Since I have been traveling I have been looking to use virtual earth offline. I really want to be able to send request locally so I can continue to play around while I am on the road. Yeah Yeah I am in the middle of a beautiful beach in the middle of Colombia and yeah I am thinking of virtual earth. There is obviously something really wrong here, but I digress. So when I was doing my searching I found a really interesting solution by Toucan you can download it here. You can also read a great review of it from the Microsoft Public Dev Team Here.

"The Professional Edition, which is not a free download, includes additional functionality for data sharing. You can collaborate on map files through SQL Server and Groove. The Groove compatibility allows members of a team to access shared map files even when disconnected from the network. Files that are modified while you are offline are automatically uploaded to the common Groove team space once you are reconnected to the network and notification is sent to other team members. "

So you can collaborate and GEO docs and have them sync with a online source even when you off-line. This could make for some cool hand held mapping app's. To tell you the truth of the matter i am still a bit confused between the differences of Microsoft groove and sharepoint and of course live mesh oh and dont forget about astoria I mean sql server in the cloud in mean SSAS. I could use some real guidance of where they intend to take the offline online syncing and where devolopers should spend most of their time for the different types of applications they are using.