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NEW YORK -- Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie finally got back in the Groove on Tuesday, announcing his long-speculated-about product, a peer-to-peer development platform that allows users and developers to create a variety of exploitive applications and services.

Ozzie, who founded Groove Networks three years ago, showed off the product at a press conference here. The base technology allows closely knit groups of individuals to collaborate on a broad range of activities within secure, shared virtual spaces in real time.

Through the Groove Development Kit (GDK), systems developers and integrators and Web developers can integrate Groove with their existing business systems or create from the ground up peer-to-peer-Web solutions by taking advantage of Groove's reusable components.

The Preview Edition of Groove can be downloaded free.

Groove, as described by company officials, is a highly modular framework that works in conjunction with industry-standard programming languages. Peer computing applications can be put together using simple XML and scripting languages, including JavaScript, company officials say.

Easily Modified Services

Developers can create more sophisticated programs as well as user interfaces by using C++, C#, or Visual Basic. The platform's components are robust enough to offer developers critical services, thereby reducing development time and decreasing development costs, officials say.

Some of these services include a persistent XML object store, shared space and member management, security and role management, peer-to-peer communications, and transparent peer synchronization, according to officials.

Some developers say they are impressed with what they saw during Tuesday's demonstration.

"Groove should create some interesting new opportunities for the developer community and enable the rapid development of effective applications for both business and consumers," says David Mendels, Macromedia's senior vice president of business development and corporate marketing.

To create applications for the Groove platform, developers need the GDK, which can be downloaded from the company's Web site. Devzone is designed to help developers come more quickly up to speed with the Groove development environment.

The Preview Edition of Groove requires Windows Me, 95, 98, NT 4.0, or 2000, along with an Intel-based PC with at least 64MB of memory and a 233-MHz Pentium processor, a 56-kbps modem, and Internet Explorer 4.0 or later.

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