Motet Web Site Press Release

Press Release

MOTET OPENS WEB CONFERENCING DEMO SITE

TODAY MOTET WEB CONFERENCING opened its new Web site and demo conferences to the public. The Motet Web site includes a complete features specification, instant registration for the demo conferences, an introduction to conferencing, and links to some of the sites already using Motet.

Motet conferencing is a system for enabling written online group discussions. Motet manages the administrative details, leaving participants free to focus on the content. A full set of navigational tools, a graphical interface and a self-maintaining design eliminate the need for the overhead normally associated with maintaining Web pages, newsgroups, and email lists.

Motet is self-maintaining. Unlike online chat, participants need not all be logged on at once. Instead, conversations typically take place over days, weeks, or even months. Unlike mailing lists or Usenet, Motet stores the discussion in a central place, ensuring that postings are consecutive and that no one adds a new posting without having had the opportunity to read all of what has been said so far. The result is a discussion that has the feel of a real-life conversation.

Motet keeps a permanent record of each discussion, allowing users to refer back to old postings if they need to and enabling late-comers to join a conversation. This also makes old discussions available as an information resource.

Keeping track of each user's place in all topics of discussion, Motet enables users to automatically pick up where they left off every time they log on. A personalized list of conferences lets users focus on the subjects that interest them with a minimum amount of navigation.

These features make it easy to participate in several discussions at once, to keep up with everything that is said, and to take as much time as one needs to formulate thoughts on a subject, without the tedium of managing, saving, deleting, and making decisions about email. The conversation runs itself. Participants can read and respond with only a few mouse clicks.

Bryan Higgins and Leha Blaney, Motet developers, brought their years of experience from conferencing at the famous WELL, of the San Francisco Bay Area, to the design of Motet. Inspired by the WELL model, Motet brings the best of traditional UNIX-based conferencing together with several new features that the developers found would add usability and value to Motet. The result is a solid system, built to run and stay fast, even on the Web, with more value-adding features than any other system available.

Some of the features Motet provides:

• An Intuitive Graphical Interface
• Complete Documentation, Including a Tutorial and Context-Sensitive Help
• Customer Support
• Detailed Usage Statistics for Administrators
• Customizable Banners and Bulletins
• Customizable Colors, Headers, and Footers
• Panel Topics
• Private Conferences
• Automatic Links
• Online Biographies
• Custom Installation
• Support of HTML 2.0 Compliant Browsers, HTML 3.0 Where Applicable, & Lynx

Conferencing is one of the important ways in which the Web is becoming a center of communication. Businesses can reach more clients when they hear what those clients are looking for. Educators can provide their services to more students, regardless of location or schedule. Virtual community is now available to not only the few who have the time to learn complicated commands, but anyone who can point a mouse and click. Motet's rich set of features, intuitive design, and complete documentation make the power of conferencing available to everyone.

Additional information on Motet is available at http://www.motet.com/, by emailing sales@motet.vip.best.com, or by calling (510) 549-9172.

Copyright © Bryan Higgins and Leha Blaney, 1996.