Microsoft Office Groove is a one of the programs from the Office suite that not many people know about.

Groove is a useful application that allows you to create a workspace for collaborating with other team members.

The thing that differentiates Groove from other online project management solutions (which I’ll blog about in the near future), is that instead of hosting the workspace on a web site, Groove stores the workspace content on your local workstation and then replicates that workspace content to the workstations of the other workspace team members. This is known as peer-to-peer technology.

You can download a free trial of Microsoft Office Groove and have a play with it, but if you decide that you want to use it, then you’ll have to whip out that credit card and say goodbye to $229 if you buy it from the Microsoft web site, or $189 if you buy it from Amazon.

I recently came across a freeware alternative which works with the same peer-to-peer replication model, allows you to create unlimited workspaces, create notes, discussions, links, tasks, and add attachments. It also allows you to do basic instant messaging between other workspace members who are currently online.

The product is called Callanos Workspace, and is worth taking a look at for the creation of simple collaboration workspaces.

Here’s a link to a visual tour of the product.

Filed under: tools | 1 Comment »

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Today I stumbled up a large list of freeware programs (and some shareware), which seemed to be very useful.

There’s quite a few tools in there which I’ve used in the past, and wouldn’t have an issue recommending (eg MailWasher, Adaware, HijackThis, Spybot search and destroy, Avast, AVG, iTunes, WinAmp, Audacity, DVD Decrypter, WinRar, Winzip, CursorXP, DesktopSidebar, Rainlendar, FlashGot, FreeDownloadManager, wget, DivX, KeePass, TrueCrypt, Filezilla, WarFTPd, Google Talk, Skype, Trillian Basic, AvantBrowser, Maxthon, Pegasus Mail, Thunderbird, Ethereal, NMeter, Nmap, Putty, RealVNC, TightVNC, OpenOffice, BartPE, CutePDF, PDF995, GIMP, Paint.Net, ActivePerl, Notepad++, Google Toolbar, DVD Shrink, VirtualDub, Mozilla Firefox, Apache, AnalogX, Cygwin, Process Explorer, SysInternals, TreeSize, TweakUI).

Wow, now that I look at the above, that’s quite a few programs which I’ve used regularly.

Now I’m wondering how many hundreds of crap programs I’ve experimented with and deleted within minutes.

Ok, let’s not waste any more brain cells on that….

I hope you find some useful free tools in there.

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(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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The first bunch of free extras for Windows Vista Ultimate users recently became available for download.

If you’re running any other version of Windows Vista, then you’ll just have to get on by without them. Where’s the love Microsoft?

So what’s in stock for you in these updates? Here’s the list: Read more »

Filed under: Windows Vista, Microsoft | No Comments »

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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