23 November 2004

Peace of Mind for Parents at Last! Multimap and Creativity Software Join Forces to Reassure Parents about the Whereabouts of their Children

Parents can now check the location of their children’s mobile phones at www.findyourchild.net or receive details of their location as an SMS message

Multimap, Europe’s leading online mapping company, and Creativity Software, the developer and publisher of software products and services catering for the needs of families, have joined forces to offer parents peace of mind about their children’s whereabouts 24x7. Parents can now view the location of their children’s mobile phones on a map at www.findyourchild.net, or receive an SMS saying that “John is in the vicinity of NW1”, for example, thanks to Multimap’s location-based services.

Chris Lee, Marketing Director, Creativity Software said, “We are really pleased to be working with Multimap to offer parents this new service. It has been designed to support responsible parenting, and to offer a welcome source of reassurance to parents when their children are out and about. The service won’t, of course, offer a substitute for constant communication with your child and sensible supervision, but it will serve as an additional safety mechanism.”

To use the tracking services, parents simply register as a user at www.findyourchild.net, specify the mobile phone number(s) to be added to their account and, once Creativity Software has checked that the user is entitled to track that phone, parents can then submit requests to check the location of their child(ren). When users search from a PC, the location of the phone is displayed on an interactive map from Multimap, with full pan N,S,E,W and zoom in/out functionality. When they search from their mobile, they are sent an SMS indicating the general area in which the mobile phone is located. The service works with mobile phones on Fresh, O2, Orange, Tesco Mobile, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and the results delivered are accurate to 150 metres.

Commenting on the deal, Willem Mijnarends, Head of Sales, Multimap, said, “One of our key aims at Multimap is to provide services that are useful for the public on an everyday basis. We are delighted that our maps are now helping to provide peace of mind to parents across the UK, at a time when a child or teenager’s whereabouts is of particular concern, and applaud Creativity Software for coming up with the concept of Findyourchild.net.”

About Multimap

Multimap is Europe's leading provider of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; weather forecasts; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 7.3 million unique users, registers more than 140 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK. Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 league table of fastest-growing, unquoted technology companies for the second consecutive year.

About Creativity Software Ltd

Creativity Software Ltd is a developer and publisher of software products and services, based in London. It specializes in developing products that serve the needs of families. It has computer servers situated in a former Ministry of Defence bunker, to ensure the most secure of environments – essential for any business that provides a critical service – such as Find Your Child. It also invests heavily in technology and skills to ensure that its internet presence is reliable and safe for customers to use.

Creativity Software partners with other organizations to deliver products that depend upon specialist knowledge. For instance, it has produced a travel product in conjunction with Rough Guides, and worked with childrens’ charities, the Home Office, the network operators and Association of Chief Police Officers to deliver Find Your Child.

The company’s products are available online at www.creativitysoftware.net and in high street retail throughout the UK - including WH Smith and PC World., Blackwell’s, Books etc, Ottakar’s, and Waterstones.