In a nutshell, JB2006 will allow you to carry on IM conversations; share projects among multiple team members; cooperatively and synchronously view, navigate, edit and debug shared projects. The concept is great, and the implementation is even better. I can't wait to get my hands on this in a future version of Delphi! Imagine, no more requests like "This isn't working, can you stop over?". The possibilities are almost endless. To name a couple of the top of my head, interactive training/mentoring without taking a flight to the client's site and using this to implement XP anywhere.

For some background, I remember chatting with Pat Kerpan back when I was in the DSP group at Borland. The conversation revolved around this very idea, and how it could help with product development. As a matter of fact, I actually wrote Delphi and JBuilder plugins to integrate TeamSource DSP into the IDEs. Among the many features those plugins had, one of them was an integrated IM client (implemented via Jabber). It was actually quite handy to have in your IDE. At first, I wasn't sure how useful it would be, but I soon became very dependent on it. Others seemed to like it to, since it won the Best Team Development Tool award at the 2002 JavaOne conference. Since it beat out Oracle, IBM, and Rational, I was quite proud of my contribution.

Still, it's a strange feeling to view this video. It's not like I'm seeing my baby being born, but more like watching from afar as my best friend has a baby that I've always wanted. Yeah, I know. Quit with the metaphors while I'm behind.