GroupMe (My own little GoogleWave Jr.)

While in grad school, I was introduced to a little handy-dandy piece of technology created by the my favorite Internet behemoth known as Google.... In this case this particular app was Google Wave

What it actually did was allow you to set up invites to individuals to a chat that would perpetually continue on as long as the individuals continue to add their comments and content to it.. Essentially those individuals would be able to go back to the beginning of the conversation and catch up if they weren't part of the conversation when it initially started. As long as they were invited and part of the conversation, they can continue to go back to information that was inserted into the conversation thread at any time.

For an online curriculum where most of your collaboration is remotely done by individuals across the country, an app like that is a no-brainer and becomes indispensable when you're doing team projects. But like most technological tools and resources, sometimes the shelf-life is brief.. And regardless of what people who use it think of it, it is sometimes gone to soon.

Since this was very very helpful to me and I saw future applications for this, I was very disappointed when it was retired... And have been doing a little side research ever sense to try a suitable replacement. Not sure if I found a replacement for all of the things that it does but I found a good runner-up in GroupMe.

The most important feature about GroupMe is the most important thing that I wanted anything replacing Google Wave to do:  allow people to be invited to a conversation that would allow you to archive the discussion for the reference so that anyone joining the group to be have the benefit of reading and access the previous conversation at their convenience. Anyone in a business or in a collaborative team environment can see the benefit of this one.

Presently this app is available on the Internet as a mobile app interface. (Since I did a Screen cast and uploaded it to YouTube for one of my groups already existing conversations... I just found out that you can insert a URL of a video to into the conversation with the functionality intact so everyone that actually is part of that conversation currently has the benefit of being able to play the video right in the thread.

I have yet to seen any technical concerns or any security based concerns that raise a red flag for me at present; but given the nature of the Internet and how most things are not super secure on a heavily traveled highway such a cyberspace.. I wouldn't advocate discussing esoteric or sensitive information in this form anyway. I will update on any concerns that I have in the future as they become apparent, but for the time being this is a app that is in heavily heavy rotation for me and one I would feel comfortable endorsing as a technical resource.

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Disclaimer: The endorsement in this Blog is based on my personal experiences and the discussed technology’s effectiveness for the project at hand. It is not to be used as a professional product testing evaluation..Your results may vary based on your use.