Re: I'd say the entire product line (do they have anything else)
Bill,
In true basher form, you bash a company, and no little about them!
Planet City has acquired the rights to Internet Hockey and Cyber Soccer. These are the first of a series of interactive games the company will market for Internet use.
Planet City has also developed original content for Internet broadcasting, which is a fast growing market sector.
Planet City has done considerable development work in this area to date.
Including the development of ‘Future Tense', an interactive Internet series, which is, at the very least, impressive technically. It has attracted the attention of advertisers and Canadian government agencies have financed 65% of development costs.
Lastly, the Company is also able to provide a broad range of consulting services to larger companies.
Bill - Perhaps you can explain why your posting on Fantasy Thread about a Fantasy Company, with it's Fantasy Officers. I'm sure your doing a service by posting on the Y2K Problems and Solutions, but how does a newbie know what to believe and what is a Fantasy. Wouldn't all the Real Intellect behind this thread be much better off finding a Real Y2K company they believe has a Real Solution and placing their combined effort behind it?
Your always here anytime you can provide Facts for or against PINC. Bashing a company you know little about is IMHO beneath you, as your post's are well written, unfortunately most have no basis in Fact.
Below is one analyst's opinion on Planet City and it's Millenium Bug Compliance Kit which was tested on a variety of PC's.
I've kept the 1st report in it's entirety, although I've boldfaced sections which I IMHO think are important, and not to bore you with Y2K details you most assuredly already know. You'll find other reports under the same link.
planetcity.com
Produced by:
Downing & Co.
8135 Rye Court
Niwot, CO 80503
303-652-0589
DOWNCO@AOL.com
1704 Hornblend St.
San Diego, CA 92109
619-272-1882
Contact:
Richard Coates
This report is for informational purposes only, we encourage readers to consult with a financial advisor before any purchase of any type of
investment. This report contains information that is believed, but not
guaranteed, to be reliable. Downing & Co. or its affiliates may have a
position on the securities discussed herein from time to time.
Formed in 1996 as a software and Internet services provider and software developer, Planet City Corp. (PINC: NASDAQ OTCBB) has acquired a license for a simple, effective and affordable Y2K solution for desktop computers. The Millenium Bug Compliance Kit (MBCK) offers a suite of programs that are easy to use, transparent to the user and addresses the Y2K problem at a variety of levels including the BIOS, Operating Systems and application software. Planet City also claims their software works with just about any type of PC out there, including the very old 8086/88 configurations!
The Millennium Bug Compliance Kit identifies if a personal computer's
PC) hardware system, more specifically the BIOS processor clock and real time clock, has a potential year 2000 problem. The program fixes these problems by applying a removable "patch" or additional program over the BIOS' existing program. The computer will then recognize the year 2000 as well as leap years, which were not previously recognized by computers. A diagnostic tool that accompanies the patch will identify any existing or future non-compliant software on the system. It performs a byte by byte scan of the hard disk to determine if any of the software has Y2K problems.
For those of you that have been living in the Outer Reaches, Y2K is the acronym given to the problem faced by computers as their internal clocks fail to read the turn of the millenium. The implications are global and potentially catastrophic. Some even believe, apocalyptic. These doomsayers predict the collapse of everything from the national power grid to Wall Street and the Banking System in a global information meltdown. Certainly, there is cause for concern, best estimates indicate over a 100 million desktop computers worldwide could be affected by this problem, at the hardware and through, the software level. It has also been estimated that it would require an additional 600,000 programmers re-writing code in the U.S. alone to fix this problem before the millennium turns. That is not going to happen, they just don't exist.
Any workable solution will have to involve software that supplies a
comprehensive solution at the administrator level, whether that
administrator be in charge of an entire network comprised of different
computers or an individual user in front of his PC. This software
solution will have to address problems of different hardware, BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), Operating Systems (DOS, Win 95/98) and specific applications software (Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, etc.).
To the best of our knowledge, no other shrink wrap product can
legitimately make this claim.
Most of the products currently available do not work or are so 'clumsy' they may as well not work. They are also hard to use and are limited in scope. They also come with a bewildering array of documentation so complex, you may as well rewrite the code yourself! Speaking of which, the current going rate of rewriting the code directly is about $ 0.30 cents a line, a medium size company will have about 100 million lines of code. Cost: about $30 million US. Planet City's Millenium solution retails at $49.95 for single user, multi-user licenses are available and for larger companies Planet City will also provide field engineer support.
