Leading Edge R&D:

DATA ANALYSIS TECHNOLOGY TARGETS NEWS HOUNDS

Not content to let data analysis remain in the arcane world of institutional and business "power users," Databeacon Inc launched Storydata.com, a new Internet site that makes it easy for anyone with Internet access and a browser to do one-click analysis of news data that affects our world.

Powered by Databeacon's thin-client software that requires no installations, training or manuals, Storydata.com assembles topical statistics on relevant news topics and makes them available in a free-of-charge, easy-to-explore format on the Web site, www.storydata.com. Current examples on the site include the U.S. State Department's data on terrorist strikes around the world in recent years, the OECD's projections on age-related spending, and the last five years of U.S. ground-level ozone readings from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"Increasingly the news of the day is fueled by statistics," says Databeacon's president and CEO, Andrew Coutts, "and that makes understanding what's going on a much more complex task. Through the wonder of hypertext links, most people know they can dig deeper into text documents. But with the technology demonstrated at Storydata.com, we're showing people they can dig deeper into the statistics themselves, and draw their own conclusions about how those statistics affect their lives."

For example, a click on the Storydata.com link entitled "Focusing on a World Wide Solution" allows anyone with a browser and an Internet connection to intimately understand which regions of the world have been affected the most by terrorist attacks from 1996-2000. Unlike the U.S. State Department site, which presents the data as text, Storydata.com gives site visitors a graphical representation of terrorist hot-spots in bar, pie and line charts and graphs. They can use Databeacon software to further manipulate the data to find out what they need to know, and even save it on their computers much like they would save a bookmark in a browser.

"We call what our software does 'Information Outreach'," says Coutts. "For too long data analysis has been an expensive, complicated, largely inaccessible science to ordinary people. We hope that Storydata.com shows the world that anyone with Internet access can get more insight out of the data that affect them -- whether it's for business, consumer or government applications."

The formal definition of Information Outreach is "the delivery of self-personalized, interactive information and analytical capabilities to large Internet-based user audiences."

While Databeacon customers and channel partners around the world use the company's software primarily for e-business applications such as statement analysis, supply chain, research information dissemination and sales forecasting/planning to audiences inside and outside the extended enterprise, Coutts believes Storydata.com represents an exciting new market opportunity for Databeacon. "For the first time since the Internet's inception, overall traffic from news sites has eclipsed online traffic to entertainment sites. In a world offering uncertain times, people need new tools to better understand what's going on, whether it's the patterns of international terrorism or the state of the ozone layer. We simply have more need to know."

About Databeacon Inc

Founded in 1995, Databeacon Inc is the award winning developer of Internet-based information analysis and reporting software to Get Insight Out. Organizations around the world are using Databeacon to deploy Information Outreach applications, defined as "the delivery of self-personalized, interactive information and analytical capabilities to large Internet-based user audiences." The company's Web site is www.databeacon.com and its headquarters are based in Ottawa, Canada, with sales offices across North America, resellers in Europe and Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partners located around the world.

Contact Nathan Rudyk, Databeacon Inc, 613-729-4480 x304, nrudyk@databeacon.com.