Peer-to-peer ready to groove

Ray Ozzie, the developer who brought the world Lotus Notes, ended three years of media speculation last Tuesday, when he introduced his latest creation, Groove Networks, a platform for peer-to-peer computing. Groove, Ozzie says, will allow groups of people to "make the best use of the pipes that connect us" by forming "spaces" on the Groove network where they can share any type of information that can be transmitted through wires.

Ozzie has been called "The Father of Groupware." He calls Groove, which has been under development for three years, the logical next step in groupware development and refers to Groove as "peerware." And he believes Groove will become ubiquitous, predicting that soon, "one of the three primary tools that everyone will use will be e-mail, a browser and Groove."

But Groove isn’t thrilling everyone just yet. "If they really want it to be everyone’s tool of choice then they’d better offer some options," grumbled Pete Vandel, CEO of ColorTech, a Mac-based prepress publishing service. "Right now, Groove runs only on Windows. Hopefully they’ll move it to Mac, Unix and Linux very soon. Until then, a lot of people won’t be getting into the Groove." Ozzie said that the Groove interface already has a Linux port, and the company is exploring other non-Windows ports including Apple’s (AAPL) OS X, "as it matures."

The preview edition of Groove is 10 megabytes, which Ozzie said will be streamlined over time. The company is also looking at developing smaller versions for handheld devices. Inside a Groove "space," group members can store and access documents, messages and tools related to whatever work is being done in that space.

Users can also chat and work on tasks together. Any changes are automatically synchronized. And everything inside a shared space is replicated on each group member’s computing device, and is available for online or offline use. "You install the software on one device, and then you can access your account on any other supported device. Your account could contain a number of personalities: your work personality, a family personality, a hobby personality. And all your activities in each personality, on each device that you use to connect to Groove, are automatically synchronized with the things you do in your other shared spaces, as appropriate," Ozzie said.

But Groove is not intended to be used only as a virtual workspace. The Groove platform is based on XML technologies so it is very expandable and customizable. Ozzie said he expects businesses will use Groove to offer services to their customers, and also expects the "vast amount" of users to program for Groove. Groove runs under a Wine-enabled Linux platform, but Ozzie said anyone who can build a simple form in HTML "is good to go" and can do simple customization of the Groove interface.

Those who can work with scripting language like Java Script or Visual Basic can also create new Groove tools or customize the existing ones. A development kit is also available. Regarding Groove security, Ozzie said the system is based on automating secure processes. All information is automatically encrypted. Bots, not humans, handle authentication so there is no administrator accessing private information such as passwords.

Ozzie also said that Groove would remove the bottlenecks inherent in many peer-to-peer setups by using a central server as an intermediary. Like Napster, Groove intelligently routs transmitted information.

So, instead of Gnutella’s method of pushing information through each connected computer -- which can slow transmission speed when the data passes through a slow node -- Groove will allow users to send information to a single server, which will then make the information available to all users within the shared space.

"Ozzie’s groupware experience has served him well here," said Gary Muscaro, an open-source developer. "But to me, the really interesting thing will bewatching where people take Groove. Groove could be just another Internet file depository, or a real tool that allows people to customize the way they use the Internet," Muscaro added. "Groove has offered people the tools and turned people loose to build something cool. So where it goes from here is something that will be determined only by its users. And I think that’s great."

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