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Before the World Wide Web dawned, computer users who wanted to communicate with others mostly used computer bulletin-board systems or online services, such as CompuServe. On those systems, most of the discussions took place in long threads of conversation about the same general topics.
O'Reilly & Associates Inc., in Sebastopol, Calif., offers a product called WebBoard that could change that. WebBoard is a Web-based conferencing system that lets users employ any Web browser and include HyperText Markup Language information in individual messages.
This means users can link a conferencing system to their Web sites that offers not only the normal static information about products and such, but also offers site visitors a way to have a highly interactive online relationship with their organizations.
WebBoard, up close
WebBoard is a collection of applications that work with Web server software that meets the Common Gateway Interface version 1.2 standard. We tried the product with O'Reilly's WebSite 1.1 server software, which was the only product we could find that actually met that standard.
The conferencing program works much like the online services it emulates: Users can log in and choose a conference and topic...