* Start-up Five Across provides IM for groups
Start-up Five Across has taken a different approach to instant messaging than most IM systems do. Instead of focusing on communication with individuals, Five Across focuses on communication with groups.
In the Five Across InterComm interface, contacts are organized into groups, such as groups for individual projects, teams, departments and so forth. The difference is a subtle one in some ways, but one that can make IM a more useful tool for many users because it can adapt to the way many people work.
InterComm has some very interesting features, including the ability to turn your presence status on or off for selected groups, scheduling services that allow manual scheduling for meetings and other events, polling capabilities and file sharing. InterComm also provides the ability to communicate with group members when they’re offline – unavailable members of a group will simply receive your IM via e-mail. InterComm Pro adds a number of features to the basic product, including file sharing with version control capabilities, archives of individual IM conversations (the base product archives group communication only), better management of contact lists and the ability to have IMs forwarded to a cell phone.
Five Across’ IM offerings provide some very interesting and useful features. On the downside, the offerings might not be as useful in larger enterprises because they don’t yet integrate with Microsoft Active Directory or other LDAP-enabled directories; nor does InterComm’s scheduling integrate with Microsoft Outlook, the primary scheduling tool on most corporate desktops. That said, for smaller organizations, InterComm could be a very useful tool that could significantly enhance productivity by making available some good enterprise-grade features in a low-cost IM system. Plus, both versions of InterComm are available for both Windows and Mac platforms.
InterComm is available as a free download; InterComm Pro is available in a single-user version for $29, while a 20-user license is priced at just under $9 per user.
