I have been designing closed Internets or "Intranets" for a few months now... it's a way that our company is linking a variety of departments by their inter-relationships. Because the Internet/Intranet interface makes things more interesting, with hyperlinks allowing immediate access to different topics, employees are more willing to take on the responsibility for communicating with each other. It's a great tool for ISO/Quality system compliance, allowing information to be updated immediately without the time-lag that is usually involved under a quality system environment. We have the technology... let's use it to make the day to day tasks easier, rather than just implementing technology for technology's sake. I would like to hear about any interesting applications that people have had for Intranets.

What are some of the specific tools and software that you use to create Intranets? My friend John Miaso made extensive use of Cold Fusion in creating Intranets for 3M here in Austin. What do you think of Cold Fusion?

I have not had a lot to do with Cold Fusion. I have simply been using MS Front Page. The new version 3.0 has just come out and it seems to have ironed out a great deal of the problems with the earlier version (Simple things like lack of spell check, etc). This is currently only in its BETA stages, but looks promising. I would be interested in the features that Cold Fusion has. I am finding that there are a lot of similarities between packages. MS Frontpage is a good way to start as it has a basic graphic design package as well.

In addition, I looked at Cold Fusion and it really doesn't help compile web pages from sctratch. It looks more at compiling the web site together after the pages have been designed (from what I saw) with another html composer. Has anyone else had any contact with Intranets and what they can be used to accomplish?

Hi, Well I know little about Intranet.But how it actually works I don't know.Has anybody got any white paper where U will get information about it.But listen, I am network Professional,so please give me information considering all these things. Thanks Paul for providing such nice chat. .....archana

We'll see what we can dig up on this! Check back over the weekend.

Intranets are just internal networks running tcp/ip and standard Internet applications (like mail, www, ftp, telnet etc..) inside a big company. To find more information, first make use of web search engines or robots, my favourite is altavista.digital.com, a gaint search robot which can give you suprises :-)

(tedchong) is absolutely correct. The good thing is that they do use standard internet applications so you can take all those people who tinker with the net at home and give them author access to their own department intranet pages. It reduces your own workload and encourages people to think about how their departments relate to others and create hyperlinks to and from their pages.

I have been running Linux for 2 years already since I set up my first intranet in our office here. The good thing about Linux is it is free and lots of unix apps can run with no problem, only complain is no real technical support, everything has to be done on usenet postings but fortunitely, most usenet people are friendly and responsive. Now, I managed to put most office apps like leave balance, email list, address list, telephone list, name list, holiday list, weather, world time, message pad etc.. on the web server of the intranet.

http://www.topsecretnet.com/ Top Secret Intranet How U.S. Intelligence built INTELINK The World's Largest, Most Secure Network