Interchange Appoints Research Scientist

    Business Editors/Technology Writers

    LAGUNA HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 17, 2005--Interchange Corporation (NASDAQ:INCX), a leading provider of local and national paid-search services in the United States and Europe, today announced the appointment of Ian Niles to the position of research scientist.
    "We are pleased to have Ian Niles on our team," said Heath Clarke, Interchange CEO. "His considerable knowledge and experience in search heuristics and taxonomic data structures are expected to be an important asset to us as we work to enhance our Keyword DNA(TM) technologies with the latest information retrieval techniques. His expertise will also be utilized during the development of the Local.com site, scheduled for launch later this year."
    Prior to joining Interchange, Niles was a research scientist for Language Computer Corporation. In this role, Niles was the principal investigator on several research projects funded by the National Science Foundation, including the development of next generation question-answering systems. Niles was responsible for improving the knowledge representation format and establishing a procedure for quantitatively evaluating automatically generated ontologies.
    As research scientist, Niles will be responsible for enhancing and maintaining the company's local and national search algorithms, heuristics and taxonomies. In this position he will lead the company's category and keyword search operations, manage new and existing data sources and determine how the company's taxonomy elements and technologies will be applied to these sources.
    Before joining Language Computer Corporation, Niles served as a senior knowledge engineer at Teknowledge Corporation for over four years. At Teknowledge, Niles designed and implemented the upper-level ontology, Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO), including a natural language search tool. SUMO is the basis for various research and commercial efforts around the world and is widely accepted as one of the leading upper-level ontologies in the world.
    Niles also served as a research analyst for TextWise, Inc. as the co-inventor of the KNOW-IT information extraction system. KNOW-IT extracts structured data from free text and allows users to navigate through the extracted data using either a graphic browser or a question-answering interface. Niles also led the integration and evaluation activities of the company's contract with the High Performance Knowledge Bases (HPKB) program, which was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
    Niles earned both a Ph. D. and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. Niles also earned a M.L.S. (Masters in Library Science) from Syracuse University, New York and a B.A. from Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

    About Interchange

    Interchange Corporation (NASDAQ:INCX) utilizes proprietary search technologies to enable consumers to find and connect with businesses in seven countries and five languages. The company serves local and national U.S. Internet search markets with its ePilot(TM) search service and Local Direct(TM) search and advertising platform, and the wireless U.S. local-search market with its recently released SMS LOCAL(TM) service (beta). Interchange Europe serves various European Internet, wireless and operator assisted local-search markets. Interchange generates revenues principally from paid-search advertising. Interchange specializes in local-search and recently acquired the Local.com domain name in order to develop a worldwide local-search destination site. The company plans to unite its various Internet and wireless local-search technologies under the Local.com brand, which is expected to be launched in the second half of 2005.
    The company is headquartered in Laguna Hills, California, with European offices in Stockholm, Madrid, and London. For more information on Interchange, please visit: www.interchangeusa.com.

    Forward-Looking Statements: All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this document regarding our anticipated financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives of our management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. When used in this report, words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "plans," "expect," "intend" and similar expressions, as they relate to Interchange or our management, identify forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of our management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to our management. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to re-launch the Local.com domain and incorporate our local-search technologies, our ability to market the Local.com domain as a destination for consumers seeking local-search results, our ability to grow our business by enhancing our local-search services, expanding our Advertiser Network, expanding our Distribution Network, and expanding internationally, our ability to integrate the operations and effectively utilize the technology of Inspire, integrate the operations and effectively utilize the technology of Inspire, our plans to develop our products and develop sales, marketing, finance and administrative functions, dependence on major advertisers, competitive factors and pricing pressures, our ability to successfully integrate our expanded infrastructure, changes in legal and regulatory requirements, and general economic conditions. Any forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to future events and are subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to our operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by this paragraph.
    Our Annual Report on Form 10-KSB, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-QSB, recent Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss the foregoing risks as well as other important risk factors that could contribute to such differences or otherwise affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The forward-looking statements in this release speak only as if the date they are made. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.

--30--EH/la*

CONTACT: Media Relations Interchange Corporation Cameron Triebwasser, 949-789-5242 Fax: 949-784-0880 ctriebwasser@interchangeusa.com or Investor Relations BPC Financial Marketing John Baldissera, 800-368-1217

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: TELECOMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE NETWORKING INTERNET E-COMMERCE MANAGEMENT CHANGES SOURCE: Interchange Corporation

Copyright Business Wire 2005