutions such as Quiq Connect. The challenge many of these face include a skeptical business culture that must be convinced that sharing some of the company’s data doesn’t mean all the data are exposed.
Groove’s privacy statement commits the vendor to the protection of your company’s private data. It’s all encrypted and unreadable by Groove Networks. But the same privacy statement reserves Groove’s right to share or sell users’ personal information, which is not encrypted. … Deploy it, but purchase your licenses in blocks with no users’ names attached. Have users employ aliases or nicknames, and keep company contact information away from Groove.Ouch. Maybe it would just be easier to do business with companies you trust.
[Random consulting company], in fact, gained firsthand knowledge of P2P’s use in a disaster. Groove’s technology helped the solution provider quickly recover from the loss of its New York office on Sept. 11 and helped employees regain their bearings to continue doing business, said [random executive], senior vice president of solutions marketing. ‘Using Groove, we were able to quickly make contact with our New York employees so that plans could be put into action to track down customers who were affected [by the terrorist attacks] as well as determining the whereabouts of some of our employees.’Remember, kiddies: use Groove, or the terrorists win.
Weblogs: they’re cheaper than therapy.
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