For Immediate Release (Palo Alto, CA - January 7, 2005) - AquaMinds Software Corporation announced today that NoteTaker for OS X, version 1.9 started shipping this week and is now available for download. The update is free to all registered users directly from the company's web site. NoteTaker is available as a 30-day, free trial-evaluation download. AquaMinds On-line Store is open 24 hours a day for direct, electronic purchases and is also sold through national retail and on-line outlets including Apple, J&R, Amazon and leading independent resellers. Academic pricing is available to qualified students, teachers, faculty and staff directly from AquaMinds.

NoteTaker is a unique and powerful productivity tool for working with unstructured, on-the-fly information. Users launch and use NoteTaker every day to help them organize, gather, share and publish their personal notes, lists, information and project notebooks. Notebooks can be as simple as to do list journals or as complex as multi-linked, project binders filled with detailed notes, files and live web pages. NoteTaker's built-in web browsing and Internet search services combine to deliver incomparable web research capabilities in an integrated environment. NoteTaker's innovative firsts includes the popular 1-Step Web Notebook creation for instant web site presentation across multiple platforms, with or without Internet access.

NoteTaker serves the diverse application needs of many users in a broad spectrum of industries, enterprises and markets including education, science, government and business. Its innovative architecture and combination of electronic notebook interface, active full-text indexing/searching, embedded Internet browsing and web search have made NoteTaker an invaluable information processing and multimedia, content creation tool for OS X users. From cutting edge publishing to ground-breaking scientific research, NoteTaker is empowering knowledge workers and creative professionals around the world with more personal productivity and more information power than ever before.

NoteTaker 1.9 is the latest update and includes many new features, enhancements and improvements.

Key highlights in this NoteTaker update:

• Enhanced Voice Memos with automatic bidirectional linking between recorded audio and text entries, for quick review
• Spring-loaded tabs and drawer views for conveniently moving and dragging information to other pages
• New Highlight & Summarize features for creating personal search and index reports (dynamic hyperlinks)
• New support for reorganizing by dragging multiple outline entries at the same level
• New Preferences for setting behavior of Return key while in various editing modes
• New multimedia AppleScript examples for using NoteTaker with iSight and iPod
• Built-in support for VoiceOver, the spoken interface for Mac OS X Universal Access
• Customizable notebook covers with optional printing
• Toolbar command button for adding a new page
• Paste as HTML option for richer information display when used with Excel tables and Word content
• New global formatting behavior including control of spacing between entries on a page (Preferences panel)
• New UI button behavior for toggling attribute column displays

Technology Preview - Introducing the new NoteTaker Plug-in Component Architecture
(requires OS X 10.3 "Panther" with Java 1.4.2 Update 2, or higher)
NoteTaker now includes five (5) free plug-in examples (demo Java™ applets) including Calc, DBquery, Sketchpad, Table and VisualMap all accessible from the Outline menu. With NoteTaker 1.9's technology preview, users can now explore the integration of custom tools and applets within notebook pages. NoteTaker's innovative Plug-in Component Architecture is being supported with a new Software Development Kit including source code to all the examples (available for free download from AquaMinds' new developer. NoteTaker components can be designed to interact with notebook data, outlines and structure. Components can easily be programmed to manage their data within their host notebook or via a remote data source. For example, the DBquery plug-in shows how remote SQL database systems can now be queried directly from within an outline entry while the results can be added and quickly displayed directly on the notebook page itself. DBquery is only one of many possible ways in which consultants and db programmers can quickly create custom information dashboard solutions using NoteTaker's plug-in architecture to integrate with existing back-end servers like MySQL, Oracle or even FileMaker.

