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Technology Stocks : General Magic -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CanynGirl who wrote (2506)	6/26/1998 9:38:00 PM
From: Raven McCloud	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

Wildfire vs. Serengeti. From the pages of Mobile Computing, June Issue. Link: mobilecomputing.com This is a great site with a lot of worthwhile info for those needing or involved with mobile computing. Check it out! June 1998 TELEPHONY WILDFIRE TO KEEP IT SIMPLE WITH ENTERPRISE PRODUCT Four years ago, Wildfire Communications jumped ahead of its time when it stunned the integrated telephony market with speech-recognition technology that managed telephone calls for people on the go. The technology was incorporated into an electronic assistant called Wildfire Gold, which performed secretarial tasks such as answering calls, taking messages, tracking down subscribers and forwarding calls to those subscribers. Wildfire will not match this technological leap with its soon-to-be-released Enterprise Wildfire product, however, at least as far as mobile professionals are concerned. Road warriors continue to look for new ways to access their messages when traveling. One way to achieve this is via bidirectional messaging, a technology that uses speech synthesis to read back messages. Bidirectional messaging will not be a part of Enterprise Wildfire, a telephony package that connects standard telephones directly to a corporate LAN via desktop PCs. Wildfire says it has forgone bidirectional by design. "My belief is that people don't want to hear long messages read to them," says Gary Roshak, vice president and general manager of Wildfire's Enterprise Division. Nevertheless, he adds, "we are experimenting with the technology and will bang on it hard before we deliver it." In the meantime, General Magic has included an e-mail reader in Serengeti, its electronic communications assistant. According to industry analyst Andy Seybold, Serengeti is superior to Wildfire not only because of its e-mail reader but also because of its ability to understand conversationlike sentences rather than the terse commands required by Wildfire. Still, the first version of Enterprise Wildfire, slated to be released this summer, will have no dearth of snappy new features. One will give subscribers access to information stored in contact managers. Subscribers will be able to call their Wildfire voice mail and, through a sequence of voice commands, tell the virtual assistant to add a phone number to the contact manager database. The call goes over the network to a server running Wildfire software and then through a low-cost ISDN primary-rate interface card to a PBX or directly to the telephone network. What appears in the contact manager is the phone number, although the subscriber will be required to attach the appropriate name manually or vocally. Wildfire Communications also is working on technology that recognizes spelling (and would enable users to enter names manually) as well as a universal serial bus (USB) implementation for notebooks. These innovations will be funded by a fourth infusion of venture capital, reported to be in excess of $12 million, from Microsoft, Intel and Matrix Partners, a venture capital group. While neither Microsoft nor Intel has a seat on Wildfire's board of directors, the dynamic duo's interests will support their vision of the "connected PC." For Microsoft, this in part means utilizing Wildfire technology in its Outlook contact manager software. The long-term benefits, Roshak says, will be seen in Microsoft's forthcoming Windows NT 5.0 Server operating system, over which Microsoft plans to run telephony. To work more closely with Microsoft, Wildfire recently created a division near Redmond, WA, with about 25 employees. Roshak says Wildfire also will work closely with Intel to optimize the product for Pentium processors with MMX technology. -- Cynthia Bournellis CurtCo Internet Services Copyright c 1998 CurtCo Freedom Group.

To: CanynGirl who wrote (2506)	6/26/1998 10:11:00 PM
From: Seconds Out	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

I have done a lot of sitting back and digesting the events of the last two days, and the week and a half prior to today. For what it is worth, here are my thoughts. I believe that a lot of people plunged in last week and the end of the prior week anticipating another bombshell announcement yesterday just like at Interop. Remember that the price moved up about 2 points on one day on no significant news. We all get a little greedy and spoiled at times, especially after a spring like this one. I believe some of the sell off yesterday morning was from people converting part of their positions from stock to calls. We held on pretty good yesterday after the initial sell off. Again some aggressive plays betting on a grand showing at the shareholders meeting. I felt that not holding onto 14 1/2 that day sent a message that nothing big was going to be announced at the meeting. This was in direct contrast to the stock's behavior leading up to Interop. Now about today. Though I hate to ever give back anything we have attained in price, I am satisfied by the bounce back to 12 1/2, well off of our low of the day. Talk of single digit prices is off the mark. I really don't see it happening, and I think we have already seen our bottom. I agree with those who said this was an opportunity to shake out some scared money, and I believe that some short term traders got in last week (greed factor) and jumped ship today. I have been long on GMGC since last summer and see nothing changed by today's events other than the need for some more patience. I have added to my position each step of the way on the dips as presented and feel very good about the future. I know none of this may sound earth shattering, but I wanted to share my thoughts with those who have so often done likewise with me. One final note. I do have a sneaky suspicion that GMGC will throw a surprise at us on the 30th. I have NO EVIDENCE to offer, just my gut instinct. I will be there and will report my impressions just as Kurt did so eloquently. Best wishes to all believers in MAGIC.