I spend a huge amount of my time looking at bits of software. I have, as you can imagine, an active interest in computing, but there are certain areas of software that I often feel are lacking a certain edge, and I am constantly on the lookout for software that pushes the boundaries, either of quality, or creativity.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at Content Management Systems, for example. I’ve tried loads of them, and some of them have been excellent, some poor, and many have great potential, albeit unrealised. For this purpose OpenSourceCMS.com has been invaluable - they have a huge roundup of software, and demos of them all. There aren’t just straight CMSs either - Wordpress is there as a blogging system, and there are some Wikis too.

One area that has always piqued my interest is that of groupware. Or, more realistically, email and calendaring with “proper” scheduling and invites. OSCMS has a load of groupware suites, but one that isn’t there is a suite called GroupOffice. GO is available in a ‘Professional’ edition, which costs money, but also a ‘Community’ edition that is GPLd. It will install (despite the documentation) quite happily on a shared webhost, and has good support for mail and calendaring, as well as modules for forums, wiki, notes, to-do, project management, chat and a few other things (including a slightly lightweight CMS). But, most importantly, it works. And it works well. So well, in fact, that I am tempted to install it here on the Moose and offer it as an option to people who have their mail hosted here (yes! you too can have an @jedimoose.org email address!!)

Most important (for me at least) is the good scheduling support. You can invite anyone you like (as long as you have an email address) and they will receive an email with accept/decline links to click (which will then update your calendar accordingly) and a .ics file which most calendaring software these days supports for adding items, so that they can add it to their own software. Marvellous.

The interface is fairly bog standard - nothing like the Ajax-goodness of Hula, but then, Hula won’t install on a shared-webhost. But it does the trick, and is very straightforward to use.

If you’re interested in GO, check out the demo on their website. And if you’re interested in having a proper calendar (+other features) on a JediMoose mail account, then leave a comment.

mrBen