AICPA gives special recognition award to XBRL founder.

Charles Hoffman is the recipient of the 2006 Special Recognition Award from the AICPA for his remarkable contributions to the development of eXtensible Business Reporting Language. The award recognizes a person who has made a significant mark on the accounting profession.

"Many call Charlie the 'Father' of XBRL because he was the individual who initially came up with the idea of using XML to structure financial statements," said Randy Fletchall, AICPA vice chair. "Charlie developed the initial prototype for what is now the XBRL technical specification and he was a leading catalyst in driving this international open-standard for business information."

Fletchall said Hoffman conceived the idea in 1998 while working for a small accounting firm in Washington State and took it to the AICPA's High Tech Task Force. Less than a decade later, XBRL is being implemented by stock exchanges and regulatory bodies on six continents and is gaining increasing traction and support in the United States. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently committed $54 million to develop commercial-strength taxonomies for U.S. GAAP reporting and to modernize the EDGAR system to accept company filings in XBRL format (www.xbrl.org).