GlobalMentor Announces Standards-Based Cross-Platform eBook Software

Mentoract Reader to Popularize eBooks Internationally

CHELSEA, OK, USA — July 16, 2001 — GlobalMentor today announced the first public version of its Mentoract™ Reader software for reading electronic books ("eBooks"). The free software, which is based on openly published standards, offers a solution for reading eBooks in virtually any language directly on a desktop or laptop computer. The Mentoract™ Reader makes it possible to directly read eBooks encoded in the Open eBook Publication Structure format, the de facto standard for storing electronic books.

GlobalMentor is a founding member of the Open eBook (OeB) Forum, the eBook industry's standards-making body that created the OeB Publication Structure eBook format. The company sees its new software as helping advance the Forum's goal of making eBooks available to a wide audience through industry-wide standards. "The work GlobalMentor has done in the Open eBook Forum is helping publishers create global eBook content through the use of the Open eBook Publication Structure. Now GlobalMentor's Mentoract™ Reader allows everyone to read that eBook content, providing users around the world a standards-based solution for accessing eBooks," said Garret Wilson, president of GlobalMentor.

The Mentoract™ Reader is the first publicly released product of GlobalMentor, Inc., since the company was founded in early 1999 at the dawn of the modern eBook industry. The name "Mentoract Reader" indicates the company's goal of providing interactive technology for educational mentoring, and the software is available at the company's web site, http://www.globalmentor.com/.

GlobalMentor's objective is to create educational eBook software that is accessible to everyone. "When we helped create the Open eBook Publication Structure, we committed to using such innovations to assist the globalization of cost-effective modern education," explained Wilson. "The Mentoract Reader is the first step on the road to realizing that goal."

Because the Mentoract™ Reader is based on the Java programming language, it can be used on a variety of computer systems. It was architectured to use open standards-compliant methods for accessing and displaying eBook content. It automatically reflows text to allow eBooks to be displayed on a multitude of devices and screen sizes. Rather than being tied to a particular region of the world, the Mentoract™ Reader natively supports international content such as right-to-left Arabic and Hebrew writing systems and can be extended to support virtually any language.

GlobalMentor, Inc. is an international education technology company and is a member of the Open eBook Forum, the World Wide Web Consortium, and the Unicode Consortium. For more information, contact info@globalmentor.com or visit GlobalMentor's web site at http://www.globalmentor.com/.