In their preliminary release, SparkNotes gained extreme popularity among students and are expected to compete with market leader Cliffs Notes. "Our free SparkNotes will have a significant financial impact on the established study-aid leaders because their business models are simply ineffective in the Internet economy," says Sam Yagan, co-founder of TheSpark.com. "With 98% of all college students online and more high school students gaining access every day, who would bother going to the bookstore to buy their products?"

SparkNotes are designed to take full advantage of the interactive nature of the web. Readers of SparkNotes can click on literary terms or character names to see a pop-up definition or identification. In addition, the message boards created for each SparkNote allow users to post questions answered by peers or the SparkNote writers themselves.

The initial release of SparkNotes will feature 100 titles, including The Great Gatsby, Crime and Punishment, The Scarlet Letter, and sixteen Shakespeare plays. "SparkNotes differ from our competitors' paper products for several key reasons: they are free, interactive, instantly accessible, and are of superior quality. They are written entirely by Harvard students and recent graduates, not stodgy old professors or desperate academics," explains Chris Coyne, co-founder of TheSpark.com. "Given the millions of unique visitors who already come to TheSpark every month, SparkNotes immediately have the reach of a Top 100 web site."

Winchester, MA - November 17, 1999 - Over 150,000 students of schools nationwide that are using HomeworkNOW.com now have the power to easily access their classroom assignments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through the Internet. HomeworkNOW.com, now in its third year of service, is a free on-line service that gives schoolteachers the ability to easily post their classroom assignments daily/weekly on the Internet.

"The response we have received in the past year is truly amazing and just goes to show the power of the Internet," says Nick Rago, co-founder of HomeworkNOW.com. "We have grown our student/parent user base by over 400% for the 1999-2000 school year with virtually no marketing budget. Our site has received International attention and as a result, schools from the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Nepal, Japan, and Israel are just a few of the countries using our on-line educational service."

The HomeworkNOW.com system (http://www.homeworknow.com) is truly revolutionary as it gives schools the power to introduce and use the Internet as an important educational tool.

"This year we have over 92% of our teachers using the HomeworkNOW.com system," noted Sandy Ewanowski, Technology Coordinator at McConnell Middle School in Loganville, GA. "Most of our teachers publish the HomeworkNOW.com site in their curriculum letters that go home to parents. The dog can no longer eat the homework of McConnell students!"