PenMagic Announces Numero Financial Work Processor for Pen Computers

April 16, 1992 — PenMagic Software Inc. Thursday announced the release of Numero, a financial work processor software product that enables mobile pen computer users to complete a wide variety of financial tasks.

Numero is designed for the PenPoint operating system and will operate on PenPoint computers announced by IBM, NCR, GRiD, and Samsung.

Numero helps people quickly and accurately complete financially related jobs such as writing sales orders, counting inventory, balancing a check book, preparing expense reports, analyzing deals and making presentations. Numero also simplifies ongoing, complex financial processes, including forecasting and budgeting.

“Numero is designed to radically minimize the amount of work people need to do to complete a job, especially when they are on the move,” said Norm Francis, president of PenMagic.

“Numero works so much like real pen and paper that the computing process disappears into the background and ceases to become an obstacle to getting something done.”

Numero introduces a new category of software for pen computers: Financial Work Processing. Users do their tasks on pieces of ‘work paper’ which they can design to look similar to the real paper they are accustomed to using. Numero’s work paper has built-in intelligence that performs calculations and interprets gestures in a ‘common sense’ manner.

According to Francis, potential Numero users include a wide range of busy people who spend a lot of time away from their desk — salespeople, executives, accountants, leasing agents, stock takers, appraisers, contractors, financial analysts, and other financial service professionals, many of whom are first-time computer users.

“Pen-based applications like this one are exactly the kind of product we think will open up the pen computing market to new users, because it understands what mobile workers need to get their jobs done,” said Kathy Veith, vice president of IBM’s Tablet Systems. She continued, “This type of application is not merely a port from the desktop, it is an entirely new approach.”

Numero’s paper-like appearance allows people to work with number -oriented paper and forms in a familiar, direct way. Users can write, erase, and highlight directly on the work paper, as well as make corrections by writing on top of their work as they go. Handwritten letters and numbers can be translated to computer ‘type’ immediately, or translation can be deferred. Freehand writing and translated type can be freely mixed and can be printed together.

Using Numero’s PageMap the user can navigate large pieces of work paper, magnify the page, and scale it to fit on a screen of any size. Like real paper, Numero pages can be folded so that one portion of a page can be compared to an-other.

Numero’s built-in intelligence does much of the work for the user. For example, using the PrestoFill feature, the user can writer a ‘T’ on a date area of the paper and have Numero fill in today’s date, underline a column of numbers and Numero automatically adds them up and creates a total, or write ‘January’ in a heading and then an arrow to the right fills in the remaining months of the year, and so on.

Numero does complex calculations automatically using more than 70 built-in financial, statistical, and mathematical functions. The user can also create a graph simply by highlighting a range of numbers and dragging it to a piece of graph paper.

The Numero product includes over 40 ready-to-use pieces of work paper. Users can adapt this paper to meet their own requirements, or they can easily design their own paper in minutes, without the need for programming. Numero’s paper design capability provides any number of columnar grids per page, eight different data types, and the ability to specify the page layout with lines, fonts, and graphics.

Using Numero’s PrestoLink feature, the user can, with a few strokes of the pen, link numbers on separate pieces of pa-per so that if a change is made, Numero automatically updates all linked pages and graphs.

In this way, different pieces of paper can be easily assembled to create document sets — dynamically linked pieces of work paper that together comprise comprehensive pen application solutions designed without programming.

Beneath Numero’s financial work processor is an intuitive multitasking database that keeps complex financial processes and data management hidden in the background. Users can work unimpeded by ‘computer-think’ while they complete their jobs.

“Numero’s well thought out features enable a natural ease of use while providing a wide variety of useful financial paper types,” commented Jerry Kaplan, chairman and co-founder of GO Corp. “We are impressed with PenMagic’s products and anticipate that they will have a strong impact on this dynamic, mobile market.”

Numero will be available in June 1992, through PenMagic, value-added resellers and systems integrators. The suggest-ed retail price is $399.

Simultaneous with the introduction of Numero, PenMagic also announced the first of a planned series of Numero Special Editions. These are sets of Numero work paper designed for specific groups of people. Special Editions include all required software so that the full Numero product is not required to use them.

The Executive Assistant, the first Special Edition announced, is a seven-piece collection of work paper for executives and managers. The Executive Assistant comes with columnar financial paper, an appointment schedule, a check book, an expense report, and presentation paper providing out-of-the-box functionality for new pen computer users. The suggested retail price is $59.

PenMagic also announced that the Numero Software Developer Toolkit will be available to qualified programmers who own a PenPoint SDK and have completed GO Corp.’s Pen Point Programming Workshop. The Numero Toolkit will allow specialized applications to transfer data to and from the underlying Numero database for seamless integration with other data sources.

In addition, developers can use the toolkit to create integrated add-in functions to perform specialized calculations or other actions. The Numero Toolkit is available from PenMagic for $399.
PenMagic Software Inc. is a privately held company based in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in September 1990 by a team of personal computer industry veterans, the company’s vision is to create new, better ways for people on the move to user pen computers as a tool.

The company’s products combine the familiarity and directness of pen-on-paper with behind-the-scenes software intelligence that helps people get their jobs done quickly, wherever they work, with the stroke of a pen.

Note to Editors: Numero screen images on 35 mm slides are available upon request. Please call Pam Glancy at PenMagic, 604/988-9982

Numero, Numero Special Edition, PageMap, PrestoLink, and PrestoFill are trademarks of PenMagic Software Inc. PenPoint is a trademark of GO Corp. Other brands and products are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

CONTACT:
PenMagic Software Inc., North Vancouver, B.C.
Norm Francis, 604/988-9982
or
Eastwick Communications
Carol Moran, 415/617-8684