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Quant the News' StockMood.com Wins Thomson Reuters Award at TechCrunch50

TechCrunch50 concluded on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 with StockMood.com winning the Thomson Reuters Award for news-based technology. StockMood.com, a website created by Quant the News, LLC, is a stock trading guidance system that uses artificial intelligence to analyze news-influenced "sentiment" expressed toward stocks, and to correlate this sentiment with price changes.

Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, and one of the sponsors of TechCrunch50.

"We are honored to receive the Thomson Reuters award. We've put in a lot of work over the last year and it's very fulfilling to see our efforts recognized in this way," comments Quant the News, LLC CEO Brett Markinson. "What we discovered at TechCrunch50 was that there is a huge appetite out there for in-depth quantitative information about the effect of news on stock price. In the past this kind of information has only been available to hedge funds and institutional investors, but with StockMood.com, we're bringing it to the everyday investor."

StockMood.com launched in a private beta on Monday, September 8th at the start of the TechCrunch50 conference and feedback from the initial users was overwhelmingly positive.

Quant the News, LLC Chief Science Officer Dr. Ben Goertzel explains, "It's clear from the initial reactions to the website that ordinary stock investors have a huge interest in this kind of information. We're getting a lot of excited reactions and also, as expected with any new product, a lot of feature requests... Clearly the adventure of StockMood.com is just beginning, but thanks to TechCrunch50 we're off to an excellent start."

In addition to StockMood.com's stock "sentiment" analysis, the website offers unique attributes. One example is its "crowdsourcing" approach, which allows for improvement of its AI's classifications. For example, if the AI classifies an article as positive but the user thinks it is negative, then the user can enter a correction. Then, if the AI considers the user reliable, it will incorporate the user's correction to help guide future judgments.

StockMood.com's core technology was developed by AI firm Novamente LLC, led by Dr. Ben Goertzel. The team at Quant the News cautions that StockMood.com is not a trading system, but rather a guidance system. Similar to commonly used quantitative financial indicators, the information given by StockMood.com may be used by different traders in many different ways.

ABOUT LAGOVENT

Quant the News, LLC is a company incubated by Lagovent Ventures Group, a Los Angeles-based investment firm co-partnered by Konstantin Glasmacher and Brett Markinson. To learn more about StockMood, Quant the News, or Lagovent Ventures Group, call Brett Markinson at 310-203-0011 x417 or go to www.StockMood.com or www.Lagovent.com.

ABOUT NOVAMENTE

Led by Dr. Ben Goertzel, Novamente, LLC is an AI consulting and Research and Development firm with business headquarters in Rockville, MD and Silicon Valley, CA. Novamente's AI-based software has been used by government agencies in the domains of biological research and national security, and by commercial customers in the industries of biopharma, national security, health information management, and market research, among many others. Alongside this customer-focused work, Novamente is at the forefront of research in artificial general intelligence and human-level AI. For more information on Novamente, visit www.Novamente.net.

ABOUT TECHCRUNCH

Founded in 2007 by leading technology blog TechCrunch and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, the TechCrunch50 conference provides a platform for early-stage, and frequently unfunded, companies to launch for the first time to the technology industry's most influential venture capitalists, corporations, angel investors, fellow entrepreneurs and the international media. Companies are selected to participate exclusively on merit. TechCrunch50 is supported by corporate sponsors Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Salesforce, MSN Money, Symantec, Thomson Reuters and Yahoo!, as well as venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital, Mayfield Fund, Clearstone Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Founders Fund, Perkins Coie and Fenwick & West.

Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, this press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. It may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Lagovent or one of its operating companies or Novamente. These statements are only predictions and actual events or results may differ materially. Any forward-looking information is based on management's current expectations and involves a number of risks and uncertainties. The press release and statements are current as of the date of the individual announcements and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly release any revisions to any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date thereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.