AquaMinds' Scott Love talks about NoteTaker's new plug-in component architecture
"Our original product vision to create a programmable platform for developers, content authors and consultants has entered a new and exciting phase with the introduction of a true plug-in component architecture," said Scott Love, AquaMinds co-founder and president. "What is especially innovative about this new technology is that we have created a context in which plug-in components (Java™ applets) can run inside of NoteTaker and also persist while maintaining their own data and state information. This alone frees developers from any dependency upon maintaining a live session or link to a server for hosting the applet. Applets can now run as true applications. For our users in education and academic settings, standalone notebooks can now include very rich content such as interactive math programs, physics simulations, chemistry examples and even multimedia charts such as a periodic table of elements. The potential to harness applets as new notebook content is virtually unlimited especially in math and sciences where applet development is well-understood, popular and widely used. To help developers get started, we have bundled five free plug-in examples with full access to the source along with a new Software Development Kit (available from our site).

We also have been working with top notch academic content developers over the past six months who will begin to release examples of their own math and science applets running within notebook pages. But as you can see with our own examples, plug-ins can also be very functional tools or mini-applications in their own right. And best of all, these plug-ins can be written by other developers and programmers without any prior knowledge about how NoteTaker operates other than the specifics of using the new API to support persistence, data state and information."

AquaMinds Developer Site Offers Software Development Kit
Developers, designers and consultants can download the new Software Development Kit for developing plug-in components for NoteTaker. The NoteTaker Plug-in Component Architecture is a technology preview included with the NoteTaker 1.9 update. The plug-in components are mini-applications written as Java applets and directly accessible from NoteTaker's menu. The new API provides many features including persistence, data and information store while also providing APIs for working directly with NoteTaker data in the form of outlines, pages and notebooks. For technical details, check AquaMinds' developer site at www.aquaminds.com/developer.jsp

AquaMinds provides new RSS feed for monitoring news and company announcements
Users can now subscribe to AquaMinds new What'sNew feed (RSS) to monitor updates and company news. AquaMinds new company web log will be going live this month as well. Subscribe to the feed at www.aquaminds.com/whatsNew.jsp

About NoteTaker for OS X
NoteTaker for OS X is personal productivity software designed for daily use. NoteTaker allows users to quickly and easily take notes, manage project plans, browse and search the Internet, create simple full screen slide presentations, drag or clip information from other applications (or use NoteTaker Services), index and search notebooks, publish and share information (Web Notebooks), add voice memos, and, best of all, customize it to fit any digital lifestyle, any information work-style.

For some tasks, generating a long document is not required and yet there is still a need to capture information, organize and process it. Making an outline or creating a list are both examples of tasks that don't necessarily require a word processor and yet the idea of electronic paper for jotting down notes is useful and convenient. Even the capture, retrieval, and organization of random information throughout the day is another example of the need NoteTaker fills.

NoteTaker is an ideal tool for working with unstructured, on-the-fly information you create, organize and gather daily. Using it can be as simple as making lists or as complex as organizing a notebook full of personal notes and pages of information. As NoteTaker's visual metaphor of an electronic spiral notebook with section tabs suggests, there is always the need to find and to retrieve information at anytime without the complexity or the overhead of a database system. Thus, NoteTaker automatically and transparently works behind the scenes to index and categorize notebooks full of information. If it's in NoteTaker, it can be searched and retrieved anytime.

Additional Notes
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: NoteTaker is a native OS X application developed using Apple's Cocoa platform/development environment. NoteTaker 1.9 runs on OS X 10.2.x or higher. NoteTaker Plug-in Component Architecture requires OS X 10.3 "Panther" and Java 1.4.2 Update 2, or higher.

For a complete list of product features, screen shots and access to downloads, visit AquaMinds web site at www.aquaminds.com A 30-day free demo test-drive version is available for download at http://www.aquaminds.com/download.jsp

PRESS & MEDIA Notes: The screen shot gallery is available at the following location:

Articles and product reviews can be found at the following location: http://www.aquaminds.com/company.jsp

Trademark & Copyright Notice: AquaMinds™® and NoteTaker™ - Copyright 2002-2005 Aquaminds Software Corporation. The names of actual companies and products mentioned in this document may be the trademarks of their respective companies. AquaMinds NoteTaker is a registered trademark.