THIRD OF FOUR: DEVONAGENT 1.5 (AND DEVONTHINK 1.9.2)

London (UK, European Union), 2nd of February, 2005 — DEVONtechnologies
Ltd. releases version 1.5 of its Internet research tool DEVONagent. Also,
it updates DEVONthink Personal Edition to version 1.9.2.

DEVONagent 1.5, DEVONthink’s research companion, is the first major update
for almost a year and so it comes with a huge list of new features,
improvements and, of course, some bugfixes. First of all, the user
interface has been revamped to make web research much easier than in
previous versions, and includes a simplified search window similar to
iTunes. The preferences dialog window has been simplified, a pop-up menu
gives direct access to search settings and a new search set editor allows
to comfortable define and manage sets of all parameters that define where
and how to search. Sets can be added, edited, saved and exported.

Search sets contain now both, a list of websites to scan and a list of all
plug-ins that are queried when using the set, and can contain HTML pages as
well as RSS/RDF/RSD/Atom newsfeeds. Plug-ins are interfaces between
DEVONagent and one or more search engines and are either Cocoa- or
XML-based. Users can even write their own XML-based plug-ins for
integrating specialized search engines. DEVONagent comes with nearly fifty
new or heavily improved plug-ins for querying almost every major search
engine and a very robust parser that handles almost every known HTML bug.

A brand new feature of DEVONagent 1.5 are scheduled search runs, which make
DEVONagent a real “search agent”. The scheduler can automatically send
e-mails with a summary of all new information, creating a personalized,
customized newsletter. DEVONagent uses the UNIX “cron” command for its
scheduler and doesn not need system extensions or background applications.

DEVONagent 1.5 also comes with an enhanced web browser tailored especially
for the needs of Internet researchers. Tight integration with DEVONagent’s
built-in intelligence allows it to show related results using a “see also”
button similar to the well-known function of DEVONthink, and a new
“Objects” drawer gives direct access to selected page elements like all
links to RSS feeds, e-mail links, images or linked multimedia files.
DEVONagent features fifteen so-called “scanners” that filter elements of a
certain kind out of web pages.

To make DEVONagent a real “researcher’s alternative” to established web
browsers, version 1.5 has its own download manager, mirrors the bookmark
lists of Safari, Camino, Firefox and OmniWeb, and fully supports RSS, RDF,
RSD and Atom newsfeeds (like Safari 2.0 which will be part of Mac OS X 10.4
“Tiger”). A full-screen mode makes intensive research more comfortable.

On the integration side, DEVONagent directly connects to DEVONthink for
one-click-archiving data as full HTML pages, links, rich text or PDF
document. PDFs from web pages are not generated using the print function.
Instead, the whole web page is stored as one single long page to prevent
unnecessary page breaks. DEVONagent 1.5 supports OPML for importing
bookmarks from OPML-compliant applications (e.g. newsreaders, outliners and
the forthcoming DEVONthink Professional), and AppleScript (similar to
Safari) for integrating with third-party applications and workflows. A
script menu gives direct access to commonly used scripts, six useful
example scripts are already included, e.g. for downloading linked JPEG
images or sending URLs by e-mail.

As always, DEVONagent 1.5 is significantly faster than its predecessor and
almost every detail both internally and in the user interface has been
overhauled. It is already based on the next revision of the DEVONtechnology
core.

DEVONthink 1.9.2 is a maintenance release that adds a new option to open
groups within the current window, support for DEVONagent 1.5 and a few more
QuickTime, XML and plain text file formats. Also, it brings many internal
enhancements and kills a few bugs.

DEVONagent 1.5 and DEVONthink 1.9.2 require Mac OS X 10.2.7 or Mac OS X
10.3, a fast Internet connection is strongly recommended for DEVONagent.
Both are immediately available as a free download from
www.devon-technologies.com and must be purchased in DEVONtechnologies’
online shop for US$ 35 (DEVONagent) or US$ 40 (DEVONthink Personal Edition)
after the evaluation period. They are also available as “Infoworker’s
Bundle” for US$ 65.

Contact details for your readers:
E-Mail info@devon-technologies.com, Internet www.devon-technologies.com

BACKGROUND: DEVONAGENT

DEVONagent overcomes all the shortcomings that make Google & Co. such a
pain for serious research. More than 50 plug-ins for search engines,
scientific databases and research tools, predefined search sets you can use
right away and a clean, easy to use user interface make DEVONagent the #1
tool for finding information on the web for the Mac.

DEVONagent is much more than just an interface for web search engines. It
helps you

– searching,
– collecting and
– organizing

information with a powerful and flexible search architecture, a simple to
use built-in archive and perfect integration with DEVONthink. DEVONagent
creates perfectly tailored summaries, acts as a fast and lean web browser,
supports news feeds like RSS and shows all items of interest in a separate
drawer. It can’t be easier to look for information on the web.

