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For Immediate Release Contact: Amanda Ingalls Spyglass 1.630.245.6512 [email protected] Fonda Berosini Shandwick Convergence 1.310.201.8857 [email protected] Spyglass Announces New Embedded Internet Technologies for Interactive Television and Mobile Data Devices Significant Performance Increases, International Language Support, Usability Enhancements and Spyglass Prism Integration Highlight List of New Capabilities CHICAGO -- Tuesday, March 2, 1999 -- Internet pioneer Spyglass� Inc. (NASDAQ: SPYG) announced today that new versions of its embedded Internet technologies will be available by the end of this month. Developed on Spyglass' Internet-based application platform for interactive television and mobile data devices, Spyglass Device Mosaic 3.2 and Spyglass Device Mail 3.2 have been embraced by leading consumer electronics manufacturers. The company is demonstrating their technologies at the Embedded Systems Conference Spring in booth #1221. As Internet technologies have become the recognized standard for connectivity, consumer electronics manufacturers have sought ways to increase the appeal of their products by leveraging this connectivity. Due to its ease-of-use, manufacturers are demanding that all content in their solutions be authored in hypertext markup language, the Internet technology known as HTML. Spyglass provides the expertise, software and services needed to create revenue generating applications such as email, Internet browsing, electronic programming guides (EPG), customer care services and games that leverage Internet technologies. About Spyglass Device Mosaic 3.2: Mirroring the company's solution-based approach, Spyglass Device Mosaic is designed as an application platform for digital cable, satellite, and wireless products. Preliminary in-house testing shows that popular Web sites are downloaded up to 65 percent faster with the new version of Spyglass Device Mosaic. Faster connection time is another way Spyglass is helping to speed consumer acceptance of connecting to the Internet via a non-PC device. International character support in both user interface and display of Web content has also been added. This provides an easy mechanism to create localized versions of Spyglass Device Mosaic on various interactive television and wireless products. Also added to Spyglass Device Mosaic is the ability to provide a wider font array, including support for anti-aliased fonts optimized for display on televisions, ensuring a crisper television display and other devices. Spyglass has formed cooperative marketing alliances with both Agfa and Bitstream, the two leading providers of font rendering technology, to provide customers with an integrated solution. Integration with Spyglass Prism, an Internet content delivery platform, and SurfWatch Internet filtering technology has also been added, creating a client-server solution that can be tuned for optimal display of content on the particular device. According to Spyglass Vice President and General Manager Randy Littleson, adding the new features to Spyglass Device Mosaic will help drive customer acceptance of Internet access on interactive television and wireless devices, rather than just personal computers. "Spyglass Device Mosaic uniquely delivers a rich feature set within a flexible and extensible architecture," said Littleson. "This will enable the rapid deployment of Internet-based interactive information appliances and services on non-PC devices." About Spyglass Device Mail 3.2: Built specifically for consumer electronics manufacturers, Spyglass Device Mail is a standards-based, embedded email client that requires very little memory and can be easily integrated into existing consumer electronic product lines. The new version contains complete email/browser integration including the ability to launch the browser from within email via Web links. Spyglass Device Mail is based on the same embedded Internet client architecture as Spyglass Device Mosaic. Because it shares the same graphics library as Spyglass Device Mosaic -- Spyglass ThinGUI -- Spyglass Device Mail maintains a consistent look and feel with the browser application. By sharing the graphics library and some other components with the browser the overall memory budget is kept down. In non-PC environments memory is at a premium. Consequently, applications must be kept small and the ability to re-use pieces of technology throughout many applications, as is the case with Spyglass Device Mail and Spyglass Device Mosaic, is a valuable benefit in terms of both size and application quality. "Spyglass Device Mail was built from the ground up for devices, not stripped down from the desktop environment," said Littleson. "As a result, the features most relevant for consumer electronics were built first, and the overall size of the product was not inflated with inappropriate functionality." Device Mail supports major Internet messaging standards, such as SMTP and IMAP4. Because it is standards-based, televisions or mobile phones with Spyglass Device Mail will be able to work with any ISP and not require a proprietary dial-up network. A customer's TV could also talk to a mail server at a person's place of work, making it possible to easily integrate home email accounts with professional ones, eliminating the need for multiple accounts -- a major drawback to some current Internet device email products. Spyglass supports these Internet client technology releases with Spyglass Professional Services, a complete engineering practice. This group is responsible for delivering everything from custom implementations of the Spyglass Device Mosaic browser to full end-to-end Internet solutions for specific markets such as television or wireless communications. These engineers are deployed directly to Spyglass customers and are also available for supporting a customer's own OEM project. |
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