Userplane’s getting ready to announce the release of our new real-time message board product and with it we wanted to talk a little about the drive behind making a new bulletin board. After all, we’re hyping our message board as “not your daddy’s forum.” So what makes it so?

Well, Userplane’s Boards are built around the fundamental principle of real-time communication. Nobody likes old news, bakeries sell yesterday’s goods at half price, and no one here’s about to swap out their Macbook Pro for a wicked fast Pentium 286!

For us, real-time communication was paramount for the product.  We live in real-time, communicate in real-time, and damnit we wanted a discussion group product to match! To do this we chose a brand new technology from Adobe – the LiveCycle Data Services or LCDS for short. LCDS was built around the need for a highly scalable real-time data  solution for rich internet applications. Perfect we thought, for the system to drive a live, improved, user experience.

This improved experience means users can see posts as they happen, without having to refresh the page. So gone are the times when you would read a post, decide to reply, type up your reply, spell check it, preview it, and then finally post it only to find there’s been like 16 other responses to the same thread in the time it took you to write yours.  Now your comment seems out of context and puny compared to the real, robust discussion occurring.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. This happened to all of us and formed the basis for developing a new and improved message board.  One designed around real-time communications that could reflect the live conversation going on. Something fresh and dynamic that could keep up with the users’ comments and interests. Think iPhone rather than brick phone.

The app’s coming out soon. Check out for yourself how the real-time boards make all those other forums look like something your daddy posted to back in 1994!