COLE'S NEWSWIRE, June 5, 2002

June 5, 2002
Vol. 8, No. 20

COLE'S NEWSWIRE is a weekly distribution of information about the sales and installations of publishing technology and the latest news on new products developed by suppliers to the industry.

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ADSTAR INC.
This Marina Del Rey, Calif.-based application service provider for the classified advertising industry has announced that it has entered into a strategic alliance that includes about $1.8 million in funding from Tribune Co. of Chicago, for a new series of preferred stock convertible into 1.4 million shares of common stock.

Through this alliance, AdStar will provide web-based recruitment ad sales technology to all major-market Tribune newspapers, including the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, LOS ANGELES TIMES and NEWSDAY. Ad agency and employer customers will be able to create, schedule and purchase print ads to run in the CareerBuilder-branded print help wanted sections, as well as place these ads on the CareerBuilder web site, http://www.careerbuilder.com/.

AdStar is on the Web at http://www.adstar.com/.

AGFA MONOTYPE CORP.
This provider of fonts and font technology has released version 4.4 of its Universal Font Scaling Technology (UFST), which features support for Asian stroke-based fonts, providing original equipment manufacturers the ability to embed Japanese, Chinese or Korean character sets while benefiting from reduced memory or storage requirements.

Agfa Monotype's scalable stroke-based fonts consist of composite strokes or "graphemes" -- simple shapes used repeatedly to build complex Asian characters. Graphemes offer storage savings, as the same graphemes are used to construct the various characters that can add up to thousands in a single font. Agfa Monotype's stroke-based fonts are both native and Unicode-encoded, and are available for Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages.

Agfa Monotype Corp., based in Wilmington, Mass., is on the Web at http://www.agfamonotype.com/ and http://www.fonts.com/.

ALFAQUEST TECHNOLOGIES
New York's ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE (176k), a Gannett-owned newspaper, has installed ink presetting and soft proofing systems using AlfaQuest's PrintExpress system.

AlfaQuest Technologies was formerly known as Monotype Systems Inc.

The PrintExpress Ink Presetting module calculates ink coverage from high resolution bitmaps and outputs to press control systems by creating CIP3/CIP4 preview files. AlfaQuest developed a custom MAN Roland interface to download CIP3 files to the DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE's PECOM Press Control System.

AlfaQuest, based in Rolling Meadows, Ill., is on the Web at http://www.monoexpress.com/.

THE BROADCAST TEAM INC.
This Ormond Beach, Fla.-based direct marketing company has introduced RealCall to the newspaper industry.

The patented technology is able to leave natural-sounding voice messages in their entirety on consumer answering devices. Because the technology launches the messages at the moment the answering device goes into the recording mode, RealCall creates the impression that someone took the time to call personally.

The company says that its system can make more than 3.2 million calls daily.

The Broadcast Team is a licensee of the Donnelley Consumer Data File, which includes more than 160 million U.S. household records with demographic and psychographic info. The company also has e-mail appending services where it can take the newspaper database and append up to 25 percent of the file with good e-mail addresses.

The Broadcast Team is on the Web at http://www.tbteam.com/ and http://www.realcallworks.com/.

ENFOCUS SOFTWARE NV
Twofoldmedia, based in the Netherlands, has chosen Enfocus Software as its preferred partner to provide a reliable and secure workflow using Portable Document Format (PDF) files for its new electronic service, which unites publishers and advertisers in a unique business transaction.

Twofoldmedia has developed an advertising service which allows daily newspapers to fill unsold advertising space on deadline, and provides advertising agencies with last-minute opportunities for bargain prices. The company has developed an on-line advertisement database -- advertisers simply register with Twofoldmedia, submit ad copy along with target group profiles for each ad and a cost per lead they are willing to pay.

The database automatically links the ads with the most relevant titles and publishers according to the profile. Publishers can look at the ad on the Internet before accepting it, downloading and placing it -- all without the intervention of a third party. Twofoldmedia handles responses to the advertisement and the advertiser can examine the results on-line (as measured by Didoc Data Services). The cost of the ad insertion is calculated by simply multiplying the number of respondents by the agreed lead price.

With Enfocus' Instant PDF, advertisers create PDF files according to supplied PDF profiles, check them and then supply them to the database.

The company also said that it and Screen Europe had agreed to integrate Enfocus Certified PDF technology into Trueflow, the digital workflow system from Screen. The agreement paves the way for the recently released Enfocus Instant PDF and Enfocus PitStop Professional to be bundled into the Screen digital workflow software.

Enfocus is based in Ghent, Belgium, and has U.S. offices in San Mateo, Calif. It is on the Web at http://www.enfocus.com/.

MACTIVE INC.
Village Voice Media of New York City has signed a contract with Mactive for the installation of AdBase systems at all seven of its publications.

Village Voice Media publications, which have a combined circulation of 900,000, are the VILLAGE VOICE, LA WEEKLY, SEATTLE WEEKLY, CITY PAGES of Minneapolis-St. Paul, CLEVELAND FREE TIMES, OC WEEKLY of Orange County, Calif., and the NASHVILLE SCENE. The company also owns web sites and Voice Radio, an Internet radio station at http://radio.villagevoice.com/.

