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

To: Bob Zacks who wrote (5820)	4/12/1999 10:49:00 PM
From: dwight martin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10081

FWIW, new MFM: Memo from Markman: April 12, 1999 "It does the work so you don't have to" is one of the primary benefits of our Portico virtual assistant service. Today, we took this concept a step further with the announcement of a new technology, code named "Kenya". You can read more about it in our press release, posted on our home page. Kenya is software that can be used to create voice agents. A voice agent is a new productivity tool that works on your behalf so that important Web information is easily available to you when you're on the go. A voice agent can be developed to monitor a Web site and to take action on specific information from that site following your preferences. If it needs your help to complete an online purchase, for example, or finds something you need to know about immediately, it can give you a call. You interact with the voice agent using conversational language to tell it how to proceed. The ability to converse using natural language is provided by linking the voice agent to our magicTalk platform. General Magic expects to add the Kenya technology to Portico this year and to other voice-enabled services in the future, giving our customers more value and extending General Magic's competitive advantage. The world is seeing this technology in action for the first time at the DemoMobile '99 conference in San Diego, California, which runs through April 13. To show the potential of the technology, we've created a voice agent that monitors and acts on information from an online auction service. In our demo, we show the user getting a call from Portico, which informs him he has been outbid and states what the new high bid is. He is given the chance to make a new bid, which he does. All of this interaction is done hands-free, using the telephone and the user's own voice. To hear a demo audio clip, click here. I encourage you to listen to it to fully appreciate the experience. General Magic's approach with Kenya represents a whole new way of giving the Web a voice. There has been significant discussion about "voice browsing", which while important, does not maximize the usefulness of the Web. What Kenya is intended to do is make the Web an active part of everyday life. Web-based services can now reach out and give people what they want, as opposed to requiring the user to initiate the contact. It's easy to imagine potential uses for Kenya, given the popularity of information, entertainment and e-commerce Web sites. I might want to have the agent place an order through my favorite online bookstore each time a new selection from a certain author appears. As another example, the notification feature could be set up so that every time a particular company is mentioned on a financial Web site, I get a call. We also expect other parties will be interested in working with us to deploy the technology on the Web. That's why our agent experts have developed a Kenya scripting tool, based on the XML standard, that we believe will make it easy for partners to create new applications or customize existing ones to exploit voice agent technology. Scripting is a very simple way to create applications. It requires minimal training and no compiling, yet it produces very powerful and useful applications. We're planning to provide a Software Developer's Kit this year so that partners can build custom agent applications that also link to the magicTalk platform. Such applications could then be made available to users of Portico and other magicTalk-based services, resulting in more useful services for professionals and consumers. I'm excited by Kenya's potential to make it much more convenient for people to benefit from their favorite Web information. With voice agents on the job, our jobs and our lives will be more productive and enjoyable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This memo consists of forward-looking statements that reflect the Company's current thinking on future events. These predictions and estimates are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or projected events to differ materially. Important factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are contained in the Company's 10K which was filed with the SEC on March 31, 1998, and the Company's third quarter 10Q. Corporate Overview Management Team Directions Events News Employment Press Releases Contact Us Previous Markman Memos: February 12, 1999 January 7, 1999 December 15, 1998 November 13, 1998 September, 23, 1998 August 28, 1998 August 11, 1998 August 3, 1998