RAINMAN

Rainman, which stands for Remote Automated Information Manager, is the proprietary publishing platform of AOL (formerly America Online). It was conceptualized and coding started by Marc Seriff and completed by Craig Dykstra, both AOL founders. Rainman code is used to create forums and pages on the AOL service by AOL and content partners of the company.

Although many consider Rainman to be faster, simpler to use and more reliable than HTML, AOL has recently begun using the universal HTML code to publish content and information to its service, moving away from its own publishing language, and migrating numerous forums to web-based content.

However, when Rainman was introduced in 1993, Web browsers were rudimentary. They did not afford sophisticated formatting or server interactions, and were sluggish on then-prevalent dialup connections. The ease of publishing content to Rainman -- combined with proprietary graphics compression technology from Johnson-Grace -- helped AOL to sign up publishing giants, leading computer vendors, and retail merchants at a rapid clip... presenting their content more attractively and to a wider audience than possible with other online services of the era. Rainman enabled AOL to stay a step ahead of the Web for nearly a decade, contributing to its meteoric rise as an online service.

Unlike HTML, Rainman commands and access are kept strictly confidential by AOL, which provides training and usage rights only to company and partner staff. However, Rainman commands have been extensively documented on the Internet, although AOL accounts without Rainman rights are unable to effect changes. Many AOL security issues have historically been the result of hackers gaining access to Rainman control; this has become less of an issue since AOL's late-1990s introduction of SecurID protection for Rainman-enabled accounts.

Some AOL volunteers formerly engaged in Rainman editing. This access was widely [but not universally] terminated due to Department of Labor guidelines which prevent volunteers of for-profit companies from performing duties substantially similar to those of paid employees.

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