fyi....comments, Eric?
 
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>Comments: Authenticated sender is <[log in to unmask]>
>From: "John Buckman" <[log in to unmask]>
>Organization: Walter Shelby Group Ltd.
>To: "Lyris Inquiry" <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 13:54:09 +7
>Subject: Lyris Bulletin
>Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
>Priority: normal
>
>LYRIS BULLETIN
>
>This message discusses recent developments with Lyris, the Internet
>email List Server.
>
>You are receiving this message because you filled out the "more
>information about Lyris" web page at http://www.lyris.com.  If you do
>not want to receive information about Lyris, just reply to this
>message and let me know.  Lyris was formerly called "WorldBase" - so
>you might have filled out that form instead.
>
>The release version of Lyris has been pushed back until July.  In
>talking with you, our prospective customers, we received a great deal
>of feedback about what you wanted, and decided to make some
>significant changes in Lyris to accommodate these.
>
>Some things you told us you wanted, and what we did to make it
>happen:
>
>EASY ACCESS TO THE DATABASE LYRIS USES TO STORE ITS INFORMATION.
>
>We were using a proprietary format database, and have now changed to
>an xBase file format.  xBase is the file format used by DBase and
>FoxPro.  It can be read by hundreds of programs, such as Word, Excel,
>and Lotus 1-2-3.  This change makes is very easy to audit, report,
>import/export list members, and countless other data-oriented tasks.
>An ODBC database driver is also available.
>
>AUTOMATIC ADMINISTRATION
>
>Many of you complained that you spend hours with current listservers
>finding bad email addresses, fighting bounced mail, and having your
>email box flooded with list server junk.  We've moved to a system
>where all email sent by Lyris is uniquely tagged.  This allows us to
>automatically determine what email address is the cause and
>automatically take the action you specify.  Other listservers cannot
>do this because their email sending program cannot handle the
>increased load.  We've written our own, super-high performance mailer
>to address this.
>
>SPAM PROTECTION
>
>Unwanted email is becoming more and more of a problem.  There are now
>companies who will spam the entire Internet for a few hundred dollars,
>as well as programs that will automate the task.  The usual way for
>list owners to fight spam is to manually approve every message sent to
>the mailing list.  Unfortunately, this is a lot of work for the list
>owner!  We've introduced a hybrid approach: the list owner only need
>approve messages from new members.  After a new member has been
>approved a few times, they no longer need to be moderated.  Since
>spammers rarely contribute anything of substance to a list, this
>technique effectively shuts them out.  Spam protection is optional:
>you don't have to use it if you don't want it.
>
>DO EVERYTHING ON THE WEB
>
>We have added dozens of features to the Lyris web interface, so that
>you can completely control all of Lyris directly from your Web
>browser.  We separated the interface into three sections: one for the
>general public, for list owners, and for site administrators. Every
>function in Lyris is now point-and-click.
>
>DEFINE PEOPLE'S ROLES AND RIGHTS
>
>On many mailing lists, there are often several people who can act as
>administrators.  For instance, you might only want one person to be
>able to remove people, but have several people who can approve
>moderated messages.  Or, you might want some people's messages to
>require approval, while other people are automatically approved. Lyris
>now allows very fine grain control over people's roles.  You simply
>check the attributes you want someone to have.
>
>SCALEABILITY AND CUSTOMIZABILITY.
>
>While many of you want to run Lyris "out-of-the-box", others want to
>customize Lyris for your particular needs.  To support this, we've
>completely separated the Lyris "engine", the part which provides all
>the functionality, from the user interface, which is completely Web
>based.  Lyris now has an Internet "protocol" which the web interface
>uses to talk to the Lyris server.  This protocol is based on the
>syntax of the Perl programming language, and allows any program to use
>Lyris' functionality.  You can even "telnet" to Lyris, and issue
>commands interactively with it.  If you want, you can run the Lyris
>Web interface on a different machine (your regular web server, for
>instance), or on as many different machines as you like.  For high
>loads (over a million messages a day), you can have multiple machines
>running Lyris, all acting as one server.
>
>There are many other things inside Lyris.  If there is something
>that is important that you want to make sure is addressed, please
>write us.
>
>A specification sheet is available.  Please visit our web site at
>http://www.lyris.com or email me if you would like a copy.
>
>Beta testers: if you received this email message, then you will also
>receive our beta testers announcement.  At that time, there will be
>information on joining the beta test program.
>
>John Buckman
>Walter Shelby Group Ltd.
>
>John Buckman  [log in to unmask]  http://tile.net/john/
>Internet Software Developer @ Shelby Group - http://www.shelby.com/
>
 
Dan Lester
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