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...LiveTopics Feature of AltaVista Brings Structure and Meaning to Web Search Results... MAYNARD, Mass. -- February 11, 1997 -- AltaVista Internet Software, Inc., a subsidiary of Digital Equipment Corporation, today announced "LiveTopics," a major new technology enhancement to its award-winning AltaVista Search service on the World Wide Web. LiveTopics gives users a personal search assistant that dynamically categorizes the results from an AltaVista search of the Web, making results more accurate and current than competing services. With a click of an on-screen button, LiveTopics organizes Web pages with similar content into groups of topics, making it much easier to find useful information quickly. The LiveTopics feature of AltaVista Search is available for public beta testing at http://altavista.digital.com. "As the Web continues to grow, a simple search query returns tens of thousands of results. The AltaVista Search index is comprehensive, but users can feel overwhelmed by so many results," said Ilene H. Lang, president and CEO of AltaVista Internet Software, Inc. "With the addition of LiveTopics to the AltaVista Search service, we are solving this problem. LiveTopics is a simple, intuitive tool for managing users’ searches, and a faster, more effective way to pinpoint the information they need as well as learn about a new field of knowledge." The LiveTopics feature of AltaVista Search simplifies an advanced search of the Web by organizing thousands of results into useful topic categories and bringing structure and meaning to the results. For example, a search for the term ‘ATM’ brings up references to 400,000 Web pages using that acronym. LiveTopics results appear in clear, concise topic categories, either in HTML tables or in a Java interface that provides a visual relationship between the topics; users can quickly zero in on Web pages discussing asynchronous transfer mode networking or automatic teller machines. Unlike other Internet search services that catalog Web pages, LiveTopics does not predefine categories, but creates them dynamically from up-to-the-moment Web content. Statistical analysis defines LiveTopics categories, not human interpretation. As the Web and its content change, the categories and search results provided by LiveTopics change automatically, making AltaVista Search results more accurate and current than competing services. LiveTopics is also language-independent, like the AltaVista Search service; users enter search queries in their native language and the results appear in that same language. "With LiveTopics, you can more easily understand the relationships between multiple Web pages," said Louis Monier, senior consulting engineer and architect of AltaVista Search. "By stepping back and having a higher view of your results, you can identify dependencies between topics and see connections that aren’t obvious from static results pages." Extending from the Web to the Desktop With this introduction, AltaVista Internet Software, Inc., further extends its business model from the Web to the desktop. After the LiveTopics beta test is complete, the technology will be available to AltaVista Worldwide Network Affiliates and AltaVista Search business partners, and will be incorporated into AltaVista Search Private eXtension products. The company expects the LiveTopics feature to immediately increase the popularity of its AltaVista Search public service, which currently has more than 27 million hits per day. Advertisers on the service will benefit from the growth in traffic and additional Web page inventory. Currently, the AltaVista Worldwide Network includes mirror sites in Northern Europe (http://www.altavista.telia.com), managed by Telia TeleCom AB of Sweden, and in Australia (http://www.altavista.yellowpages.com.au) managed by Telstra/Yellow Pages. In addition, a Network Affiliate agreement was recently signed with Alam Teknokrat Sdn Bhd, to establish a mirror site in Malaysia to serve Internet users in Asia. That site is expected to be operational by mid-1997. AltaVista Search is the most popular search technology on the Web, and provides the most comprehensive and high-performance Internet search service to end-users. Since its launch in December 1995, the AltaVista Search Service (http:// altavista.digital.com) has grown rapidly, with more than five billion hits in its first year of service. Consistently ranked as one of the most popular sites on the World Wide Web, the AltaVista Search Service is the recipient of numerous awards worldwide, including PC Computing’s MVP Award as ‘Best Search Engine,’ Internet World magazine’s ‘Industry Award for Outstanding Service,’ the European Online Users Group (EUROLUG) ‘Product of the Year,’ and the ‘Cool Search Engine of the Year’ award. AltaVista OnSite Computing Solutions provide secure, simple and direct access to information and people over the Internet and private intranets. AltaVista Search, Directory, Tunnel, Firewall, Forum and Mail products give users a competitive edge, enabling productive business to take place from anywhere. Further information on LiveTopics and AltaVista OnSite Computing is available at http://altavista.software.digital.com, or by calling 1-800-336-7890. Digital Equipment Corporation is a world leader in open client/server solutions from personal to integrated worldwide information systems. Digital’s scalable Alpha and Intel platforms, storage, networking, software and services, together with industry-focused solutions from business partners, help organizations compete and win in today’s global marketplace.
Note to Editors: Digital, the Digital logo, AltaVista and the AltaVista logo are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.
CORP/97/527
  
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