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To: up_tick who wrote (4125)	11/11/1998 11:54:00 AM
From: Rick Rappaport	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

Your last statement about the 9 carriers gm hoped to have selling Portico--do you think that a service 18-24 months away from availability eliminates the carriers' interest in offering Portico? Do you see gmgc in great financial need the first quarter 99 and rolling over for the next investors? tks for your well reasoned and sobering comments since August.

To: up_tick who wrote (4125)	11/11/1998 12:07:00 PM
From: Mike Gordon	Respond to of 10081

2 thoughts for uptick: * IMO, GUI will NEVER be an interface of choice in the automobile. The proposed "car-driver-enabled" GUI's that I've read about sound ludicrous to me (from a consumer perspective). If you want data from your smart network while driving, most are going to opt for the safety and convenience of a VUI (IMO of course). * The market does not share your negative take on the QCOM/MSFT announcements as it pertains to GMGC. Volume has been lighter so far today, and price movement has been negligible.

To: up_tick who wrote (4125)	11/11/1998 12:09:00 PM
From: Sea Otter	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10081

The QCOM/MSFT play has a terrific market. No argument there. It's just not GMGC's market. First, have you ever used one of these micro-browser phones? They are very limited. My boyfriend built the first demo browsers, and I've seen just what they can do. Work ok in some circumstances, less well in others. The problem is that their screen size is necessarily limited, so you only get to see a very limited window on data. Certain data can adapt to this, other data can't. I remember trying to navigate through a sales database - nightmare. Seeing TWA flights from SF to London was easier, however. HDML was better suited for such an app. In any event, a mixture of VUI and GUI is obviously the optimal approach. (Technical nit: HDML, is a standard. UP gave it up to the standards committee. All devices that I'm aware of use HDML rather than HTML, since HDML was built expressly for low-bandwidth wireless comm, where as HTML wasn't. The QCOM deal is, in my understanding, an HDML deal) Laptop wireless is a different scenario. But even there, limited bandwidth means that you can only get critical data. I know, I've struggled with it enough. As to GMGC being proprietary, vs the open-standards of the QCOM deal. What technology is proprietary in GMGC? They license everything, even run NT instead of Unix. The VUI is theirs of course, but there isn't a competing standard there, nor will there ever be. So I don't see this as a point. Right now Portico is mainly about human messaging over existing mobile telephones. Right now the QCOM play is mainly about data messaging via a upcoming next-generation of micro-browser phones and laptops. Will they converge? Absolutely. In the press release yesterday QCOM kept mentioning voice, and we all know GMGC wants to get to corporate data. But, where we stand right now, they are completely different approaches and plays. As to the carriers lining up behind this deal rather than GMGC. No, I disagree on this point for three reasons. 1) Non-competitive. The VUI virtual-assistant positioning of Portico is nowhere to be found in the MSFT deal. Apples and oranges. 2) Timeframe. GMGC is here now, QCOM deal delivers sometime in 2000 - maybe! Vaporware. 3) Politics. Carriers take multiple tacks all the time - internally they are huge Balkan states with many disparate agendas. To think that this deal somehow precludes a GMGC deal doesn't accord with how these firms work. Anyway, we'll see who is right soon enough. You predict we won't get any of these 9 carriers because of QCOM/MSFT. I predict we'll get some of them. In fact, I predict we'll get one very soon, certainly before end of the year. So time will answer this debate soon enough. I also predict that no one will be chatting about QCOM/MSFT very soon. It will drop off the end of the earth as an issue, not to resurface for another year, probably two. Sea Otter

To: up_tick who wrote (4125)	11/11/1998 1:26:00 PM
From: stephen wall	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10081

up tick, re: To conclude, VUI is what Portico has to offer as a unique value proposition -- the rest is table stakes for the new world of telco services. VUIs are very real on PC's today, users choose GUIs because they are faster, richer and easier. The question is, will VUIs ever make inroads when a GUI is available? The most successful transparent human interface is the spoken word, not the written word. While there may be, as yet, technological impediments to the smoothing transparency and "richness" of the VUI, it's inevitability is certain; not to supplant the GUI, to be sure, but rather to be used in conjunction with it. I think what a customer wants most is qualitative and intangible, not quantitative. (My God, if quantity is the endgame we should be currently delirious in our collective drowning of information overload.) The question is how to provide that service in the most humanly COMFORTING and EFFORTLESS way. With voice, there is that subtle sensory shifting away from pure data content to people content. At least that is the way I see this entire communications complex moving. People will become the center, visually, aurally, emotionally. "The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without resistence." - Marshall McLuhan "The Median is the Message" 1967. stephen