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

To: Kurthend who wrote (5761)	4/4/1999 10:44:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10081

For some reason, this message double printed. Can you say anything about the new convertible share buyers? Are they the same crew? Mark Kurt, I guess it would be wise to read this 10K also, but finding it hard to get the time. I appreciate your efforts. Some comments in response, - Expand Global Presence. Our magicTalk voice user interface can be customized for use in languages other than English. This doesn't interest me. We have great potential to do everything here in the US. If our market doesn't want it, this is very telling. Also, the energy of doing multiple languages seems to be inefficient. These guys are trying to remain solvent. They need to make money in the most efficient manor, IMHO. - The voice-enabled Quicken.com service is expected to be available to customers in mid-1999. This seems to be a solid agreement. I think it's going to be a great addition to Portico, which will be a big differentiation to other services. It would be interesting to know if WK customers can access Intuit products? - Internet appliance. We are also developing a flexible, low-cost hardware platform to deliver voice-enabled services to home consumers. Sounds like a DataRover. I'd like these people to make money with Portico and MagicTalk. Other projects may turn out to be in the money, but for now I'd like this company to simply survive and that seems to mean making a success of Portico. - For example, call forwarding and voice mailbox features are offered by companies such as AT&T Corp., MCI Communications Corporation and Sprint Corporation, as well as the regional telephone operating companies and other independent voice mail vendors. Etc., etc., etc. Yes, there are many forms of competitive products and GM has it great task of beating them. They certainly must execute timely introduction of products with features that the market wants at an affordable price. Unfortunately, they must educate the market to this service and that is expensive and slow. That's why they want Telco backing, but Telco's will cannibalize their own revenues with this product and they might be seduced into waiting for other services we have not heard about. Certainly products from WK, Lucent, Motorola and others will be considerations as will true Internet appliances using standards from WAP. This market is going to move fast and I would guess that simple Portico won't be a viable product over the long run as phones become too powerful and want data downloads, not just audio. Portico must have a road map to handle hybrid functions of VUI/GUI and then once you are deeply involved in the wide range of web sites, what makes "Portico" a service of choice? - However, a third party may commence litigation against us in the future. Of course litigation "may" commence. May, could, is there really such a difference? It is clear that Lucent has set the groundwork for many of these voice-enabled services. They will test their patents against many companies. - Although the Portico service was released on July 30, 1998, we expect to incur significant losses through the year 1999, .... This service is a huge undertaking for a little company and they will certainly have problem handling success if it comes. One example was their not having a billing system. Getting service people, selling vertical applications to corporations, etc, etc. The thing that burns me most about our last earnings report was the lack of revenues puts their ability to get subscribers in question. They spent huge dollars on advertising, but where are the numbers? Sure many of these people got free service, but less than $500K seems like a disaster. But under any circumstance, a service like this would be unprofitable for a long time as they have huge expense establishing infrastructure to handle demand. The 20 millions we just got from new convertibles will not solve any long-term problems. Have you noticed any names on these new converts? Are they the same players as before? - NETalk was engaged in the development of applications providing users with advanced speech recognition tools to access Web content over the telephone.....Of the total purchase price, $777,000 has been allocated to in-process research and development while the remainder was allocated to certain intangible assets. A total of $1.5 million was spent on this acquisition. So I guess about $800k was for the services of Senior White? I think this is simply an accounting issue. It's got nothing to do with how much Dr. White got from the deal. All these deals assign a portion to immediate write-off and part as assets to the balance sheet. When a company has little or no physical assets, they usually write off a large portion of the deal. Kurt, I appreciate your energy on this subject. I feel like I've done all I want to with this company for the moment. I will just wait now to see what comes. Regards, Mark

To: Kurthend who wrote (5761)	4/4/1999 10:44:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

Kurt, I guess it would be wise to read this 10K also, but finding it hard to get the time. I appreciate your efforts. Some comments in response, - Expand Global Presence. Our magicTalk voice user interface can be customized for use in languages other than English. This doesn't interest me. We have great potential to do everything here in the US. If our market doesn't want it, this is very telling. Also, the energy of doing multiple languages seems to be inefficient. These guys are trying to remain solvent. They need to make money in the most efficient manor, IMHO. - The voice-enabled Quicken.com service is expected to be available to customers in mid-1999. This seems to be a solid agreement. I think it's going to be a great addition to Portico, which will be a big differentiation to other services. It would be interesting to know if WK customers can access Intuit products? - Internet appliance. We are also developing a flexible, low-cost hardware platform to deliver voice-enabled services to home consumers. Sounds like a DataRover. I'd like these people to make money with Portico and MagicTalk. Other projects may turn out to be in the money, but for now I'd like this company to simply survive and that seems to mean making a success of Portico. - For example, call forwarding and voice mailbox features are offered by companies such as AT&T Corp., MCI Communications Corporation and Sprint Corporation, as well as the regional telephone operating companies and other independent voice mail vendors. Etc., etc., etc. Yes, there are many forms of competitive products and GM has it great task of beating them. They certainly must execute timely introduction of products with features that the market wants at an affordable price. Unfortunately, they must educate the market to this service and that is expensive and slow. That's why they want Telco backing, but Telco's will cannibalize their own revenues with this product and they might be seduced into waiting for other services we have not heard about. Certainly products from WK, Lucent, Motorola and others will be considerations as will true Internet appliances using standards from WAP. This market is going to move fast and I would guess that simple Portico won't be a viable product over the long run as phones become too powerful and want data downloads, not just audio. Portico must have a road map to handle hybrid functions of VUI/GUI and then once you are deeply involved in the wide range of web sites, what makes "Portico" a service of choice? - However, a third party may commence litigation against us in the future. Of course litigation "may" commence. May, could, is there really such a difference? It is clear that Lucent has set the groundwork for many of these voice-enabled services. They will test their patents against many companies. - Although the Portico service was released on July 30, 1998, we expect to incur significant losses through the year 1999, .... This service is a huge undertaking for a little company and they will certainly have problem handling success if it comes. One example was their not having a billing system. Getting service people, selling vertical applications to corporations, etc, etc. The thing that burns me most about our last earnings report was the lack of revenues puts their ability to get subscribers in question. They spent huge dollars on advertising, but where are the numbers? Sure many of these people got free service, but less than $500K seems like a disaster. But under any circumstance, a service like this would be unprofitable for a long time as they have huge expense establishing infrastructure to handle demand. The 20 millions we just got from new convertibles will not solve any long-term problems. Have you noticed any names on these new converts? Are they the same players as before? - NETalk was engaged in the development of applications providing users with advanced speech recognition tools to access Web content over the telephone.....Of the total purchase price, $777,000 has been allocated to in-process research and development while the remainder was allocated to certain intangible assets. A total of $1.5 million was spent on this acquisition. So I guess about $800k was for the services of Senior White? I think this is simply an accounting issue. It's got nothing to do with how much Dr. White got from the deal. All these deals assign a portion to immediate write-off and part as assets to the balance sheet. When a company has little or no physical assets, they usually write off a large portion of the deal. Kurt, I appreciate your energy on this subject. I feel like I've done all I want to with this company for the moment. I will just wait now to see what comes. Regards, Mark