ClearForest Launches New Web Services to Realize Value from Semantic Web and Announces Mashup Contest

Business Wire, Oct 4, 2006

WALTHAM, Mass. -- ClearForest Corp. today launched the beta release of Semantic Web Services-1, the first in a series of revolutionary web services developed to deliver the value of the semantic web today.

ClearForest Semantic Web Services-1 (SWS-1) leverages the power of over a decade of research and product development in natural language processing, text extraction and event detection, making these capabilities available now as a standard web service. Text is submitted to the web service where semantic analysis is applied to it, identifying all people, organizations, and geographies located within the text. The service returns the results as XML or as a formatted web page.

The API enables Web site developers, software programmers, enterprise information managers and others to identify concepts and relationships contained in text and the results can be incorporated directly in user applications or as a component of web sites.

The beta release of SWS-1 deploys a subset of ClearForest's natural language processing capabilities. In order to allow the development community to explore the value of building innovative applications and services that leverage semantic processing, the SWS-1 beta is available at no cost. Following the beta period, SWS-1 will be available as a no-cost service for non-commercial use and as a licensed per-transaction service for higher volume commercial uses. Using ClearForest's proven parallel processing platform, the service is readily capable of supporting "web scale" solutions with millions of transactions per day.

"For years, ClearForest has successfully applied our award winning technology to help traditional content publishers repurpose and monetize their content. We are excited to open up our platform to allow the broader development community to innovate and build upon our technology," said Tom Tague, Vice President of Solutions and Marketing. "We look forward to seeing what independent developers will design for the next generation content applications for consumers and businesses."

In addition to launching the ClearForest SWS-1, ClearForest is announcing the first in a series of developer contests for the most creative use of the API. First place winner receives $2,000, second place $1,000 and third place $500. The contest challenges developers to create innovative applications that highlight semantic processing. Applications should combine the SWS-1 web service with other web services APIs to create the smartest and coolest mashups in the world. Example applications might include, passing the results of a Google([R]) query to SWS-1, having it respond with all the people in the results set, and then using the Technorati([TM]) API to find those people's blogs, and provide those links along side the search results. Another example might be searching RSS feeds for particular people or companies. The contest begins today with final submissions due by December 11, 2006 and winners to be announced by December 18, 2006.

The beta release of the ClearForest SWS-1 is available immediately. For more information on the web service and the contest please, please visit http://sws.clearforest.com

About ClearForest

ClearForest Corporation is a provider of text analytics solutions, supplying the analytical bridge between two previously disconnected worlds of information--unstructured text and enterprise data. In allowing both to be analyzed simultaneously, ClearForest makes unified business intelligence a reality. Our award-winning solutions enable text driven business intelligence for customers such as Eastman Chemical, Reuters, Elsevier Science and International Finance Corporation to turn large volumes of contextually-based information into proactive business intelligence.

Corporate headquarters are in Waltham, MA. For more information, please visit www.clearforest.com. [c]2006 ClearForest Corp.