The Internet today accommodates thousands of data servers such as WorldWide Web (HTTP), Gopher, News (NNTP), FTP, and NFS servers. A variety of Internet clients, such as Mosaic, allow hundreds of thousands of users easy and uniform access to knowledge repositories and on-line libraries.
However, people who access Internet's information resources today do so alone, unaware of others who access them at the same time, and hence unable to draw upon each other's personal resources easily. Doors (TM) is a software architecture developed by Ubique that unifies Internet's resources --- people and information --- in a simple framework suitable for live human interaction and collaboration. Doors turns Internet's silent libraries into places teeming with human presence and discourse, allowing people to seek and provide guidance, collaborate with colleagues, and interact socially.
Applications of Doors include virtual support centers, virtual sales rooms, virtual tradeshows, virtual conferences, members clubs, on-going user groups, distributed workgroups and committees, distance learning and telecommuting.
The first large scale application of Doors is a virtual tradeshow to be held during 1995 in conjunction with a large (physical) tradeshow in the computer networking field. In this virtual tradeshow, booths will be staffed by vendor representatives (who may attend the physical show or remain at their office) and attended by visitors from around the world, through the Internet.