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Dialog Completes Major Upgrade of Alerting Features

CARY, N.C., USA — July 31, 2002 — Dialog, a Thomson (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions, announced today that it has completed major enhancements to the Alerts service it offers to users of its Dialog®Classic, DialogClassic Web™ and Dialog®Web services.

The company said that the enhancements are now available and that there is no change in the fee to maintain Alerts through the Dialog services.

The enhancements announced today include:

• The ability to run single Alerts across multiple files of content sources, including those containing intellectual property information such as patents and trademarks. (The Dialog services are composed of more than 600 separate databases, each containing thousands of content sources, such as periodicals, newsletters, monographs, dissertations, standards and specifications, government statistics, newspapers, as well as patent and trademark documents.)



• Automatic removal of duplicates of the same documents retrieved from multiple files through Alerts. (Some content sources reside in more than one Dialog file.)



• More robust options for the delivery of documents containing images. Many documents retrievable from Dialog databases contain images, such as those found in patent documents, trademark applications and chemical structures, which are critical elements for understanding context.
  
  Now, Alerts users can have their retrieved documents containing images delivered via e-mail, fax, postal mail or FTP. Users opting for e-mail delivery can now also choose to have their e-mails formatted in HTML (with the image imbedded), or formatted for Microsoft Exchange or Lotus® Notes®. Or, users may have the images delivered as a file attachment to an ASCII formatted e-mail.



• Improved scheduling, with a new option to specify when the Alert profile is to be run. Users are now able to select days and times for their Alerts to be run and results delivered.

"For many of our customers, the ability to utilize Alerts is essential to their ability to best put the information we offer to work. It means that important news and competitive intelligence, for example, can be delivered directly to their desktops without them having to sign on and search for it," said Paul Colucci, Dialog senior vice president of product development.

"Dialog has the largest collection of content of any online service provider, including many types of intellectual property information not readily found elsewhere," Colucci added. "The ability to save and run Alerts across related files leverages Dialog's vast content collection for maximum effectiveness."

Dialog's Alerts feature is an automated service that allows users to create personalized searches of key words and concepts (such as the names of competitors or regulatory agencies) and then run them against selected Dialog files. As content is added to the selected Dialog files, articles and reports that match an Alerts user's search are automatically retrieved and delivered. Alerts are especially useful for monitoring media coverage, competitive developments and regulatory activity, and for identifying pending trademark and patent information.

- Ends -

About Dialog
Founded in 1972 by Dr. Roger K. Summit, a pioneer in developing the technology behind electronic information retrieval, Dialog is the world leader in providing online-based information services to organizations seeking competitive advantages in such fields as business, science, engineering, finance and law.

Today, Dialog's online services — offered through the Dialog®, Dialog Profound®, Dialog DataStar™, NewsEdge and Intelligence Data brands — give users the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 1.4 billion unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise intranets. Searchable content includes articles and reports from thousands of real-time news feeds, newspapers, broadcast transcripts and trade publications, plus research reports and analyst notes providing support for financial decision-making, as well as in-depth repositories of scientific and technical data, patents, trademarks and other intellectual property data.

Corporate librarians, knowledge managers, other information professionals and end-users at more than 25,000 business, professional and government organizations in more than 100 countries prize Dialog services for their depth and breadth of content, precision searching and speed.

Headquartered in Cary, N.C., USA, with direct operations in 31 other countries worldwide, Dialog is a business of The Thomson Corporation. For more information about Dialog, please visit www.dialog.com. Or, please call (U.S./Canada) 800-3-DIALOG or (U.S.) 919-462-8600. Dialog's London office may be reached at (44) (0) 207-940-6900.

About The Thomson Corporation
The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), with 2001 revenues of US$7.2 billion, is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers. Thomson provides value-added information, software applications and tools to more than 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate training and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).

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