GeoNet was an early international online services network built using microcomputers. Based on the software developed in Germany by GeoNet Systems GmbH in the early 1980s, and completed in the early 1990s, it was one of the first networks to offer a comprehensive online services platform, and was early to market with a number of innovations. Unlike other "mailbox" systems at the time, GeoNet had a user-friendly command interface and made extensive use of distributed processing technology.
GeoNet became an important force in the European market within 15 months of introducing its first system in the early 1980s, and by 1986 had an installed base of some 25 systems in 8 countries. By the early 1990s, GeoNet systems had been established in Austria, France, Germany, Guatemala, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, USA and USSR. Apart from the Austrian PTT and An Post in Ireland, most of the operators were independent private companies.
GeoNet systems were strongly interconnected using a proprietary pre-X.400 protocol, called "InterMail". The so-called "GeoMail" network constituted a worldwide “private domain”, later interconnected with other public and private domains through X.400.
Later versions of GeoNet software ran under OpenVMS on DEC hardware. The largest installations ran on Alpha clusters. GeoNet operated centralised system monitoring and maintenance from Germany.
Some of the many innovative features of the GeoNet systems:
The UK systems GEO2 and MCR1 were run by Poptel which aimed its services at non-commercial organisations, and the distinctive GeoNet addressing format (e.g. GEO2:TONY.BLAIR – a well-known user in the early 1990s) was widely recognised in NGO and labour movement circles.
In addition, Computer Access (originally Hackney Computer Access)* [see http://www.access-it.org.uk Archived 2010-12-11 at the Wayback Machine ] created the Hackney HOST using the GeoNet technology, using this to tackle digital exclusion within East London and the Lea Valley, under the aegis of City Challenge funding.
The system in the USSR, MOS1, was established at the height of the "glasnost" period and relayed information about the attempted coup in 1991 to the Western media.
The GeoNet name is now used by a German Security-ISP. Geonet's last hostmaster - Kay-Michael Sonntag from Höxter — took over the website | geonet.de as well as their customer base on 21.12.2012 together with Arno Witt and founded the entrepreneurial community of the Web-Security-Hosting-Services already in October 2012.
In October 2018, Arno Witt (who previously owned 50% of the company) took over the shares of Web Security Hosting Services UG and integrated the company into the WE Webdesign (owner: Arno Witt) in January 2019. Since then, GeoNet has continued as a department of WE Webdesign. The products of GeoNet, especially the mail accounts from geonet.de and geonet.com, which partly existed since the early 90s, will be strengthened in the future and offered through the WSHS-Solutions.
In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by RFC 9051.
VBScript is a deprecated programming language for scripting on Microsoft Windows using Component Object Model (COM) based on classic Visual Basic and Active Scripting.
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
Webmail is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) provide webmail as part of their internet service package. Similarly, some web hosting providers also provide webmail as a part of their hosting package.
The Microsoft Windows Script Host (WSH) is an automation technology for Microsoft Windows operating systems that provides scripting abilities comparable to batch files, but with a wider range of supported features. This tool was first provided on Windows 95 after Build 950a on the installation discs as an optional installation configurable and installable by means of the Control Panel, and then a standard component of Windows 98 and subsequent and Windows NT 4.0 Build 1381 and by means of Service Pack 4. The WSH is also a means of automation for Internet Explorer via the installed WSH engines from IE Version 3.0 onwards; at this time VBScript became means of automation for Microsoft Outlook 97. The WSH is also an optional install provided with a VBScript and JScript engine for Windows CE 3.0 and following and some third-party engines including Rexx and other forms of Basic are also available.
An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the 1980s, and updated by RFC 5322 and 6854. The term email address in this article refers to just the addr-spec in Section 3.4 of RFC 5322. The RFC defines address more broadly as either a mailbox or group. A mailbox value can be either a name-addr, which contains a display-name and addr-spec, or the more common addr-spec alone.
Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) is an API for Microsoft Windows which allows programs to become email-aware. While MAPI is designed to be independent of the protocol, it is usually used to communicate with Microsoft Exchange Server.
Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems.
Unified messaging is a business term for the integration of different electronic messaging and communications media technologies into a single interface, accessible from a variety of different devices. While traditional communications systems delivered messages into several different types of stores such as voicemail systems, e-mail servers, and stand-alone fax machines, with Unified Messaging all types of messages are stored in one system. Voicemail messages, for example, can be delivered directly into the user's inbox and played either through a headset or the computer's speaker. This simplifies the user's experience and can offer new options for workflow such as appending notes or documents to forwarded voicemails.
Apple Open Collaboration Environment (AOCE) is a collection of messaging-related technologies introduced for the Classic Mac OS in the early 1990s. It includes the PowerTalk mail engine, which is the primary client-side interface to the system, the PowerShare mail server for workgroup installations, and a number of additional technologies such as Open Directory, encryption, and digital signature support.
Asterisk is a software implementation of a private branch exchange (PBX). In conjunction with suitable telephony hardware interfaces and network applications, Asterisk is used to establish and control telephone calls between telecommunication endpoints such as customary telephone sets, destinations on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and devices or services on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks. Its name comes from the asterisk (*) symbol for a signal used in dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) dialing.
A fax server is a system installed in a local area network (LAN) server that allows computer users whose computers are attached to the LAN to send and receive fax messages.
As the next version of Windows NT after Windows 2000, as well as the successor to Windows Me, Windows XP introduced many new features but it also removed some others.
Windows Fax and Scan is an integrated faxing and scanning application introduced in Windows Vista and included in the Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate Windows Vista editions as the replacement for the Fax Console of Windows XP; it is available in all versions of Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 (x86/x64) and Windows 11 (x64), but not on ARM64 versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Telecom Gold was an early commercial electronic mail service launched by British Telecom in 1982. It was based on Prime minicomputers running Dialcom software under a customised version of PRIMOS. The system offered various services, including e-mail to and from other Telecom Gold users and those of Dialcom services in other countries, and other e-mail systems such as Sprint and integration with telex, fax, online databases and an experimental OCR system for a short while. Later, X.400 functionality was added.
Unified communications (UC) is a business and marketing concept describing the integration of enterprise communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, voice, mobility features, audio, web & video conferencing, fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), desktop sharing, data sharing, call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging. UC is not necessarily a single product, but a set of products that provides a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types.
Callware Technologies, Inc. (Callware) is a software company in the telecommunication industry, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. It specializes in developing unified communication and unified messaging solutions for the US Department of Defense, government, educational institutions, and mid to enterprise business.
GroupWise is a messaging and collaboration platform from OpenText that supports email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management. The GroupWise platform consists of desktop client software, which is available for Windows,, and the server software, which is supported on Windows Server and Linux.
A mailbox provider, mail service provider or, somewhat improperly, email service provider is a provider of email hosting. It implements email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or end users, on their behalf.
The first release of Microsoft Exchange Server was version 4.0 in April 1996, when it was sold as an upgrade to Microsoft Mail 3.5. Before that, Microsoft Mail v2.0 was replaced in 1991 by "Microsoft Mail for PC Networks v2.1", based on Network Courier from its acquisition of Consumers Software. Exchange Server was an entirely new X.400-based client–server mail system with a single database store that also supported X.500 directory services. During its development, Microsoft migrated their own internal email from a Xenix-based system to Exchange Server from April 1993, with all 32,000 Microsoft mailboxes on Exchange by late 1996. The directory used by Exchange Server eventually became Microsoft's Active Directory service, an LDAP-compliant directory service. Active Directory was integrated into Windows 2000 as the foundation of Windows domains.