NEW YORK and SOUTHBOROUGH, MA, May 7, 2001 — Rough Guides, a publisher of travel guides, has selected Texterity, a leading provider of eBook conversion services, to create high-quality electronic books for the Microsoft Reader. The eBook conversion was done using Texterity's TextCafe automated conversion system, which allows publishers to create industry-standard electronic books. Texterity supports Microsoft eBook technologies, providing conversion services to publishers using Open eBook (OEB) and the Microsoft Reader (LIT) format.

Rough Guides' travel eBooks were designed with the mobile user in mind and fully support the features of the Microsoft Reader and the latest PocketPC technology. The travel guides will be used as a part of "The Mobile Experience Tour!" which demonstrates server, wireless and device technology from Microsoft and Microsoft partners around the world. Travel guides for major US and international cities will be available to coincide with the Tour.

Rough Guides will make over twenty eBook versions of their travel guides and dictionary phrasebooks this month using the TextCafe system. In addition, Rough Guides is working with Texterity to convert additional titles for eBook distribution.

Jennifer Gold, Director of New Media for Rough Guides stated, "Our agreement with Texterity is a major step in helping us achieve our strategy in providing customers with easy access to our travel books and dictionaries. By providing our material as an eBook, we give customers another way to use our content, and allow a path in the future to deliver through wireless and other digital delivery methods."

"We are delighted to be working with Rough Guides and Microsoft to deliver eBooks in Microsoft Reader format to the travel market," said Cimarron Buser, Texterity's Vice President of Marketing. "The eBook format is a great fit for this type of information, and we believe that the Microsoft Reader provides a superior experience for users in terms of both readability and access."

"We're excited to see Texterity's unique conversion system supporting the Microsoft Reader format," said Steve Stone, General Manager for Microsoft Reader Product Group. "Texterity's technologies help enable the growing momentum of eBooks and make more titles than ever available in Microsoft Reader format."

The Rough Guides agreement further enhances Texterity's extensive list of publishing customers, and expands the use of the technology to reference works. TextCafe is the industry's first fully automated PDF to XML conversion system, and uses expert systems and proprietary recognition processes to deduce and make explicit the structure that is implied by original formatting, allowing direct conversion from PDF to XML, Open eBook, and Microsoft LIT format.

Rough Guides is recognized for its hip, irreverent travel guides, written with an eye for detail and a voracious appetite for off-the-beaten-path adventure. From a single Greece guide published by four friends in 1982, Rough Guides has grown to more than 150 titles, including 100 travel guides, unique language phrasebooks, acclaimed music reference guides, eclectic world music CDs, and a best-selling pocket Internet guide. The company is also known around the world through its BBC/Travel Channel television series, Rough Guides.

Founded in 1991, Texterity is a leading provider of ePublishing services enabling fast, cost-effective automated transformation of published pages into multiple electronic formats. Texterity relieves the major bottleneck in electronic publishing today, which is to repurpose PDF-based content. Texterity's services provide solutions for the ePublishing lifecycle, including automated conversion of existing content into XML, HTML, eBook, Wireless, and Print. Texterity provides services to leading publishing, catalog, eBook, portal, and corporate customers including Aspen Publishers, Penguin Putnam, Prentice Hall, Thomson Learning, Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt General, World Book, Perot Systems, Lycos, Fisher Scientific, Sciquest, GiantChair.com, Reader's Digest and Gartner Group. Privately held, Texterity is located in Southborough, Massachusetts. Texterity proudly partners with Microsoft® Corporation.

TextCafe is a trademark of Texterity, Inc. For more information on Texterity, visit its Web site: http://www.texterity.com.
The Rough Guides name is a registered trademark of Rough Guides Ltd. For more information on Rough Guides, visit its web site: http://www.roughguides.com.
Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.