Hi Frank. It gets better and better. Still think we are a year or so away from major payout but each day it gets closer and closer.
From Canada investment tonight
In many parts if the Canadian business world, Nortel is still a magic word. Take the case of Heritage Concepts International (HCI).
The Canadian biometrics company that announced on Monday that its technology will accompany Nortel Networks (NT) to CeBIT 2001, a high tech trade show to be held in Hamburg later this month.
On a day when, once again, the bottom fell out of the markets, HCI?s shares picked up about 8% to close at $0.265.
The company has traded in a range of 9 cents to 95 cents in the past year.
HCI is working on facial recognition technology, but is still very much in early stages of development itself. Its revenue for the six months ending in December was just over $300,000, and a portion of that came from its stake in the Great Canadian Soup Company. So, it?s clear that an association with Nortel is important, no matter how battered the networking giant might be right now.
?Nortel really wants to humanize the computer,? says Jerry Janik the chairman of HCI and the president of its biometrics subsidiary AcSys Biometrics . ?Part of that is that the computer should really know who you are, it helps breakdown the barriers between technology and human beings.?
Be that as it may, investors reading the press release on Monday morning were wondering exactly, precisely, what the deal is between Nortel and AcSys.
Nortel is taking an AcSys prototype to CeBIT as part of its personal Internet presentations. The prototype was originally developed for a U.S. bank that wanted to be able to control access to financial information. The bank was finding that its employees weren?t logging off their computers when they walked away from them and, in theory, others could get access to unauthorized information.
?They asked to develop something that would look at the person, it would log them on, and when they left, it would log them off,? says Janik. ?If your boss looked over your shoulder that was fine, but if it was someone it didn?t recognize looking, it would shut the screen down.?
For Nortel, the company adapted the technology slightly. ?We created something so that when you start your computer, it will recognize you and put you in a website or the information you want to see, then if someone else steps in front of it, it will switch to something else, or log off altogether.?
Post Hamburg, Janik says that the companies will continue to work together. ?What they?re going to do is develop a suite of products and we?ll be a part of them.?
This is the first time that HCI has had any dealings with Nortel. Janik says that he approached the company about four moths ago to showcase some of his products and that the relationship evolved from there. He also said that Nortel was interested in its wireless biometrics technology, but isn?t taking that technology to Hamburg.
Raj Nanavati, a biometric industry analyst with International Biometric Group in New York wasn?t familiar with the details of the agreement but says the announcement seems like a good, small step for the company.
One caution for investors interested in buying into HCI?s cause is that widespread adoption of facial recognition is probably still a few years away. The theme of CeBIT 2001 is ?Get the Spirit of Tomorrow.? As you can imagine, the exhibitors try to outdo each other with bleeding edge technology, even if that technology isn?t immediately ready for commercialization.
?Most network systems now rely upon fingerprint technology,? says Nanavati. ?Although there are some very good facial recognition technologies that work very well. The day when you can actually just pick up your cell phone, or laptop, or PDA and it automatically identifies you, that?s not right now because facial recognition hasn?t been integrated to all those components.?
However, if you still believe Nortel has the touch, that day is probably not too far off.
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