(COMTEX) B: EXCITE@HOME FIRST PORTAL SERVICE TO OFFER TOLL-FREE NUMBE
B: EXCITE@HOME FIRST PORTAL SERVICE TO OFFER TOLL-FREE NUMBER AND ONE-STOP
RETRIEVAL OF ALL MESSAGES WITH VOICEMAIL LAUNCH VOICEMAIL AND FAX Messages
Delivered to Your Email with a Toll-Free Number and Personal Extension
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jun 21, 1999 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ --
Consumers can now receive their voicemail, email and faxes all at one
single location withtoday's launch of Excite Voicemail, Excite@Home
(Nasdaq: ATHM) announced today. The service lets consumers receive
voicemail and fax messages from their own email account with a
toll-free number service and a personal extension. Excite Voicemail
marks another milestone supporting the company's vision of "All Band,
All Device, All the Time" and complements the company's newVoiceChat
service (see related announcement). Excite@Home also announced a $6
million minority investment in General Magic, the back-end provider of
the service.
(Photo: newscom.com )
VOICEMAIL, FAX and EMAIL -- WHEREVER YOU ARE Excite Voicemail funnels
all voice, email and fax messages into one Excite email account,
letting Excite users retrieve all of their messages from one location,
voicemail.excite.com. To sign up, users simply go to
voicemail.excite.com and create a personal extension of their choice to
go along with a toll-free number for the service. Unlike other
offerings, Excite@Home Voicemail is available cost free to callers and
users anywhere in the United States. Excite users can receive up to
approximately 60 messages and 10 faxes per month. Anyone calling a
user's Voicemail telephone number within the free service area can
leave a private voice mail or fax that is then immediately sent to the
user's Excite Mail account. Users can then retrieve voicemails, faxes
and emails by simply logging on to their Web-based Excite mail account.
Voicemails can be heard by clicking on audio files and faxes can be
read as attachments.
"Our goal is to give people convenient tools to control and manage
their daily lives," said Joe Kraus, senior vice-president, content,
Excite@Home. "Today's means of communication -- voicemail, faxes and
emails -- can be overwhelming to people. Excite Voicemail bridges the
gap between traditional means of communication and the ubiquity of the
Web to provide the ultimate convenience of receiving all of your
messages in one place."
Excite Voicemail uses General Magic's patent-pending magicTalk
voiceuser interface. magicTalk allows people to interact with Voicemail
as if they were having a conversation with a friend. Callers leaving a
voice message or sending a fax to a Voicemail subscriber won't have to
memorize anycommands. They interact with the service using their own
spoken words, and the service "talks back" in a friendly way to confirm
information or offer assistance.
A PERSONAL AND PRIVATE SERVICE Using Excite Voicemail, consumers no
longer need to cope with shared answering machines possibly losing
messages due to multiple users or needto purchase a fax machine. The
service is also ideal for students, business travelers or homes with
limited telephone lines and answering machines. For example, kids can
have their own messaging access separate from Mom and Dad's personal
phone line. Travelers can use the service to retrieve all their
messages in one place wherever they log onto the Web.
"With Voicemail, the Excite@Home team is making its Web experience even
more dynamic and customer-friendly," said Steve Markman, chairman,
chief executive officer and president of General Magic. "General Magic
is very pleased to contribute our magicTalk technology, which allows
Excite@Home's email users to benefit from the convenience of our
natural language voiceinterface."
About Excite@Home Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM) is a global media company
based in Redwood City, Calif. Through the company's narrowband portal,
Excite (www.excite.com), and broadband services, @Home and @Work, the
company uniquely offers consumers content and interactive services
across both narrowband and broadband, and advertisers highly targeted
marketing solutions across all platforms of delivery. Leveraging the
high-speed, always-on attributes of cable, Excite@Home empowers unique
multimedia applications that go beyond current Web experiences. The
company will combine the Excite brand -- one of the best known names on
the Internet with 70 percent recognition among Web users -- with
@Home's broad distribution, a worldwide footprint of 65 million cable
homes, to deliver on its vision of "All Band, All Device, All the
Time."
For more investor information about Excite@Home, please call the
Company's stockholder services hotline at 1-888-924-9248. Brand
recognition statistics quoted are from Frank N. Magid and Associates,
Inc. (1/99).
SOURCE Excite@Home
(C) 1999 PR Newswire. All rights reserved.
prnewswire.com -0-
CONTACT: Raphel Finelli, 650-298-4503, rfinelli@excitecorp.com,
or
Melissa Walia, 650-569-2213, melissa@excitecorp.com,
both of Excite@Home
/Photo:
newscom.com
For assistance: PR Newswire Photo Desk, 888-776-6555
or 201-369-3467
WEB PAGE: voicemail.excite.com
excite.com
GEOGRAPHY: California
INDUSTRY CODE: CPR
MLM
SUBJECT CODE: PDT
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