Village Voice Media purchased an AdBase system for classified, ROP and display ad order entry, classified pagination and ad dummying. The contract also includes WebBase for web ad order entry and Money Manager for accounts receivable. The system will have fax in/fax out capabilities. The company will utilize Microsoft Windows 2000 clients and servers with a Microsoft SQL database.

The company also announced that it had installed a 553-seat AdBase system at the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (268k) and Contra Costa Newspapers, publishers of the CONTRA COSTA TIMES (183k) and three other daily titles. The installation is part of the company's sole-supplier agreement with Knight Ridder of San Jose.

Further, the company has announced that it has released two new products, AdLink and PageLink. AdLink provides ad production management features such as assignment, creation and deployment. PageLink gives ad producers that ability to place and preview ads using any Quark XPress-based pagination system. The tool places ad stacks directly onto XPress pages and automatically generates predefined ad reservation boxes and populates them with assigned ads.

Mactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fusio of Helsingborg, Sweden, is located in Melbourne, Fla., and is on the Web at http://www.mactive.com/.

MANAGING EDITOR INC.
This Jenkintown, Pa.-based software development and integration company has announced the release of Roundhouse 2.7 for Windows. This version of its ad tracking system incorporates the product's most recent innovations with Windows compatibility, offering PC-based publishers an enterprise-wide advertising workflow system with benefits for ad builders, manufacturing managers, sales reps, customers and editorial paginators.

Roundhouse features system connectivity with MEI's Page Director Ad Layout System for dynamic deadline management between ad production and pagination. It also offers web-based ad proofing for sales reps and customers, page status monitoring and approval for newsroom page editors, and revenue-tracking capabilities for profit-and-loss analysis by ad, issue or user.

Managing Editor is on the Web at http://www.maned.com/.

NEWSENGIN INC.
The COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN (10k) has deployed NewsEngin's My NewsEngin editorial suite as its new editorial system. In addition to full editorial workflow, the MISSOURIAN will use NewsEngin's tools to capture wire stories and to track photos, graphics and stories.

The MISSOURIAN plans to use a Quark XTension from IPTech to give the newsroom a bidirectional editorial system. The MISSOURIAN is a daily newspaper operated by the University of Missouri School of Journalism, the oldest journalism school in the world.

NewsEngin, based in Narberth, Pa., is on the Web at http://www.newsengin.com/.

NORTHERN LIGHTS DATASYSTEMS INC.
The BAY CITY (Mich.) TIMES (38k) has installed the JobMinder photo assignment system in conjunction with the newspaper's new Digital Collections DC4 archive from Gannett Media Technologies International (GMTI) of Cincinnati. It was the first combined installation as part of a new agreement between Northern Lights and GMTI.

Minneapolis-based Northern Lights is on the Web at http://www.jobminder.net/.

TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
The PRESS ENTERPRISE (169k) of Riverside, Calif., the CONTRA COSTA TIMES (183k) of Walnut Creek, Calif., the MORNING STAR (54k) of Wilmington, N.C., and Florida's NAPLES DAILY NEWS (45k) are new clients of TMS' Weather Page Service.

TMS will provide the weather coverage in these regional newspapers with customized, fully paginated daily weather data, weather forecasts and weather maps -- covering local, national and international weather.

The weather pages feature full color graphics and are prepared in partnership with Weather Central and the Weather Channel. TMS Weather Page Service gives newspaper readers weather details for 1500 national and 300 international cities.

TMS, a subsidiary of Tribune Co. of Chicago, is on the Web at http://www.tms.tribune.com/.

SAXOTECH INC.
The New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYTRNG), a division of the New York Times Co., has purchased and is now implementing SAXoTECH's Publicus Online Publishing System to produce the web sites for 13 of its daily newspapers.

Publicus will be used to publish the web sites of newspapers such as the GADSDEN (Ala.) TIMES, http://www.gadsdentimes.com/, the TUSCALOOSA (Ala.) NEWS, http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/ and the GAINESVILLE (Fla.) SUN, http://www.gainesvillesun.com/.

The NYTRNG contract includes the Publicus Base System plus add-on modules which include Publicus Query Module for polling, Publicus Agenda Module for event scheduling and Publicus Multi-Channel Module for wireless and handheld devices and e-mail publishing.

Publicus will be integrated with existing editorial and advertising front-end systems in use by the 13 papers, including systems from Unisys, Atex, SII, DTI and Baseview. The NYTRNG contract also includes training, consulting services, support and software maintenance.

SAXoTECH, with U.S. offices in Rockville, Md., is on the Web at http://www.saxotech.com/.

THE SOFTWARE CONSTRUCTION CO.
North Carolina's FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER (73k) has announced the purchase of SCC's MediaServer multimedia production and archive database system.

The MediaServer installation replaces a legacy AP Preserver system, and will be used as the newspaper's main picture desk and photo assignment system as well as a photo and graphics archive. The system includes SCC MediaServer Web Access and Assignment Modules. It will provide access to 20 concurrent SCC MediaGrid and Web browser clients.

Atlanta-based SCC is on the Web at http://www.swcc.com/.

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