DURHAM, N.C.-Instead of making plans for what they wanted to do once they graduated from high school, Jud Bowman and Taylor Brockman were making plans on how to raise money for their future while they were in high school.
The two North Carolina School for Science and Mathematics students raised more than $5 million in venture-capital financing to fund the expansion of their company, Pinpoint Inc., a provider of custom wired and wireless search infrastructure solutions. The company’s wireless directory engine technology was so well received, CNET selected the company as one of the “10 Wireless Companies to Watch.”
“Pinpoint’s search and navigation technology is designed to produce the most relevant results-something that is even more important for users accessing the Web through a mobile device,” said Bowman, president of Pinpoint. “Our Wireless Directory Engine overcomes the difficulties of entering text on mobile devices and dramatically simplifies the process of finding information from the wireless Web.”
Pinpoint’s search engine continuously crawls the Internet to find content optimized for mobile devices. When content is found, company content editors review the sites, along with sites submitted to Pinpoint, and categorize them into a directory.
If a user wants to find the Wall Street Journal’s mobile edition, all they have to do is select “2” to access “News,” select “2” again to access “Newspapers,” and then select “2” a third time to go the Wall Street Journal. Pinpoint said conducting the same search on a typical wireless device would require a user to press 38 keys.
The company noted the key to its directory engine is that it leverages the rapidly growing content of its wireless search engine, providing a robust and scalable directory solution for the wireless Internet.
“Pinpoint has developed the most powerful search and directory platform for carriers and mobile portals to offer wireless navigation to their subscribers,” noted Eric Harber, vice president of marketing and business development for Pinpoint. “By enabling simplified navigation to information anytime, anywhere, our solution promotes satisfaction and loyalty among wireless users.”
Lycos Inc. took notice of Pinpoint’s solution, announcing plans to integrate the wireless directory engine into Lycos’ WAP portal, Lycos Anywhere, allowing users of Internet-enabled WAP phones, personal digital assistants and other wireless handheld devices to have access to the editorially selected WAP sites.
“The combination of this new WAP directory and our existing WAP Search provides the easiest to use and most convenient mobile search experience to our users,” said Ron Sege, executive vice president of Lycos. “Pinpoint’s innovative wireless directory engine allows us to seamlessly integrate the most comprehensive listing of wireless Web content into Lycos Anywhere.”
