TeleFinder is a

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

-based

bulletin-board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

written by Spider Island Software, based on a

client–server model The client–server model is a distributed application structure that partitions tasks or workloads between the providers of a resource or service, called servers, and service requesters, called clients. Often clients and servers communicate ove ...

whose client end provides a Mac-like

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

. It appears to be the first such system on any platform, predating Apple's own

AppleLink AppleLink was the name of both Apple Computer's online service for its dealers, third-party developers, and users, and the client software used to access it. Prior to the commercialization of the Internet, AppleLink was a popular service for Mac ...

, as well as other Mac-based BBS systems like

FirstClass FirstClass is a client–server groupware, email, online conferencing, voice and fax services, and bulletin-board system for Windows, macOS, and Linux. FirstClass's primary markets are the higher-education and K-12 education sectors, including ...

. In more recent years the product has added a complete suite of "sub-servers" for popular

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

protocols. The TeleFinder software consists of 2 programs, the Server software (Macintosh only) and the GUI based client software (also called TeleFinder), which is available for both macintosh and Windows based PCs. The TeleFinder Server could also network with other TeleFinder Server BBS computers and share email and forum messages between themselves and also over FidoNet. The TeleFinder Server System Operator (SysOp) could also use ResEdit (a Macintosh resource editor software) to create and modify profiles to give their BBS a unique GUI. These profile files were distributed by each BBS for users to download and use with the client software, if they wished to see this GUI. Otherwise, a default GUI was used instead. TeleFinder Server and Client software was originally written by Rusty Tucker with portions by Chris Silverberg and Jim White for Spider Island Software in Irvine, California USA. All artwork by Drew Dougherty of Attention Design (now BXC Creative).

External links

TeleFinder Server
Bulletin board system software {{network-software-stub