I've been looking at another new resource for collaboration and productivity lately. I haven't done a lot with it, but it's a pretty solid approach that I expect will be widely embraced. They went into public beta last night with conferencing, group voicemail and email. They expect to have MP#streaming and email/SMS broadcast up and running early next week, maybe even by the weekend. It's an intriguing approach to real-time communications.

Radio Handi is now open for public use. It's been a long road, and we almost didn't make it, but we got the product out the door. We're calling it The Party Line for Planet Earth.

Here's what you can do right now...

• create communities about any subject, location or group (i.e. try creating one for your extended family)
• host live conference calls with up to 20 people calling in from local #s in 30+ countries, worldwide via Gizmo
• play and record group voice messages for everyone in your group
• send an email to yourgroup@radiohandi.com and it'll be appended to your web message board
• edit a lightweight wiki for your group
• call into your group voice mail/conference bridge by dialing sip:your_group@sip.radiohandi.com

Here's what we'll be turning up over the next one to two weeks

• send an SMS to your group, it'll be relayed to other group members and appended to your web message board
• send an email to your group, it'll be relayed to other group members
• voice messages recorded on the IVR system will be auto-emailed to other group members
• listen to a live MP3 stream of public conversations on the listen (kind of like skypecasts except it works with any streaming media player)
• email photo/video/audio clips to your group, and they'll be appended to your web message board

The basic concept behind Radio Handi is to make group communication easy, whether you want to blast an SMS out to your drinking buddies, or host a live conference call with your extended family. There are all sorts of applications for the service, including:

• gaming - gaming clubs and guilds can use the service to chat as they play a game, and can even use it to organize gaming sessions for non computer based games
• family communication - families can use the service as a sort of refrigerator noteboard (use SMS/email to post daily schedule information and updates, use conferencing to get the whole extended family on the line)
• clubs and organizations - use it to conduct club business, host virtual meetings, and even to telecast events such as lectures
• education - teachers and tutors can use it to organize call in classes, and to create practice forums for their students (call in to practice your French while driving to work)
• event promoters - can use the email/sms/voice mail broadcast feature to get the word out about upcoming events

The service is free of charge in the US and via Voice over IP. International dial-in access is also free during the beta test, but will be available for a flat monthly fee later this summer. Our goal is to make the service available very widely, and at a very low cost.