Capitol Wire operates a subscription-based web site serving government, politics and business with in-depth news and other information from news bureaus in five state capitals: Trenton, N.J.; Albany, N.Y.; Columbus, Ohio; Harrisburg, Pa., and Richmond, Va. Capitol Wire was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Middletown, Pa.

According to Knight Ridder, even though the implementation schedule for all the newspapers has yet to be determined, three newspapers have been approved for a system implementation this year, beginning with the KANSAS CITY STAR.

Rightslink Permissions will enable the newspaper to instantly license reuse of copyrighted content. Customers can get immediate permission to reproduce articles by clicking on a rights and permissions link located near the articles.

CCC also said that MSNBC.com and VNU eMedia Inc. have announced that they are adopting Rightslink.

An MSNBC.com visitor can use Rightslink to receive a news presentation that combines audio, video and text on a particular topic. For example, the MSNBC interactive "On the Front Lines" shows deployments of troops in the Middle East against a map of the region.

VNU eMedia Inc. of New York City had also installed Rightslink. The company is a division of VNU Business Media, whose titles include ADWEEK, the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, BILLBOARD and PROGRESSIVE GROCER.

The PlateDriver QPS 4 exposes plates as large as 26.7-inches-by-29.5-inches (680mm-by-750mm) for four-up formats. The plates are easy to load using the semiautomatic feed-table, although those who prefer automatic plate handling will be able to purchase an optional set loader, available toward the end of this year. The PlateDriver QPS 4 employs a Bacher 2000 register system, able to punch plates for most standard B2/B3 printing presses. Imaging resolutions are ranging from 1200 dots-per-inch (dpi) to resolutions as high as 3175 dpi, with screen rulings up to 1016 lines per inch (400 lines per cm) possible.

Esko-Graphics is the result of the recent merger between Purup-Eskofot A/S, a supplier of pre-press equipment to the graphics industry, and Barco Graphics, a supplier for digital pre-production systems to the packaging industry.

The agreement allows GMTI to market the JK&A digital tearsheet system in combination with GMTI's Digital Collections' Ad Archive for archiving digital tearsheets (newspaper pages that include advertisements) and making them available for web access by newspaper advertisers.

The DC4 Ad Archive is designed to allow advertisers to easily access digital tearsheets via full-text search and retrieval. Tearsheets can be viewed and downloaded using a common web browser.

The JK&A digital tearsheet system automates the scanning of printed newspaper pages and the processing of the resulting digital (tearsheet) page files for database storage and retrieval, as well as e-mail distribution. The combined systems will be sold by GMTI at a base price of $59,000 (software only).

The ad-takers at each site are networked to the servers in Richmond via Citrix MetaFrame connections. The centralized setup simplifies the information technology burden of supporting newspapers dispersed across a wide geographic area.

The paper will also be using Mactive's WebBase software for Internet ad order entry. The system will include an INSI A/R interface, a credit card clearinghouse interface and a RightFax fax-out interface. Windows 2000 clients will be running on Sun Fire V880 servers with an Oracle database.

Mactive also said that LOOT, a Brooklyn-based classified advertising paper, purchased a 22-seat AdBase system for ad input and classified pagination. The paper will also be using WebBase for Internet order entry. Available each Wednesday, LOOT is sold throughout Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Westchester County and Long Island, reaching more than 100,000 readers weekly.

During a 15-week transition and working with Nando's technical support team, the DAILY NEWS completed its first major redesign in several years and launched the new site using Nando's template-driven design tools.

Nando also said it had acquired the technology and customer base for three successful community publishing tools from Waveshift Inc. Waveshift developed and licensed YourTown, MyCalendar and Webforums to newspaper companies across the United States and Canada. The company will now concentrate its development and marketing efforts on its SportsHuddle publishing system.

The deal is for a two-phased project culminating in the rollout of Insiight within the whole newsroom with Adobe InDesign for pagination. The first phase is to implement 110 Coyote XE and 12 Coyote Layout workstations to replace aging MTX editorial and pagination SII-based software. The WORLD plans to convert these licenses over to Insiight licenses over time.

The company also said that it had opened of a new office in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, earlier this summer. Net-Linx recently took over the lead role in sales and support in Brazil as a result of the cancellation of a pre-existing distribution agreement between EMData of Belo Horizonte and CText Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich.

CText was acquired by Net-Linx in June 2000 at the same time as the Net-Linx acquisition of System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento. Net-Linx said EMData, a division of Brazilian newspaper publisher Associados Media Group, is no longer acting as a distributor of software.

This agreement with NYTimes.com marks the first premium archived news service offered by Yahoo!.

Relevant search results will appear as a paid archive and branded as content from the NEW YORK TIMES. Archived articles dating back to Jan. 1, 2000 may be purchased for $2.50 each, the same price as single archive units on NYTimes.com, and users will complete the transaction on Yahoo! News. In addition, top current news from NYTimes.com will continue to be available through Yahoo! News for free.