Many-to-Many Communication

Newsgroups are still popular but too numerous and difficult to follow. Especially with the variety of news readers today one is never sure

"Pursued" (:-)) by stressful feelings on the Information Highway we briefly looked at Web-based solutions, as the Web has become today's OS and GUI for (soon) everything. The following list is not prioritized in any sense. At the CERN Web Office we have looked in detail into the first 2, as they are freeware and selected, so far, HyperNews, although we found it far from perfect.

• HyperNews. Free download from the Web. Works on Unix & Windows. Creates discussion forums very easy to follow and flexible for the user (but not for the Administrator). The Windows95 discussion forum chose HyperNews for its set-up.

• MHonArc. Free download from the Web. Works on Unix & Windows. It is basically a Perl Email-to-HTML convertor.

• FirstClass Internet Server by SoftArc Inc,a conferencing product for medium size loads ( up to 150 simultaneous connections). FCIS runs on MacOS and WinNT with modest demands on hardware (know of a real case of a FirstClass server with 3000 users/32 simultaneous connections at peak, running on a 133MHz, 64MB RAM box, 4 GB disk, over WinNT4.0 with a 99.9% uptime).

• TopClass. Designed to conduct Web-based training. It is completely cross-platform. It provides the capability to send messages to a group of students enrolled in a given class.

• WebBoard from O'Reilly Software runs on a WinNT box over an HTTP server (O'Reilly's own WebSite for instance) and permits bulleting board functionality/messaging with a transparent user interface.

• The WWW Consortium has assigned the study of Push Technology to a working group which recently met to discuss and converge to some standards and HTML specific enhancements.

Have a look at some ideas on Collaborative Technology.