Key features:

Collects, analyzes weights and summarizes search results from all major
Internet search engines. Eliminates junk, similar, archived or error pages
on-the-fly and looks for specific types of data, e.g. webcams, multimedia
files, downloadable archives, e-mail addresses or links on demand.

A scheduler allows to run predefined queries completely unattended and to
execute a series of actions like archive in DEVONagent or DEVONthink, send
an e-mail or speak a text.

The integrated web browser based on the Safari engine is especially
tailored at the needs of web researchers. Access all your Camino, Firefox,
OmniWeb and Safari bookmarks, filter out e-mail addresses, images or linked
files with just one click and compare the results of a search run using A.I.

DEVONagent is able to scan RSS, RDF, RSD and Atom feeds. In addition, the
integrated web browser converts such feeds on-the-fly to HTML and presents
them similar to Safari 2.0.

Presents the result of the search run in human-readable format as digest,
dynamically assembled to selected topics. Found search words are
automatically highlighted and texts summarized.

An easy-to-use but powerful web page archive allows you to organize and
search stored pages.

DEVONagent is built on a flexible and extensible plug-in architecture that
allows to query a great variety of search engines and write new plug-ins at
ease. Also, DEVONagent automatically scans your favorite web pages for news
and follows promising links.

DEVONagent features a clean, intuitive user interface and full AppleScript
integration. Like all DEVONtechnologies applications, DEVONagent is built
to seamlessly integrate with Mac OS X and supports services or
drag-and-drop and provides a Dock menu.

BACKGROUND: DEVONTHINK

DEVONthink is the Mac incarnation of the real paperless office. It’s a
notepad, outliner, scrapbook manager, information manager, freeform
database, archive, bookmark manager and image and multimedia database, all
in one integrated application. DEVONthink intelligently stores and helps
organizing all types of data, text files, PDFs, images, bookmarks, even
QuickTime movies and MP3 files. A hierarchical filing structure and AI
functions for sorting in and finding documents makes it ideal for both
keeping a simple notebook and organizing large information collections.

An integrated text and RTF editor including a real-time
paragraph/word/character count and many other comfortable editing and
highlighting functions make it easy to not only enter short notes but to
write letters, articles, even books. Finally, the integrated Safari-based
web browser displays web pages directly within the DEVONthink workspace,
e-mails can be comfortably imported using a provided AppleScript and all
documents that DEVONthink does not natively recognize can be “printed”
directly into the database from any other application.

People use DEVONthink to

– collect text snippets, documents, images, PDF or movies, bookmarks,
– archive their e-mails,
– write new documents,
– organize all of them,
– create links between them,
– find that “needle in the haystack”,
– and surf the Internet.

DEVONthink provides the main features of many standard applications such as
Finder, Sherlock, Safari, TextEdit, Stickies, Preview, iPhoto, QuickTime
Player and Help Viewer with one consistent, easy-to-use Mac-like interface.

Key features:

– Stores whatever you like, from texts, images, PDF, HTML and XML over text
clippings, iChat logs, scripts and Microsoft Word/RTF files to links
– Is able to index contents only instead of storing them in the database
– Integrated browser based on Apple’s WebKit (“Safari Engine”)
– Helps you to sort in new stuff (“Classify”, “See Also”, keywords etc.)
– Advanced text editing including rulers, highlighting real-time statistics
and display of invisible characters
– Lightning-fast, intelligent search function
– User-defined labels
– Dynamic Wiki-style links and static cross links
– Built-in outlining capabilities
– Easy-to-use interface providing Services and a Dock menu
– Supports Services (like CalcService or WordService)
– Supports drag-and-drop in both directions

What’s unique:

– Im- and exports Finder comments
– Captures contents from the built-in browser or from Safari
– Imports e-mails from Apple Mail
– Plays QuickTime movies and MP3 files
– Stores aliases to local files
– Groups or ungroups documents, organizes them into hierarchies
– Works with much more file formats than all alternatives
– Batch imports and exports data extremely fast
– Works flawlessly with huge databases ()300 MB)
– Does not need indexing but searches faster than the competition
– Uses all major features of Mac OS X

CORPORATE BACKGROUND

DEVONtechnologies Ltd., founded in 2002, incorporated in 2004 and
headquartered in London, UK, European Union, researches in the field of
semantic and associative data analysis and synthesis, and develops key
applications based on the DEVONtechnology. Named after the Devonian Period,
the DEVONtechnology marks the departure into a new age of data processing.
The main focus of all activities is clearly on using the robust, flexible
and versatile architecture intelligently to create rock-solid applications
for a variety of purposes, including but not limited to databases,
intelligent agents, data-mining, information retrieval and
human-computer-interfaces. More information: www.devon-technologies.com.