SANTA CRUZ, California, September 27, 2002 – Haptek Inc., known for highly functional and entertaining 3D characters, has recently detected the beginning of a possible economic turnaround – Haptek is experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of requests for integration of Haptek technology into third party applications.  “We haven’t seen this amount of activity for more than eighteen months,” says Jack Wiley, CFO of Haptek.  “After the economic downturn most companies were lying-low and limiting integration of new technology into their products, it's now becoming more and more apparent that people want new, fresh ways to use and experience technology, and businesses are turning to Haptek to enhance their product offerings. Haptek is becoming an important part of the user interface because companies want to differentiate their products and provide their end users with a more 'human' and entertaining experience."

The mathematical models of emotive behavior used in Haptek's characters results in highly realistic, believable spontaneous performances. In fact, these Software Personalities create characters whose appearance and behavior are so realistic that the Medical Profession is starting to use them to demonstrate disorders as well as to teach and perform.

"Medical Learning Company, a Kurzweil Technologies Company, is incorporating Haptek’s Generation-4 software into its new knowledge-based medical training systems - thereby giving doctors and the medical community at large real-world interaction with patients in a simulated yet fully interactive experience," says David Burkholder, Medical Learning Company (www.med-learn.com).

The quotes below, from Haptek partners, illustrate the wide range of applications where an automatic, realistic character has added value, functionality, and customer appeal.

Haptek’s partner KnowledgeView Ltd., a leader in the provision of innovative systems for managing content and its presentation in publishing and communications, is actively integrating the Haptek technology with KnowledgeView’s RAPID Publish web services.  Managing Director, Dr. Ali Assam, stated that ‘we find the near-video and advanced emotions capability of Haptek of tremendous value to our publishing and corporate communications products, enabling us to provide solutions for dynamic news/sportscast and for CRM’. (www.knowledgeview.co.uk).

"Cognos Web Services has fully integrated an active Haptek character utilizing voice recognition for data entry, allowing the user to actually talk with the synthetic personality, while Cognos Business Intelligence software responds accordingly to the query and utilizes a text-to-speech system for the character’s response. The end result is a fully autonomous character that assists the user in the Cognos Web Services query system," Don Campbell, VP Product Innovation & Technology, Cognos, Inc. (www.cognos.com).

"Imparta is committed to creating online learning simulations that offer the same immersive experience as our CD-based products.  We conducted a very thorough examination of all the available technologies, from streaming video to various types of animated characters.  Haptek is not only the leader in its field, but also offers the best tradeoff between bandwidth and quality available on the market today," said Richard Barkey, CEO, Imparta Ltd. (www.imparta.com).

Dr. Juan E. Gilbert of Auburn University writes, "I chose to use Haptek because Haptek's tools give me development flexibility.  The Gen 4 plugin gives me flexibility for text-to-speech or speech-to-face animation using JavaScript as the controlling language across browsers. This is very powerful!  The PeoplePutty development tool gives me flexibility to create a diverse representation of personas for all of my needs.  After an extensive review of several tools, we found the Haptek Gen 4 plugin and PeoplePutty combination to be the best 1-2 punch on the market for animated character development!"

"When we sought a solution to endow a face to our flagship product, Haptek's generation4 technology stood out immediately from anything we ever saw from other companies. Where other products seem far less lifelike, not to mention robotic or cartoonish, Haptek's distinctive avatars breath life into our material.  Their seamless combination of a robust and highly customizable character creation tool, People Putty, with their delivery tools for the web and desktop applications makes for a compelling experience. We are profoundly excited by our relationship with Haptek." Andrew Slovak, President of Well-Spoken, Inc. (www.wellspoken.net)

Zabaware is committed to giving computers the power of thought. We produce artificially intelligent chatter bots capable of being a digital secretary and a companion. However, no matter how intelligent the artificial intelligence brain is, it must have a good “body.” The integration of Haptek’s 3D character engine and Zabaware’s artificial intelligence software is a natural one. Haptek is clearly the leader in the field when it comes to creating realistic real-time 3D characters," said Robert Medeksza, President of Zabaware (www.zabraware.com).

For more information on Haptek’s Generation-4 commercial software - please contact Jack Wiley, Business Development, Haptek, Inc. at (831) 728-0770 or by email at jack@haptek.com.

Jack Wiley, CFO
Haptek, Inc.
P.O. Box 965
Freedom, California 95019-0965
(831) 728-0770
www.haptek.com
jack@haptek.com

Haptek® PeoplePutty® and Haptek Generation-4TM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Haptek, Inc. All other names and/or brands are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.