WebReader Home Page
CONTACT: Robert Uomini 510-528-0258 uomini@fractals.comKensington, CA - July 31, 1998. The Fractal Images Company today announced immediate availability of WebReader(tm) 2.0, the HTML-enhanced Internet newsreader written in Sun Microsystem's Java(tm) programming language.The Fractal Images Company Introduces WebReader(tm) 2.0 The Newsreader that Brings HTML to Usenet.
"We are excited about offering the world's most complete newsreader to the general public", says Robert Uomini, WebReader's developer and founder of The Fractal Images Company. According to Uomini, the Beta release, which began in May, turned up very few problems in the product. "The fact that few bugs were reported was especially gratifying, proving the reliability of WebReader and making it the newsreader of choice for the enterprise", adds Uomini.
"We are pleased to see today's announcement from The Fractal Images Company," said Dr. Lew Tucker director of strategic relations at Sun Microsystems' Java Software. "WebReader is an innovative example of Java technology applied to Internet newsgroups."
WebReader makes use of patented technology, allowing the user to post articles in HTML in such a way that while WebReader users see rendered HTML, HTML-disabled newsreaders see an ASCII synopsis, free of HTML tags. WebReader accomplishes this magic by including a pointer (URL) to the HTML in the article header rather than sending the HTML to the news server. An important side benefit of this technique is that it enables articles posted from WebReader to be completely backward compatible with non-graphical news clients while at the same time save a tremendous amount of disk space on news servers around the world.
With WebReader, marketers can reach highly targeted audiences through newsgroups. Its HTML capabilities allow users to enhance their postings with fonts, italics and bold graphics. In fact, they can post the actual Web page. WebReader also allows users to read articles in HTML 3.2, bringing the full complement of graphics and color to the screen. For non- graphical browsers, an ASCII "synopsis" of the page is displayed.
WebReader has a host of exclusive features that facilitate business usage. Among them: the ability to search and display groups whose names or descriptions match a given expression; a unique "locate author" function which identifies the author of an article, along with his or her business and home addresses and telephone numbers. It can also filter by user-geographical location, which is extremely useful for anyone who wants to develop a mailing list. These and many other features make WebReader the ultimate newsreader for companies doing business on the Internet.
*****The Fractal Images Company was founded in 1990 by Robert Uomini. The company developed the first fractal image generation software package for use on Sun workstations. In 1994, the company changed its focus, becoming a provider of Internet-related products and services. The FractalNet Web pages were among the first to offer online purchasing and hotel reservations. Later that year, the FractalNet Real Estate Server became the first Web page to feature residential real estate, and it continues to be a leading source of information on residential property listings. Sun, Sun Microsystems and Java, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.