>I meant for private, specialized communication between two or more machines that are not using HTTP and not talking HTML, but instead are exchanging information for a specific data-processing or business purpose.

Yes, I know what you mean. The Universal Thread Client is a new version which will be release at the beginning of 1997. It's a full socket application done in Visual FoxPro. Yes, no need for a browser or a mailer.

The good thing of this advanced technology is that it will allow you to do whatever you want without having any limitation. The bad thing is that it is extremely difficult to establish a good protocol and make that all work together with robust code.