We were very impressed with the clarity of Planet City's Director of R&D, Chris Faust, in being able to identify the overall complex nature of the Y2K problem and realizing, however, that the solution must be simple to use. After installation, the program allows for a diagnostic, which will tell you if the computer has a compliance (Y2K) problem and gives the option to fix it. The software also gives the user the option to perform the hard drive scan. Operations from that point are transparent to the user.
We have used Planet City's software ourselves. We installed it on an Acer Aspire P75 with 24 MEG RAM, Monorail P133 with 16 MEG RAM (an oddball hybrid notebook/desktop) and a new Fujitsu P166 MMX Lifebook 400 series 16 MEG EDO RAM, all had different BIOS and came with a variety of application software and custom setups. The software worked flawlessly, including forward dating tests, also it correctly identified the Lifebook was in compliance. We then turned over the software to consulting associates where it was tested on 386 and 486 machines with older operating systems, BIOS and software. Again, the software scored, identifying these were all out of compliance and proceeded to make the fix.
We came away convinced that Planet City had a solution as good as any out in the market and better than most, at a reasonable price, which is geared to the end user. In short, they have a hit. Planet City is addressing a huge market and in our estimation, even if the software does not do what in claims a 100% of the time for a 100% of the computers in use, a small market penetration will still garner huge rewards for the company. This is more than likely in our opinion.
Validation is an important part of any software success and Planet City has just announced an agreement with America Online (NASDAQ NMS: AOL), the worlds largest online service provider, in which AOL will market Planet City's Millennium Bug Solution to its 17 million users world wide.
An earlier version of the software has already been sold to major
companies in Australia, where the software originated. The software is
selling about 14,000 copies a month there.
Planet City is in evaluation with Citibank Canada and several other
companies and organizations. In addition, it has an agreement with
Programmers Paradise (NASDAQ: PROG) to appear its catalog, which will
reach 8 million people.
Planet City has sold 10, 000 units to Impulse Distribution the 3rd
largest distributor in that Benelux countries, according to Rudy Rupak, President of Millennium Software Solutions, he expects this order to exceed 50,000 units.
Pacific Dynamics of Colorado, software resellers, have ordered 15,000
copies.
Royal Group Nigeria, PTY LTD. (Nigerian group that holds the Good Year and Pepsi franchise), have issued a P.O. for 5000 copies and individual orders, by telephone, are over 2000.
We would expect further validation from the company, as we move closer to the millenium deadline. These validations should take the form of large purchase orders and license agreements. Naturally, we were concerned about Planet City's ability to fill these orders. Planet City operates as essentially a supplier and license reseller. They have already developed and produced attractive packaging and are ready to ship their product. In fact they have already done so. The software was originally developed in Australia. Planet City has acquired the world wide licensing rights, excluding Australia and S.E. Asia. In addition, they have improved the original software to widen its scope of compliance, the latest version is meant to address over 95% of the systems in use. We believe this may be a valid claim. Since Planet City operates in a 'virtual' sense, overhead is low and strain on corporate resources is at a minimum. Translation: Product profit margins are high. Planet City's agreement with AOL costs little more than legal and handing over the master disks. AOL provides the downstream marketing pipelines, and bears the costs thereof. We
expect Planet City's agreement with AOL to fall in classic 60/40 lines, making a profitable relationship for both parties. By acquiring this license, Planet City has avoided costly development time and is able to offer an attractive, effective, reasonably priced "turn-key" product.
The core business of Planet City remains its Y2K Software, which ensures that a PC is Year 2000 Compliant. The Company believes it will continue to sell this product well into 2000. Planet City realizes it is in a highly competitive market segment and cannot afford to be a one-product company, even if it is a huge hit. The company, has already began to diversify. Gaming software still leads the industry in volume and profitability. Planet City has acquired the rights to Internet Hockey and Cyber Soccer. These are the first of a series of interactive games the company will market for Internet use. The demos of the games are available and the company is negotiating with major on-line service providers for distribution.
The company has also developed original content for Internet
broadcasting, which is a fast growing market sector. The market segment is an inevitable and logical outgrowth for the Internet. It began with push technologies and will end with full-blown productions, utilizing advanced multi-media. The jury is still out on the path to profitability.
