I've been trying out Shinkuro, a collaborative network application, lately.  The basic concept behind it is to facilitate keeping files in sync among groups.  You and every one in your group installs the client software and then someone creates a group and invites everyone to join.  E-mails get sent out, people accept the invitation (via the client) and directories get created on the members' hard drives.  Every time a file is placed in there it gets e-mailed out in batches and reassembled by each member's client.  Every time a file is edited, e-mails get sent out.

It interfaces with Outlook fairly nicely, all the resultant e-mails are purged out, and it works with any POP3 server.  There is even a chat client so you can discuss changes.  I have yet to use this in any depth though so I don't know how well it works.  It also isn't apparent to me, and not discussed on the website whether the chat transport mechanism is e-mail as well.  If so, I imagine that realtime discussions would be frustrating at best. 

The client is simple to master, there is not a whole lot to it.  Group creation is easy, invitations are easy and notifications is unobtrusive so it doesn't disrupt your day-to-day workflow.  Right now I'm just using it to keep files in sync between my home PC, Audrey's PC, and work.  Though the purpose is similiar to source repositories and source management systems, it fills a slightly different nitch.  It's more applicable to documents and files that get shuffled among groups.  The e-mail mechanism is not a real time change mechanism, and everyone's changes are stored in their own directory, so I'm not entirely sure how effective the merging mechanisms are, I haven't really had to use them yet.

My only faults so far have to do with the client UI.  Every time anything happens the UI places "alerts" (a red exclamation point) by the item that has changed.  Someone accepts your invitation: alert.  Someone updates a file: alert.  Someone removes themselves from a group: alert.  It's very easy to get 4 or 5 exclamation points on your screen, especially when groups are first set up.  When that happens you have to go through and clear them one by one.  Some sort of "Clear All Alerts" option would be helpful.

Also, it's a pain to have to tab back and forth between different functions of the application: member list, file list, chat, group list.  Some sort of split layout where they are all in front of you at once would be helpful.

Still, this is only alpha version of the software, and I could see it as a great enhancement to productivity in a world in which most people have laptops/wireless.  I love it for sending random files back and forth from work, and have pretty much rid myself of transportable media.  I'll be very interested to see how it develops.

In the meantime if anyone else wants to try it out, download it.  If you want to add me to a group e-mail me and I'll shoot you back an e-mail addres to use.  I think this might be a good mechanism for theLOC to discuss lunch meeting places, etc.  Having a restaurant list that could be updated, and viewed side by side with a chat client would make things much more streamlined on lunch days.  Best of all, the e-mails would be automagically deleted from Outlook immediately after they are used.

Cool Pen Tricks - this is a website that teaches you how to do all the cool pen spins and flips that the kids in debate used to do in between being obnoxious jackasses who wouldn't back down from an argument, no matter how ill-formed.

I actually was one of those jackasses (for a brief period) and can do the classic spin.  Found via [sciatica]