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StudentOnline.com
and KenTech Launch World’s First Wireless Community for Higher
Education
November 11, 1999
NEW
YORK, NY, November 11, 1999 – Building upon the momentum generated
at the EDUCAUSE higher education technology conference, StudentOnline.com
Inc. and KenTech Inc. today announced the launch of StudentOnline.com,
the world’s first wireless community in higher education.
StudentOnline develops fully integrated campus Intranets by
transmitting personalized and time-sensitive information to
students directly from a school’s existing administrative
and faculty databases. To facilitate its goal of making information
instantaneously accessible, StudentOnline partnered with KenTech
Inc., a full-service Internet systems integration firm and
developer of wireless Internet applications. KenTech extended
the reach of StudentOnline’s services via mobile phones using
tools from Phone.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: PHCM) and via personal
digital assistants.
"With
the tremendous help we've received from KenTech in terms of
integrating StudentOnline with wireless Internet technologies,
we now afford students the opportunity to obtain instant information
retrieval even when away from their desktop," said StudentOnline
CEO Sunil Deshmukh.
By
indicating which courses and activities they're interested
in, students develop a Digital Personality that allows information
to be constantly delivered to a Web organizer including alerts,
noting changes of important events such as: class syllabus
and assignment date changes, and student group meeting schedules.
Students can access individualized content feeds such as local
entertainment and cultural events, regional weather, job opportunities,
local merchant student discounts, local and national news,
college and professional sport information, and movie &
TV times from a PC terminal or a wireless Web PDA or Internet
ready cellular phone In addition, professors and students
are able to create subscription groups and publish custom
Web pages for posting important information to be distributed
to be people that have a specific interest in the course or
organization.
"StudentOnline
and KenTech share a vision that wireless Internet functionality
will become synonymous with electronic commerce in the twenty-first
century," said Ken Nelson, President of KenTech.
"StudentOnline's
wireless portal site is a great aid for students to access
their class and social activity information from anywhere
on the campus."
Phone.com
is proud to supply the wireless internet tools to Alliance
program member, KenTech, to deliver a new category of community
application for the cellular phone," said Kathy Simpson, Director,
Developer Marketing, Phone.com, Inc, "StudentOnline is a great
example of extending a community’s web presence to mobile
phone customers."
As
multiple schools implement the StudentOnline system, each
school's Intranet is instantly linked to a nationwide inter-campus
network to facilitate the open exchange of information between
students and professors across the nation. Students across
campuses, with common digital personalities and scholastic
interests, will inherently be part of national collectives,
where they will be able to share ideas, collaborate on similar
class projects, and view current social events occurring at
universities nationwide. Currently, these communications are
supported within StudentOnline's system via threaded discussion
boards, chat, and instant messaging.
About
StudentOnline
Located
in New York City, Student Online.com Inc. was founded in 1997
to fill the void between the needs of internet-savvy students
and existing information technologies without compromising
the ideals, values, or budgets that institutions of higher
education maintain. We've succeeded in creating an interactive
platform guaranteed to build community through the implementation
of advanced information solutions. For more information, visit
www.studentonline.com or call 888-765-4949
About
KenTech
KenTech
is a full-service Internet systems integration firm which
develops and implements wireless Internet database applications
and communication solutions to support mobile e-commerce and
calendaring applications using any wireless compliant Internet
browser. KenTech works with existing intranets and in-house
applications to plan, design, purchase, integrate and support
wireless IP solutions that facilitate wireless access to the
global internet and to enterprise Intranets from virtually
anywhere in the United States. For more information, call
(888)-339-3274 or visit www.kentech.com.
About
Phone.com
Phone.com,
Inc. is a leading provider of software and services that enable
the delivery of Internet-based information services to mass-market
wireless telephones. Using its software, wireless subscribers
have access to Internet- and corporate intranet-based services,
including Email, news, stocks, weather, travel and sports.
In addition, subscribers have access via their wireless telephones
to network operators' intranet-based telephony services, which
may include over-the-air activation, call management, billing
history information, pricing plan subscription and voice message
management. Phone.com is headquartered in Silicon Valley,
California and has regional offices in Belfast, London and
Tokyo. Visit http://www.phone.com
for more information.
Except
for the historical information contained herein, the matters
discussed in this news release are forward-looking statements
involving risks and uncertainties that could cause actual
results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking
statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but
are not limited to, Phone.com's limited operating history,
potential fluctuations in Phone.com's operating results, uncertainties
related to the Phone.com's long sales cycle and reliance on
a small number of customers, Phone.com's dependence on the
acceptance of its products by network operators and wireless
subscribers, Phone.com's ability to adequately address the
rapidly-evolving market for delivery of Internet-based services
through wireless telephones, the need to achieve widespread
integration of Phone.com's browser in wireless telephones,
competition from companies with substantially greater financial,
technical, marketing and distribution resources and the ability
of Phone.com to manage a complex set of engineering, marketing
and distribution relationships. Further information regarding
these and other risks is included in Phone.com's Form 10-K
dated September 24, 1999 and in its other filings with the
Securities and Exchange Commission.
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