Bowling Green, Ohio, May 1, 2001, Senecio Software, Inc. announced today that it has received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $750,000 from the National Institutes of Health to enhance their web-based, all-Java® survey software, AskAnywhere®.

Senecio Software's AskAnywhere® surveying system is comprised of three components: 1) a questionnaire editing application, a client-side data collection applet, and a communication and data processing server. This system allows survey researchers to write questionnaires and host those questionnaires on the web regardless of their platform, location, or language.

Phase II development of AskAnywhere® will focus on three main goals: 1) to complete work on the beta version of the program, 2) to complete the online user manual, and 3) to complete a final late-beta evaluation test prior to the release of the product.

Completing work on the beta version of the program will focus on addressing user concerns raised in the evaluation of the alpha version of AskAnywhere®, incorporating user suggestions into the design of a beta version of AskAnywhere®, as well as, integrating multiple languages into the interface of the software.

Completion of the user manual will provide survey researchers with details about the program as well as provide a number of online tutorials. Moreover, a small library of commonly used questions, question formats, and sections of questionnaires, such as standard demographics, will be developed as a complementary source to the online manual.

Jerry Wicks, President of Senecio, Inc., said "additions to the beta version of the program, the improvements to the online manual, and key tutorials, and the availability of an item and questionnaire library will strengthen the ease of use of the program as well as the overall appeal of the product."

About Senecio Software

Founded in 1992, Senecio Software, Inc. is an Ohio-based corporation specializing in the design and production of software for the collection and analysis of social and market research data. Given the rapid rise in the use of the Internet for commerce and its growing use among all segments of society, Senecio's corporate strategy has been expanded to supply professional survey research tools and services to scientists and market researchers demanding more advanced software tools for their Internet survey work as well as the development of advanced data gathering tools involving remote sensing and wireless communication. Senecio Software, Inc. can be reached by telephone (419-352-4371), fax (419-354-7512), e-mail (info@senecio.com) or the world wide web (www.senecio.com).

Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems. AskAnywhere is a registered trademark of Senecio Software, Inc.