22-December-2004

Beta Release

We've released a Beta version of Agent 2.1 to the Agent Design Board -- a small, external group of Agent users who provide design, performance, and usability feedback. Once we've iterated Agent 2.1 with the Agent Design Board, we will release an updated version to the much larger Agent Beta Team.

Features

Agent 2.1 is a vastly improved release with many new features:

• Multiple News Servers - access multiple Usenet and private news servers from a single instance of Agent
• Newsgroup Directory - a new interface for searching or browsing news servers when subscribing to groups
• Task Management - on-line operations are optimized to improve performance and reliability
• Multiple Connections - simultaneous connections improve download throughput and multi-tasking
• Multiple Desktops - a new, richer interface for organizing folders

See the Agent Product Road Map for details and screen shots.

David Black

In October, David Black joined the Agent Team to oversee quality assurance and manage the Agent Beta. David brings over 10 years of experience in consumer software quality assurance. Most recently, David worked at Macromedia on RoboHelp.

Regards,

The Forté Team