Five Across Ships Drag & Drop Web Publishing [May 17, 2005]

Create Rich Multi-Page Web Sites with the Ease of Blogging

NEW YORK, May 17, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Five Across, Inc., the Silicon Valley start-up that launched the world's fastest blogging engine in Feb. 2005 at DEMO@15!, today announced it has extended its technology to enable the creation of multi-page web sites. Available immediately, the hosted service, Bubbler(TM), provides page navigation that is generated automatically; updates text and pages in real time; provides drag-and-drop photo, audio, and video sharing; and has a group model that provides wiki-like collaboration for authorized users.

Five Across Reinvents Small Business Web Publishing

Blogging software has delivered a faster, easier way for consumers and business users alike to publish online. According to Technorati, the blog directory and measurement firm, there are over 9 million blogs with 40,000 new weblogs created every day showing there is huge pent up demand. Blogging, however, is only 0.1 percent of the 9 billion web pages estimated by search engine vendors. Five Across's new technology dramatically changes the landscape by bringing the ease of blogging to the business users and professionals who want a quality web presence at reasonable cost.

"You can turn an idea into professional looking web pages in a matter of minutes," said Ben Gross of Ferris Research.

Functionality Beyond Blogging

Users create web pages by dragging and dropping their content -- including digital photographs, movies, audio, and other multimedia assets, as well as business documents like spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. Five Across's Server technology combines the content into compelling web pages instantly. As each page is added, navigation is created automatically and added to all site pages. Content can be presented in dramatically different styles through a rich set of high-quality designer templates that automatically create professional web sites.

"We're providing the technology to build full-scale multi-media web sites with the ease of blogging," asserted Five Across CEO Glenn Reid. "Now business users in real estate, creative fields, public relations, teachers, and even families and soccer teams can create a web presence easily and at low cost."

The Five Across Server Technology

The media-rich hosted sites are powered by Five Across' Server, which integrates multiple network protocols into a powerful and versatile replacement for Apache web servers. The Five Across Server transparently integrates web hosting, content management and messaging, eliminating the need to source and manage separate web server, SMTP, instant messaging, and file sharing systems.

Five Across offers an OEM Server to ISPs and Web Service Providers to offer blog and web site hosting to their customers. The Five Across Workgroup Server, which includes the instant messaging and group collaboration client software, is also available to corporations for business blogging behind the firewall.

Pricing and Availability

Effective immediately, Five Across offers Bubbler Hosted accounts starting at $5 per month, depending on storage and bandwidth usage. A free Bubbler 1(TM) account is available for content contributors or for simple text blogging. The Five Across OEM Server for ISPs and other blog hosting providers and the Five Across Workgroup Server are both available immediately. Additional information is available at www.bubbler.com.

About Five Across
Founded in 2003, Five Across provides a web publishing and blogging service combined with advanced communication and collaboration software that makes it easy for business and personal computer users to publish and share information. The company's products have been adopted by a diverse set of customers including Dartmouth University's Hitchcock Medical Center and Jordan Baris Real Estate Services. Five Across is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and backed by leading investors Adobe Ventures and Granite Ventures. For more information please visit http://www.fiveacross.com/.

Bubbler, InterComm, Five Across and the Five Across logo are trademarks of Five Across, Inc. All other company and product names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

SOURCE: Five Across, Inc.