Sharpcast Press Release

Synchronization Solution Eliminates Dealing with Manual Backups, Tedious Uploads, and Bulky E-mail Attachments; Sharpcast Offers Free 5GB Photos Account Through Year End

PALO ALTO, CALIF. and NEW YORK, NY – (October 12, 2006) – Sharpcast, a pioneer in synchronization software and services for consumers, today released a powerful version of its Sharpcast Photos service that delivers a completely unparalleled way to back up, share, access and sync digital photos. Sharpcast Photos includes free desktop photo software that works automatically with the web to perform all of the tedious tasks associated with digital photo management all on its own. The company demonstrated the new all-in-one photo solution for the first time today at the Digital Life consumer electronics exhibition at the Jacob K. Javits convention center in New York. The company also announced today that everyone who signs up for a Sharpcast Photos account by November 15 will receive a free 5 GB account through the end of the year. It takes only minutes to get up and running on Sharpcast Photos at www.sharpcast.com. Visitors to Digital Life, October 12 – 15, can visit Sharpcast and try Sharpcast Photos in booth 436.

“The future of all applications lies in the seamless integration of the desktop and the web so that your files and data are always backed up for you, and you can access them wherever you are, on whatever device you’re using and whether you’re online or offline,” said Gibu Thomas, chief executive officer of Sharpcast. “Sharpcast Photos is the first example of how powerful this type of universal synchronization can be.”

Sharpcast Photos is unlike any other photo service due to its continuous multi-way synchronization which keeps a person’s PC in perfect sync with the web and optionally with their mobile phone. For example, when photos are edited in one location such as a home PC, the change is made everywhere else instantaneously and automatically on the person’s other PCs and in their online web albums. If photos are added through a web browser while away from home, those photos automatically appear on the person’s home PC and optionally on their mobile phone.

And because Sharpcast Photos includes powerful desktop software and doesn’t rely solely on web access like most services, people have access to their entire photo collection from anywhere even when they don’t have web access. Changes made to a collection while offline, for example on an airplane, automatically synchronize the next time the person connects to the internet.

“Corporate email users are spoiled today with constant access to email on their laptops and mobile phones. They can take it for granted that their email is always available and in sync across all their devices,” Thomas added. “We’re extending that experience beyond email to all other file types, starting with photos, but for the mass consumer market. So far, nine out of ten of our customers say they won’t go back to the old way.”

New Sharpcast Photos features include effort-free web albums – albums that are created, backed up and organized automatically with a single click in the desktop organizer software or in two easy steps on the web; an editing tool set that automatically syncs photo edits and enhancements across all of a person’s PCs and the web; and Photo Chat – a new way for people to talk to each other about their photos by leaving comments that instantly sync to all other places the photo exists – PCs, the web, and on any PC where the photo has been shared.

These new features improve on the core feature set that has already garnered great praise throughout the consumer electronics and photo industries, including:

·      Transparent back-up: photos kept in Sharpcast Photos are always backed up online automatically, along with all of the metadata (captions, album titles etc.)
·      One-step recovery and migration: to recreate your entire collection on a secondary or new PC, simply log into Sharpcast Photos desktop software on the new PC – the entire collection will be perfectly replicated
·      Sharing without uploading: simply drag and drop albums onto a name in a contact list to share them with others, so you never have to wait around for uploads
·      Desktop delivery of shared albums: albums shared with you are delivered right into your desktop organizer, so you never have to go to the web to see shared photos
·      Full offline capability: Continue to manage or share your photos even if you are not online. All changes are synchronized seamlessly everywhere the next time you connect to the internet
·      Automatic mobile syncing: Photos sync automatically from your PC to your phone, and photos taken on your phone are instantaneously synced to your desktop organizer and web albums

Sharpcast is developing APIs that extend its universal synchronization capabilities to any other type of application, data or device. The company is already working with global independent software developers and device manufacturers to extend its own services as well as Sharpcast-powered third-party services to millions of customers around the world.

An innovator in digital media and information synchronization, Sharpcast develops software and services based on their patent-pending universal synchronization platform, which delivers the absolute simplest way for people to back up, share, access and sync their digital content regardless of what device they are on and whether they are online or off. A team of wireless and mobile industry veterans with a proven track record for building large-scale wireless data systems and successful software businesses founded Sharpcast in 2004 with a mission to make digital life simple.