Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 12:41:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Simone Paddock 
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: O'Reilly releases Udell's new book "Practical Internet Groupware"

For immediate release
For more information, contact
Lisa Mann (707) 829-0515 ext 230 or lisam@oreilly.com


The Internet as a Groupware Platform
O'Reilly Publishes Jon Udell's "Practical Internet Groupware"


Sebastopol, CA--Collaboration. From its academic roots to today's busy
commerce sites, the Internet has always been about collaboration:
providing a means for people to communicate and work together
effectively. On the Internet of the future, the concept of
collaboration will move front and center, transforming the way we work,
and the way the Internet is used.

"Every once in a while a book comes along that makes me wake up and say
'Wow!'. Jon Udell's 'Practical Internet Groupware' is such a book," says
Tim O'Reilly, President and Publisher of O'Reilly & Associates. "How to
build effective applications for conferencing and other forms of
internet-enabled collaboration is one of the most important questions
developers are wrestling with today. Anyone who wants to build an
effective intranet, or to better manage their company's interactions
with customers, or to build new kinds of applications that bring people
together, will never think about these things in the same way after
reading this book."

"More than anyone else I know, Jon has thrown off the shackles of the
desktop computing paradigm that has shaped our thinking for a better
part of the last two decades. He works in a world in which the Net,
rather than any particular operating system, is truly the application
development platform," explains O'Reilly. "Jon has laid his finger on
the most important change in the computer industry since the
introduction of the Web."

"The Internet is a groupware platform," says Udell. "It's easy to lose
sight of that fact. Consider the Web. It was invented to enable
scientists to collaborate. As it became a mainstream phenomenon, it
morphed into something that many people think of as more like broadcast
television than groupware. A few years ago, as a senior editor at BYTE
Magazine, I reviewed software and wrote about technologies and industry
trends. Everything changed in the spring of 1995 when I became BYTE's
executive editor for new media. My charter was to do what every
high-tech magazine felt compelled to do in 1995: jump on the Web
bandwagon. It was a dream assignment that I tackled with gusto. At
first I focused on clever and efficient ways to transform BYTE into an
electronic publication. But a funny thing happened on the way to the
Web. Just weeks into the job, it dawned on me that our content online
wasn't just a publication. I began to see that it was fast becoming a
suite of Internet-based groupware applications. And I began to see
myself as primarily a developer of such applications."

"Any developer worth his salary in tomorrow's market is going to need a
cross-platform toolbox much like the one Jon applies in this books,"
says O'Reilly.

Drawn from the author's real world experience, "Practical Internet
Groupware" describes the tools and technologies for building and
rapidly deploying groupware applications, and also discusses the design
philosophy and usability issues that determine the success or failure
of any groupware endeavor.

According to Udell, the key to success lies in using simple tools,
often Open Source, that effectively blend in established Internet
technologies that have always had a collaborative aspect (SMTP, NNTP)
with new technologies that enhance our ability to manage collaborative
documents (HTTP, XML). The result is an approach that codifies the idea
that many Web content providers have long suspected: yesterday's online
content is fast becoming tomorrow's network-based applications.


"Practical Internet Groupware" is being serialized on the O'Reilly
website at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pracintgr/chapter/index.html

For a piece written by Tim O'Reilly on why "Practical Internet Groupware"
is such an important book, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/ask tim/pracintgr preface.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, 
author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pracintgr/

For a cover graphic in jpeg format go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/1565925378.jpg


###


Practical Internet Groupware
By Jon Udell
1st Edition October 1999
1-56592-537-8, 524 pages, $29.95 (US$)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pracintgr/
(800) 939-9938
order@oreilly.com