Initially, AdStar will add its technology to sites for Ohio's AKRON BEACON JOURNAL (143k), North Carolina's CHARLOTTE OBSERVER (241k), California's CONTRA COSTA TIMES (184k), Texas' FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM (231k), Missouri's KANSAS CITY STAR (268k) and Minnesota's ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS (202k).

As part of the agreement, AdStar will develop and host private-label classified ad transaction web pages for Knight Ridder's newspaper sites.

Products to be added to the production line are Thermostar, Agfa's thermal plate, and the N91 plate -- part of Agfa's visible light assortment.

Full manufacturing ramp-up for the thermal and visible light platers is expected by the end of the year.

The company has also launched a web-based training program that offers access to more than 300 courses. Agfa has contracted with First Class Systems of Vancouver, British Columbia, to provide the technical infrastructure for the on-line courses.

The initial release of the program includes courses in client/server and data management, Internet networking, professional development, Windows and other popular software applications. The courses are designed for professionals who wish to work at their own pace from the convenience of home or office.

The Agfa Academy site also maintains a record of students' training history to monitor progress or for their resumes. The company said it would expand and customize its on-line offerings to cover more graphic arts processes as well as Agfa products.

Atex Online Advertising (AOA) is integrated with Atex Enterprise, the company's ad order entry and production system, giving AOA access to the pricing, contract management and text composition features of Enterprise.

Account customers can now securely log into the AOA system and perform a variety of tasks, and the product now supports Enterprise customers using both Sybase and Oracle databases. The latest version of the product now automatically e-mails both transient and account customers when their ad is scheduled to expire. Account customers can upload advertisements, which are placed in Enterprise for further processing, and they can modify and kills ads according to specific, customizable criteria.

The APS Optical Plate Bender System is a fully automatic register, punching and bending system with optical positioning for single- and panorama-width printing plates. It is offered as a stand-alone high punch and bender system that can be installed in most in-line hardware configurations.

Formacyclis is based in Jarfalla, Sweden, and has approximately 20 installations in Europe.

Doubling-clicking on an image in the database opens the image in Photoshop, where any of the Photoshop features can be used. After the image editing is complete, the image is closed and placed back into the IQue database.

The product also keeps a version history of an image, as well as allowing for easy format changes and the transfer of IPTC header information.

The company also says that its NewsEditPro IQue system also now supports an instant-messaging function. By choosing the "chat" function, users can see all the other users logged onto the system.

As of Version 3.4, NewsEditPro and NewsEditPro IQue are both Carbon applications, running under Mac OS X.

The television station broadcasts 52 daily news bulletins plus in-depth analysis of market developments and financial topics. Ventiquattorre-TV journalists use Methode to produce scripts, captions and graphics. As each element is inserted into the schedule, Methode automatically updates and displays the total running time for the program.

Methode has also been designed to interface with TV studio hardware; it provides connectivity with video devices such as character generators, on-screen graphics workstations and TelePrompTers, as well as video servers through compliance with the MOS protocol used to interface to these devices.

The TRIBUNE is using JobMinder in combination with Photo Mechanic Pro from Camera Bits. Reporters create assignment requests from the JobMinder web interface. Photo editors confirm and assign the request, by printouts or e-mail, to a photographer using the cross-platform JobMinder client software.

Once the assignment is shot, the photographer combines all the assignment information from JobMinder with each digital camera image by using the auto-created IPTC file from JobMinder and the stationery pad from Photo Mechanic Pro. JobMinder then uses the file transfer protocol (FTP) to send the combine image and information to the TRIBUNE's photo archive.

Prolatus' technology allows those who rely on hard-copy proofs to communicate changes the way they always have, while permitting immediate exchange of the information with other proofing-round participants.

Kirbi will own 51 percent of the new venture -- which will get a new name in the first quarter of 2002 -- while Barco N.V. will own 49 percent.

The head office of the new company will be in Gent, Belgium. Hardware and software product development will be in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Czechia and the United States. All manufacturing will be in Europe.

The companies said that the combined revenues of the new business will be US$227 million (250 million Euro).

Wick publications are in Arizona, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oregon, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Idaho and Alaska. Wick is based in Sierra Vista, Ariz.