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

To: Frank Wechsler who wrote (3728)	9/16/1998 9:02:00 PM
From: Seconds Out	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10081

Webly is no secret to GMGC. Their name came up at the NYC Shareholders Meeting and Dr. Markman acknowledged them as a competitor. It will be good to have as much advertising as possible as this new field becomes defined in the minds of business professionals and analysts. The idea of a virtual assistant and unified messaging is changing from concept to reality rapidly, and GMGC is at the forefront. It is interesting to see what Webley focuses on in this release. They are obviously aware of GMGC and are trying to show off their uniqueness and competitive advantages. What they have is conference calling and, for the near future, call waiting to tout. Not much,IMHO, compared to the fluidity of Magic Talk and the human personality traits of Portico. I have interacted with a few different voice activated programs, from Schwab's Voice Broker to Bell Atlantic Mobile's Talk Dial, and nothing compares to the user experience of Portico. Let's also not forget the stock quotes and news items that Portico throws in as well. Webley's campaign will certainly put pressure on Saatchi and Saatchi to effectively differentiate Portico from the competition, but I think the butler routine will not measure up to the personality of Portico if effectively advertised. All in all, a very good sign that this field is beginning to come of age, and I believe GMGC remains ahead of the curve. Best wishes to all believers in the magic. Seconds Out.

To: Frank Wechsler who wrote (3728)	9/18/1998 8:49:00 AM
From: JC	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10081

Frank. and others, I will answer what I know from my DD about Webley. A. I have been mentioning them as a serious competitor since I joined the board this summer. THeir service has been commercially available since june '97. They did not just pop up, and they ARE NOT vaporware. B. I have subscribed to the service myself to get an idea of its competitiveness, along with 10 other competitors in a quest to find the right product for my consultancy. Webley is based on a UNIX platform with plug and play technologys and a self healing SONET ring, etc. They are not beholden to NT for example, and therefore they claim, and I may be tempted to agree, an advantage in adaptability in the long run. (to upgrade they do not need to "go down" llike portico has recently) To answer someone else their pricing is at 14.95$ a month with no setup fee, and .149$ a minute one time access, that is they DO NOT double charge for outbound or inbound calls on a per leg basis (Ie: one leg in to Portico, one leg out to your client), which saves me personally a bundle. Right now their voice interface is an English Butler named Webley, though I have demo'd a personality named "copper" as well who is a rather sultry female. My clients liked Webley better for his uniqueness. Webley does not have as good of recognition as Portico right now, but I prefer their TTSinterface, and I LOVE the ability to conference up to 32 people on the fly. I currently consider, after using all 11 competitors I could identify through my search that only Webly, NETWORK WILDFIRE, and Portico are the only viable competitors in this market, with STI (ESA) and Premiere Technologies doing well in the TUI market and JFAX doing great in the international market (though not quite a Unified MEssaging competitor!) I identify Network Wildfire as a competitor because they A. have two RUNNING carrier deals with Pac Bell Mobility in CA and NV, and with Canada Bell Mobility in Toronto with another with Century Tel due to be released this winter I bleieve. Network Wildfire is different from their horrible commercial service Wildfire Gold, which we all know is un scalable, feature poor, and an unviable competitor. The network version, their operations man tells me, will have fax and POP3 email available in december, is scalable, like Portico at 100,000 users per cluster with daisy chain capability to go higher. The fact that Wildfire has carrier agreements ALREADY makes them a competitor. Those are my two cents for this morn.. feedback? JC