Assumedly the model will follow, at least initially, traditional
broadcast media: Advertising. This makes sense when you consider that
whereever you can attract a large audience advertising revenues will
follow.
Planet City has done considerable development work in this area to date.
Including the development of ‘Future Tense', an interactive Internet
series, which is, at the very least, impressive technically. It has
attracted the attention of advertisers and Canadian government agencies have financed 65% of development costs. Lastly, the Company is also able to provide a broad range of consulting services to larger companies. This would relate to compliance issues past, present and future. Currently, this is extremely lucrative business with many consultants easily commanding triple their normal rate. The cost for compliance, at a certain point of criticality, becomes meaningless, since the entire operation of the business is in jeopardy. (We have not included this for purposes of financial modeling.)
Validation is an important part of any software's success and Planet City has just announced an agreement with America Online... in which AOL will market Planet City's Millenium Bug Compliance Kit to its 17 million users world wide.
Programmers, Engineers and Information Technology managers have been
aware of the Y2K problem since it began in the 1980's. In those limited memory days, programmers scratched for every byte of memory they could find. This resulted in identifying year dates by the last two digits only. On January 1, 2000 most computers will believe it is 1900 or, at least, 1980 when desktops really began their silicon based existence.
This rollover will create a variety of hardware and software problems,
resulting in the computer ‘locking up', corruption of data and/or
software refusing to operate. Since software designers have used many
different methods to address date issues within software, a seemingly
simple problem becomes a complex issue. Even software giant Microsoft
address date issues differently in the same Office Suite of programs
(Word, Excel, Access)! Add to this a variety of BIOS and coded chips in many different systems over the last two decades and the complexity of solution is multiplied many fold.
According to Planet City: The ramifications of this problem are enormous and far-reaching. Every PC in existence prior to 1996, including Pentium I, will require a repair / upgrade to fix the problem. The costs associated with Y2K compliance represents billions of dollars and an overwhelming effort by programmers to fix. According to Business Week (March 1998), the diversion of resources required to fix this problem could result in a 0.3 percentage point drop in total economic growth in 1999 and cut half a percentage point off of growth in 2000 and 2001.
On September 24, 1996, Congressman Stephen Horn, who is Chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology, submitted to the full committee a report on the Year 2000 problem. The Subcommittee held hearings on April 16. He said that these hearings revealed "a serious lack of awareness of the problem on the part of a great number of people in business and government. Even more alarming was the cost estimate reported to the Subcommittee to remedy the problem, which was said to be $30 billion for the Federal Government alone.
Private Industry faces similar staggering costs.
Let's take a look at Medicare, the IRS and Chase Manhattan as three
different examples. In 2000, an estimated one billion claims will be
filed, totaling over $288 billion. This, according to a May 16, 1997
report of the General Accounting Office (GAO): "Medicare Transaction
System."
This may present problems. The same GAO report shows why. Medicare claims are not actually administered by Medicare. It's administered by 70 private agencies. These agencies have been informed that their contracts will not be renewed in 2000. The agency that officially supervises Medicare has plans for one huge computer system that will bring the program in-house. Medicare now knows that it has a problem with its computers. They are not Year 2000 compliant. So, to make sure that they will be compliant, Medicare has issued an appeal to the 70 newly canned companies: please fix the year 2000 problem for us before you leave. As the GAO report puts it, "contractors may not have a particularly high incentive to properly make these conversions. . . ."
The IRS has 100 million lines of code. Their code is not year 2000-compliant. After the failure of the 11-year, $4 Billion, project to upgrade the system, Chief Information Officer Arthur Gross announced that getting the IRS year 2000-compliant is the "highest priority for the IRS." The IRS has nearly 50,000 code applications to coordinate and correct. This task will require the IRS to move 300 full-time computer programmers to the new project. (Reported in "TechWeb," April 21, 1997).
For comparison purposes, consider the fact that the Social Security
Administration began working on its year 2000 repair in 1991. Social
Security has 30 million lines of code. By June, 1996, the SSA's 400
programmers had only fixed 6 million lines. Chase Manhattan Bank has
spent between $200-$250 million to upgrade their systems. There is also the question of whether fixes could be made in time even if cash and programmer resources were available. Only about 22% of the world's code resides in the U.S. This country, with England are on the fore front of Y2K correction. Millions of desktop users and small business will be on their own. These are the markets Planet City intends to addresses, over 100 million desktop units are in need of a Bug killer.
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