NGT Contact: Mr. Edward Rosenthal Next Generation Technologies, Inc. Phone: 425-744-1100 e-mail: edward@ngtvoice.com CharacTell Contact: Dr. Paz Kahana CharacTell Ltd. Phone: 617-965-1014 e-mail: pkahana@charactell.com Next Generation Technologies to Market CharacTell's iREAD Notes™ Professional Lynnwood WA, April 8, 2002 - Next Generation Technologies, Inc. (NGT, Inc.) of Lynnwood, WA, a technology consultancy providing services to the professional community since 1994, and CharacTell, Ltd., a leading provider of advanced and innovative optical character recognition products, today announced that they have concluded an exclusive North American distribution agreement to market CharacTell's iREAD Notes™ Professional, an advanced handwriting recognition system. "With ACR and its unique ability to address nearly all character types," said Arthur Gingrande, one of the most well-known OCR/ICR industry experts, "CharacTell is offering a powerful new solution to an age-old problem, namely, how to convert image-based information to useful data fast, accurately and inexpensively." Reflecting on the business behind this relationship, Ed Rosenthal, President and CEO of Next Generation Technologies, Inc., said "Executives still use a yellow tablet to capture important information whether in meetings or on the road. CharacTell's technology will enable the easy conversion of this important information into electronic formats for dissemination and storage purposes." Mr. Rosenthal added: "In addition, the ability to capture tables and some graphics makes this technology dynamic and powerful in new ways." Advanced Character Recognition (ACR) CharacTell's ACR is based on principles of character mapping similar in concept to those used in human gene and DNA mapping. One may think of this mapping approach as a significant technological breakthrough in comparison to traditional feature extraction and neural networks-based products. ACR utilizes a highly accurate set of mapped strings that describe each character uniquely and speedily. Training is also much reduced: only a few hundred characters are needed to train on a new font, language or character type, thus making ACR a powerful tool when data types cannot be fully projected in advance. Next Generation Technologies, Inc. Company Information Incorporated in 1994, Next Generation Technologies, Inc. is a custom solutions provider of alternative PC access technologies, universal design strategies, and supporting Sec. 508 compliance . NGT has two primary market orientations: bringing speech input/handwriting recognition and related PC solutions to their medical, legal and professional clientele by offering complete technology solutions; providing adaptive technology consultation, evaluation, products and implementation, and technology support. NGT actively searches out and evaluates emerging technologies that can provide support to professionals assisting the disabled to lead productive work and personal lives. NGT maintains strategic affiliation with it's corporate and technology partners to provide complete customer solutions with competitive pricing. For more information, contact Next Generation Technologies, Inc. at (425) 744-1100, or visit our web site at www.ngtvoice.com. Company Information CharacTell Ltd was founded in 1998 with the express mission of developing the world's most accurate recognition engines. The company has developed Advanced Character Recognition (ACR) as the strategic technology platform on which it bases its progressive product line. ACR-based products from CharacTell are in extensive use in demanding data entry applications and systems worldwide. CharacTell also markets SoftWriting™ and iREAD Notes™ Pro, two end-user application products dedicated to the conversion of unstructured documents containing non-connected, hand-written notes to editable form. For more information, contact CharacTell Ltd. at (617) 965-1014 or +972-3-648-9484, or visit the CharacTell Ltd. web site at www.charactell.com.