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

To: cool who wrote (3098)	7/31/1998 5:43:00 PM
From: Frank Wechsler	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

From Techweb: techweb.com General Magic Delivers Voice-Based Service (07/31/98; 1:12 p.m. ET) By Jeff Sweat, InformationWeek General Magic rolled out Thursday a voice-based message service called Portico with which the company said it hopes to reinvent itself. Portico, first unveiled in May, is a "virtual assistant" that ties together phone, fax, and e-mail systems. The integration lets users check and respond to all their messages from a single device, whether it's a phone, cell phone, or computer. The service is based on MagicTalk, General Magic's voice-recognition technology. Users can retrieve information, and can compose fax and e-mail messages using a normal speaking voice. The assistant will also read fax and e-mail messages, as well as Internet content over the phone. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based General Magic, which has its roots in the personal digital assistant market, has acknowledged the success of Portico is critical to the company's survival. General Magic is shipping Portico on schedule, something the company said it believed was necessary to show its ability to execute. Portico will be licensed according to monthly usage fees based on five standard plans. Costs will range from $19.95 for 60 minutes to $149.95 for 1,300 minutes, with a $50 setup fee for all plans. It will be sold by a network of 52 local resellers, most of them wireless service providers. The company said it also plans to offer IT organizations outsourced services based on Portico, which might give General Magic an avenue to the corporate market its previous products failed to crack. Portico's shipment comes on the heels of a $7.3 million second quarter loss General Magic reported Wednesday. The company attributed the loss, in part, to higher operating costs in developing the network service. The company's revenue also slipped, falling to just $91,000 from $297,000 in the year-ago quarter.