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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Once upon a time, people bonded with their co-workers on office softball teams and traded gossip at the water cooler.

OK, so those days aren't completely gone yet. But as big companies parcel Information Age work to people in widely dispersed locations, it's getting harder for colleagues to develop the camaraderie that comes from being in the same place.

Beyond making work less fun, feeling disconnected from comrades might be a drag on productivity.

Now technology researchers are trying to replicate old-fashioned office interactions by transforming everyday business software for the new era of work. The historically dry-as-sawdust products are borrowing elements from video games and social-networking Web sites.

You can tell just from looking at the Beehive program under development at IBM Corp. that something is different. Beehive's color scheme is bright yellow, not IBM's standard blue. The cheerfulness reflects the fact that Beehive is meant to encourage far-flung co-workers to like each other more.

Beehive is an online portal for employees to describe their expertise, so valuable knowledge doesn't get lost inside the bureaucracy.

Those kinds of tools are common, but Beehive adds an unusual dose of Facebook or MySpace. The 27,000 IBMers using Beehive can post pictures, video and one-sentence updates about themselves.

Such personal touches often are missing when people work at a distance from one another, says Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher developing Beehive. Co-workers in different locales can't wander into one another's offices and see family pictures on the desk. They don't shop at the same places or have children in the same schools.

DiMicco says he believes these tidbits help people understand one another better. And the usual communication tools — like e-mail, instant messaging, phones and even videoconferencing — do only so much to fill the gap.

The problem affects any company in which telecommuting, outsourcing and globalization have spread the staff across cultures and time zones.

At Intel Corp., for example, many project teams have at least one person who has yet to meet the group's boss face-to-face.

Recently, Intel tried to improve the situation by testing a "visual business card" system. Participants could not only list standard information about their location and job title, but they also could post pictures, brief biographies and things they like.

Intel is exploring whether virtual-world software, which can show 3-D representations of meeting rooms, auditoriums, factory floors — you name it — will make it more natural for groups to collaborate.