General Magic and Verity to Join Agent Technologies; Verity’s Topic Search Engine to be Integrated with Telescript Technology
SAN JOSE, Calif. — October 30, 1995 — General Magic, Inc. (Nasdaq: GMGC) and Verity (Nasdaq: VRTY) today announced plans to embed Verity's Topic(R) search engine and agent technology into General Magic's Telescript(TM) development environment and to develop and distribute a Topic Library for the Telescript Development Environment. The plans announced today provide the basis for integrating the two companies' agent technos into tools for developers of communicating applications for the Internet and other networks.
By joining Verity's search and retrieval technology with General Magic's mobile agelogient capabilities the companies seek to provide tools for creating services and applications capable of sophisticated information analysis and complex activity in response to information. As an example, content-driven action could enable an information publisher on the Internet to offer services which monitor stock portfolios – taking action based on prices tracked during the day, track news related to specific portfolio companies and deliver a daily personalized summary combining news, trends and actions directly to the customer. Potential prototype applications of this nature are scheduled to be shown at both the General Magic Developer's Conference in San Jose, October 30-31 and in the Verity booth #864 at the InternetWorld trade show in Boston, October 30-November 1. Pricing and availability of integrated tools from Verity and General Magic are planned to be announced at a later date.
"Telescript technology is expected to complement and extend Topic's information searching, filtering, and retrieval capabilities," said Philippe Courrot, Chairman and CEO of Verity. "We are excited by the possibilities this combination provides for the development of a new category of applications capable of content-driven action."
"Today's networks place the burden on the user to seek out information of relevance in an ever growing sea of content. Few of us have the time or expertise to contend with this," said Marc Porat, Chairman and CEO of General Magic. "We look forward to the integration of Topic technology into the Telescript environment to give developers a platform for creating personalized services that save users time and simplify their experience with today's networks."
Verity's Topic family of products is designed to provide personalized search, retrieval and categorization of archived textual information, as well as real-time monitoring and filtering of information selected from dynamic text files. Telescript technology is designed to allow the creation of software surrogates, called agents, capable of traveling through diverse networks to interact with services and other agents on a user's behalf. The combination of these two technologies is designed to enable developers to create network-based applications capable of "content-driven action" – personalized action above and beyond simple notification in response to information encountered on a network.
Verity, Inc., was founded in April 1988 and is headquartered in Mountain View, CA. Verity develops and markets the Topic family of software tools and applications for searching, retrieving and filtering information across the Internet, enterprise and CD-ROM. Verity's products have been licensed to corporations, government agencies, on-line service providers, Internet publishers and software developers worldwide. The Topic search engine is the engine of choice for Adobe Systems, Lotus Development Corporation, Netscape Communications, AT&T WorldNet Services and many other software developers.
General Magic, Inc. was founded in May 1990 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Its mission is to participate in the electronic marketplace by developing and licensing software to leading providers of communication products, network services and network applications. The General Magic Founding Partners Council includes AT&T, Cable & Wireless, France Telecom, Fajitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, Nortel, NTT, Oki, Philips, Sanyo, Sony, and Toshiba. To date, General Magic has generated minimal revenues from the sale of products and services based upon its technologies, does not expect to generate any significant revenues in 1995 and expects to incur substantial losses at least through the year ending December 31, 1996.
Magic Cap and Telescript are trademarks of General Magic, Inc.
Topic is a trademark of Verity, Inc.
General Magic and Verity acknowledge the rights of the trademark owners for all trademarks referred to herein.
CONTACT:
Tom Hershenson of General Magic Inc., 408-774-4343 or [email protected];
or
Marguerite Padovani of Verity, 415-960-7724 or [email protected]