CAMBRIDGE, MA--(MARKET WIRE)--Feb 11, 2008 -- MetaCarta®, Inc., the leading provider of geographic information retrieval and search solutions, today announced that the Lowell Publishing Company, a MediaNews Group company and publisher of the Lowell Sun, The NH Broadcaster, Sentinel & Enterprise, The Valley Dispatch and Nashoba Publishing, are using MetaCarta Local Alerts Service to inform their web site users about news stories and community events related to their neighborhood. Local Alerts is a registration-based service that delivers users personalized up-to-date news about the neighborhoods in which they live, work or go to school.

Source: MetaCarta
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"We are delighted to partner with MetaCarta and bring our customers another valuable resource designed to help inform them of the local news and information happenings in their primary areas of interest," said Mark O'Neil, president and publisher, Lowell Publishing Co. "We see many applications for this unique service that will benefit our customers, both readers and advertisers."

MetaCarta Local Alerts offers publishers a fully branded service that creates a sticky environment that is designed to attract new readers and retain existing readers. It is a hosted service that uses MetaCarta's unique geographic information retrieval technology to hyper-localize content. Local Alerts identifies the places mentioned in free-form content, in real time, making it easy to deliver it to specific users. Local Alerts draws users back to the publisher's site for repeat visits, substantially increasing user frequency and page views metrics, enabling publishers to better capture local advertising dollars and maximize advertising rates.

"Forward thinking newspapers like the Lowell Sun are adopting the Local Alerts service because it adds value to their already valuable content, and it saves time for their online readers," said Rick Hutton, Vice President of Content Services for MetaCarta.

About MediaNews Group, Inc.

MediaNews is the nation's fourth largest newspaper company, with headquarters in Denver, CO. MediaNews Group and its affiliated companies publish 58 daily newspapers and approximately 100 non-daily publications in 13 states with daily and Sunday circulation of approximately 2.6 million and 3.0 million, respectively. In addition, MediaNews Group owns a CBS affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska and four radio stations in Texas. MediaNews Group maintains web sites for all of its daily newspapers.

About MetaCarta

MetaCarta, Inc. is the leading provider of geographic search and referencing solutions. MetaCarta products make data and unstructured content "location-aware" making that information geographically relevant. Using a map interface, these innovative solutions make it possible for customers to discover, visualize, and act on important location-based information. Founded by a team of MIT researchers in 2001, MetaCarta is privately held, with US headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts and offices in Vienna, Virginia and Houston, Texas and resellers worldwide. For more information, please visit www.metacarta.com or MetaCarta Resource Center.

MetaCarta is a trademark of MetaCarta, Incorporated. All other product or corporate references may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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