I've mentioned it before, but a refresher: Rizzoma is basically the successor to Google Wave. I cursed Google when Wave died, since I had killed CommYou on the theory that Wave was going to win. That was aggravating not only because I had given up my project, but even more because I *wanted* that tool. Most online collaboration platforms suck sharp flinty rocks through a straw, and I've been wanting something better for ten years. CommYou was supposed to be that, and Wave promised to be before it died.
Anyway, Rizzoma is by no means identical to Wave, but it's close enough to look very familiar to those who used it. The team there has been working on it for a couple of years, fleshing out the platform, adding features and gradually starting to do a lot of things right that Google got horribly wrong, especially in terms of integration. (The fact that they've been integrated with both Facebook and Google from the beginning was my first sign that they had a clue.)
Lately, they've added a lot of features that are cool, but more importantly useful, such as:
- Mind Map views of conversations, so that you can easily see the structure of the discussion;
- Google Drive embedding, so you can build Rizzoma conversations around lots of different document types;
- A nascent gadget store;
- Possibly most interesting to me, Chrome integration, so you can use Rizzoma for working around arbitrary pages. (This had been a key part of CommYou's long-term vision.)
