aQtive in context

PC owners have a wide range of desktop applications at their fingertips from popular software packages like Microsoft Word and Excel to the Internet. Most people spend a considerable amount of time darting back and forth between applications. Now there's a unique software product that can make everyday working much more gratifying. aQtive has developed onCue, an intuitive, dynamic software application that takes the user to their computer's resources much more quickly and with minimum fuss. The technology makes Internet and desktop usage more productive by providing short cuts and eliminates the need to break the flow of their work.

the market

Most people use less than 10% of the functionality offered by the applications on their computer. With the Internet this is even worse. With over 3 million web sites and countless pages, you know the right information must be 'out there', but you have no idea how to find it. It's not surprising that, according to a recent study by IDC, the average visitor to the major search engines spent between 45 minutes and 160 minutes in a single session! There are now over 8 million UK Internet users (14% of the UK population), growing at over 40% each half year! In Western Europe the figure stands at 10% of the population expected to rise to 35% over the next two years and in the USA the figure is over 60 million regular users and still increasing rapidly. That means over a 12 million working days per year spent in the UK alone just looking for information, 200 million working days world-wide! Add to this the time spent rooting around in menus and manuals trying to find the way to do things using PC applications - we have a major national and global problem managing this beast on our desktops!

aQtive's onCue is the first of a new breed of desktop application that cuts through this confusion offering the appropriate Internet and desktop services when they are needed. In a recent market report Durlacher say "beyond (1999), we see the portal extending outside the browser to provide information to a wider variety of client applications and devices." aQtive offers this now!

	What you are doing
Internet applications		Desktop applications

The Internet portals and desktop search engines help to reduce the distance on the left, desktop shortcuts, toolbars and 'intelligent' wizards help to reduce the distance on the right. aQtive aims to collapse the whole thing!

onCue isn't a search engine that you 'go to', but something that is automatically there. It deliberately aims to elide the difference between Internet services and local applications.

onCue

onCue makes computers easier and more pleasurable to use. onCue does the work for you by almost anticipating what your fingers want to do next. For example, Sarah has just received an email. The message contains names, addresses, web URLs, numbers and tables. With the exception of some URLs that are highlighted to click, this is dead information. With onCue, as Sarah selects different parts of the text and the onCue toolbar changes to reflect the kind of information selected. She chooses some words in the text and various search engines, on-line and PC dictionaries are suggested.

onCue changes as Sarah reads her email

With a mouse click, onCue automates the Internet service or desktop application to instantly find a map from a postcode, find the spelling of a word, draw a chart from a table, look up a name in an online directory. The user may not even know these things are possible.

Sarah clicks histogram icon

Depending on your query, the technology automatically presents a unified view of disparate desktop/Internet programs. A single highlighted query can launch a broad search across multiple applications and presents the appropriate options in an easy to navigate toolbar. Users simply click on the desired button and the job is done.

Sources

IDC Research, "The Power of Portals: Who's Using Them and How", IDC #W18352, 1999. http://www.idcresearch.com/Data/Internet/

BMRMB International's Internet Monitor quoted in Granville Equity Research "The New Economy" April 1999.

IDC Research, "Internet Usage and Commerce in Western Europe 1997-2002", IDC #103E, 1999. http://www.idcresearch.com/Data/Europe/

Mediamark Research, "Spring Cyberstats Report", 1999. http://www.mediamark.com/mri/docs/prcs_s99.htm

Durlacher Research, "Internet Portals", 1999. http://www.durlacher.com/