We wanted to do something special.

Better features, reliability and interface design. There's a lot of bad software out there. A lot of half-developed concepts, poor interfaces, bugs, bugs and more bugs. We felt we could do it better. We wanted to create a product that would make a positive contribution to society, and that would reach both business and educational markets. Education suffers from a dearth of good software. Profits are smaller, so many companies neglect education, and concentrate on the games and business markets instead. We felt if we could reach both markets, the business sales would assist us in providing quality software to educational institutions, to teachers and students trying to make the most of limited computing resources.

Our products save small companies thousands of dollars. We're idealistic. We looked at electronic reference products and discovered less than half a dozen companies with an interest in the reference market had the resources to develop electronic dictionaries. We did some detective work and found they were typically spending a half million to two million dollars or more on R&D costs alone. These numbers might astonish you, but consider that it usually takes two or more programmers a year to a year and a half, or more, to develop this kind of authoring product in a corporate environment. By the time you tally wages, equipment, office space, and development tools, you're already up to about $160,000, and this isn't counting the infrastructure that holds it all together, the managers, the meetings, the market research, desks, phones, etc. Small and medium-sized publishers can't afford to get into this market the way it's currently structured. We decided it was time to develop electronic dictionaries in a different way. Lexicographer takes a completely new approach that can potentially revolutionize the development of electronic references! Small companies can now afford to convert their existing references and develop new ones for the growing multimedia and computer book markets.

We think we've succeeded!

A new kind of teaching tool.

We've talked with teachers. We looked at some of the problems they are having with educational software and we built solutions into Lexicographer and the accompanying documentation. This is an excellent tool for the classroom or library, because it can be used by teachers and students alike, and the modules which are created can form a growing and lasting edition to the classroom software library.

We studied educational licensing agreements as well. We made ours flexible. Lexica, our dictionary viewing software, can be sent home with students, at no additional fee, so they can use their word lists, dictionaries, and glossaries on a home computer as well.

There is no question that language arts skills are some of the most valuable that a student can learn. Post-secondary achievement, job promotions, success in a given field, are often very dependent on a student's vocabulary and understanding of the content and context of words. Lexicompatible products give the student hands-on experience in an interactive environment, and Lexicographer can provide teachers with the means to do very specialized word lists for a specfic grade level or subject area, for remedial and gifted students, for ESL studies and more. Prior to the development of Lexicographer, it was unlikely that software companies would provide teachers with dictionaries as specialized as those mentioned above. Now it is possible for teachers themselves to develop these dictionaries, and share them within a school, or between schools, or even to distribute them over the Internet within the terms of our academic license agreement. Also, Lexicographer also provides the means and motivation for commercial software vendors to provide specialized educational dictionaries, since Lexicographer very significantly lowers research and development costs.

To receive more extensive information on our academic version send an email request to presspage@abiogenesis.com and, for each request, please provide your full name, the name and type of publication you represent (if you are freelance, list one or two previously published articles, or describe the nature of your proposed writing project) and a brief statement of what you are interested in writing about. Also let us know if you would like to receive the information by email (preferred) or US mail (provide mailing address in first request).

The uphill climb to ultimate success.

Victims turn financial misfortune into a positive contribution. The road to Lexicographer's development was not an easy one. The entrepreneurs who began Abiogenesis found themselves, about two years ago, in an untenable situation with an apparently unscrupulous employer who owed them tens of thousands of dollars in overdue wages. It's not easy to develop a new software concept, and create the software itself, when you're trying to make ends meet and to recover (unsuccessfully) all the money owing. Our founders took great financial risks, and succeeded, however. And, as you can see from these informational and resource pages online, we are determined to turn something bad into something very, very good, and to put that chapter of our lives behind us.

To receive more extensive information on our uphill climb send an email request to presspage@abiogenesis.com and, for each request, please provide your full name, the name and type of publication you represent (if you are freelance, list one or two previously published articles, or describe the nature of your proposed writing project) and a brief statement of what you are interested in writing about. Also let us know if you would like to receive the information by email (preferred) or US mail (provide mailing address in first request).

Abiogenesis makes the first wave!

Entrepreneurial company gets in first on unique development opportunity. With the market shaking out, and doomsayers constantly predicting the demise of every new computer system (and some well-established ones), no one expected a new platform to rear up out of the back room. But the BeBox from Be Inc., a powerful dual processor multimedia, video and networking machine, is attracting the attention of developers and users alike. They said the Mac wouldn't last a year, and the Amiga wouldn't last two, yet these 'doomed platforms' have a combined user base, ten years later, of over 20 million systems worldwide, and Macintosh sales up are 25% this quarter! This should caution industry predictors to take a longer viewpoint, and to not discount the many niche markets to be filled in the computer industry. The BeBox seeks to fill some of these niches, and Abiogenesis was one of the first selected to receive one of the limited number of pre-release developer BeBox personal workstations distributed in North America.

To receive more extensive information on our development plans send an email request to presspage @ abiogenesis.com and, for each request, please provide your full name, the name and type of publication you represent (if you are freelance, list one or two previously published articles, or describe the nature of your proposed writing project) and a brief statement of what you are interested in writing about. Also let us know if you would like to receive the information by email (preferred) or US mail (provide mailing address in first request).