Apple iPhoto Product Manager Joins Award-Winning Software Team

ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, N.J., Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- PreClick Corp. announced today its entry into the digital photo software market with its 5-Star(TM) Photo Organizer, currently in beta.

The company also announced a number of recent hires, including John Santoro, a 12-year marketing veteran of Apple Computer and a former UPI photographer, most recently the iPhoto product manager. "I joined this team for two reasons: it built the fastest and easiest photo organizer and the most innovative business model. We generate new revenue for photo finishers, retailers and manufacturers," said Santoro.

PreClick earned its first revenue this month through two licensing deals with the Internet's fifth largest photo processing site and with New York City's second largest photo retailer, Adorama, see http://www.adorama.com. (Editor's Note: details to be announced October 1 and October 14th). The licensed products are based on PreClick's 1.0 product, the 5-Star(TM) Photo Organizer, enabling users to organize, preserve, print and share their photo collections.

Brian Smiga and Tony Mann, software veterans each with 15-years awarding winning product experience, co-founded the company in September 2001.

"No products, other than Apple's iPhoto, are satisfying to 'soccer moms,' busy, family-oriented women who make up the new majority of digital camera owners. We focus on building the world's easiest and fastest to learn, all-in-one photo organizer that finds, sorts, prints, shares, and manages these rapidly growing photo collections," said Smiga, chief executive officer. "Digital camera owners shoot three times as many photos but spend 90% less on prints. PreClick is going to change that for the $30 Billion photo-finishing industry."

PreClick is entering a market with robust growth, with 30% annual sales growth of digital cameras projected to penetrate 50% of US homes by 2005. The company recognized that owners of digital cameras would need a new client software model to effectively find, organize, print, and share their pictures. Instead of a mere scrapbook, the founders foresaw the opportunity for a "lifetime media management system" that would automate the distribution, printing, and preservation of digital photo collections among friends and family. Once established, the community of users will be self-perpetuating, creating increased revenue from printing, processing and add-ons.

PreClick's founders include Brian Smiga, chairman and chief executive officer, Tony Mann, chief technology officer, and Josh Muskovitz, senior software engineer. Smiga is a veteran entrepreneur with 15 years of award-winning software development and company formation experience. His first product, Dynodex, won Best Contact Manager for Mac in 1991-1994; his second product, Actioneer, was a top product for Palm and Lotus Notes from 1998-2001. He was recruited as Senior Vice President, Business Development and Marketing for 1ClickCharge, which he profitably sold to CMGi for $35 million. In 1999, Brian was recruited as CEO of 3Path, a peer-to-peer priority content delivery company, where he raised $10.5 million from Intel, Goldman-Sachs and BRM Capital.

Tony Mann, CTO, is an expert in user-centered design and extreme programming who first worked with Smiga in 1991. Mann has since designed and built collaboration, artificial intelligence, education, and consumer applications.

"Our wives, parents and friends are the users we focused on," said Mann. "They voted clearly for fast, easy-to-use photo management on their computers, not on the Web. As networked client software, we take advantage of the resources and privacy of the customer's personal computer to deliver significant ease-of-use, speed, convenience, and power advantages over in-store kiosks and sites like Shutterfly."

Josh Muskovitz, senior software engineer, has shipped software products for distance learning (Mentergy), artificial intelligence (WebMind), security (OpenService), and imaging (IBM, Lectra).

This founding team previously has co-authored four relevant U.S. Patents. They are joined by John Santoro, a former UPI photographer, who was most recently the Product Manager for Apple iPhoto; Laird Popkin, who is the co-chair of the Internet Content Exchange (ICE) standards group and was most recently CTO at 3Path, Sothebys and Newscorp; and Beau Roberts, former Director of Product Marketing at MacAfee.com, and Reseller Account Manager at Computer Associates.

PreClick's corporate advisors bring a wide range of relevant experience and contacts. They include Jay Torborg, former Director of Multimedia at Microsoft, Doug Rowan, former CEO of Corbis, Rick Smolan, producer of "A Day in the Life" Series, and William Bevington, Chairman of Information Communication Design, Parsons School of Design/The New School and author of Designing with Type.

PreClick is a digital asset management software company founded to provide digital photographers the fastest, easiest and most convenient way to organize, print, preserve and share their digital photos. Its photo management software provides customers a convenient "kiosk in the home" for processing and printing. The company is interested in talking to license partners in the $100 billion photo industry, particularly camera and hardware OEMs, photo-finishers and retailers. More information is available at http://www.preclick.com.