COLE'S NEWSWIRE, July 17, 1996

July 17, 1996
Vol. 2, No. 31

The 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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ACCUWEATHER INC.
AccuWeather, a weather data content provider based in State College, Pa., has been judged an IWAY 500 winner in the science category. Conferred by IWAY magazine, the annual IWAY 500 designation ranks the top 500 sites on the World-Wide Web. AccuWeather may be visited at http://www.accwx.com.

ASSOCIATED INFORMATION SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL INC.
AISI of Auburn, Calif., has announced the sale of its FaxAction inbound fax/OCR server to the DENVER POST. The POST will use FaxAction's editorial and advertising software to interface to its existing production systems made by System Integrators Inc.

Inbound electronic faxes, e-mail and scanned text will be automatically run through OCR (optical character recognition) on the FaxAction NT server and made available to all users and departments on the existing network. The SII classified system will cost ads; FaxAction can direct costed information to the fax sender automatically, if desired.

Jim Albright, technical services manager for the POST, said the purchase decision was based in part on AISI's "expertise with SII systems and networks in general."

In June, AISI signed an agreement with System Integrators to resell FaxAction to the SII customer base. AISI is planning to provide FaxAction interface modules into databases from Sysdeco, Advanced Publishing Technologies, Cybergraphic and CText.

CTEXT INC.
Ann Arbor, Mich.-based CText has announced the introduction of Dateline/NT, a Windows NT version of its editorial production system. Dateline/NT is based on Dateline/2, CText's OS/2-based software product. Dateline/NT uses Microsoft Word for Windows 95 as its text editor and North Atlantic Publishing's NAPSEngine composition module.

Workstations on either Dateline system can use Tandem Computers servers, or any machine capable of running Sybase System 10 or System 11. Dateline/NT has added interface features, such as drag-and-drop file management, customizable toolbars and automatic display of header information. CText is on the World-Wide Web at http://www.ctext.com/.

FREEDOM SYSTEMS INTEGRATORS INC.
FSI, based in Wichita, Kan., has announced the first North American installation of METS, FSI's Mentor Editorial Tracking System, at the ST. JOSEPH (Mo.) NEWS-PRESS (50k morning). FSI is replacing a Dewar System 2 with a Quark-based production environment, including eight copy editing, eight pagination and 10 reporting workstations.

MAXUM DEVELOPMENT CORP.
Maxum Development Corp. of suburban Chicago has begun shipping Phantom 1.1, an upgraded version of AKTIV Software's Macintosh-based web crawler (formerly called Duppies).

Phantom will scan any number of web sites and build a complete, searchable index of their HTML pages. Once a site has been scanned, Phantom allows web visitors to perform searches using simple queries. Phantom also archives and mirrors complete web sites, and performs automatic updating while providing a host of reporting and site management capabilities.

Additional features include independent server or CGI execution; a fully customizable HTML end-user interface; multi-page query responses; user name and passwords for protected sites, and automatic updating of search indexes.

Maxum also has begun shipping an upgraded version of its popular World-Wide Web server add-on application, NetForms, which enables webmasters to easily process information entered by visitors to create completely interactive web sites. NetForms can take user-submitted information and create a new HTML page, send an e-mail message, insert text into an existing page, and store the data for later processing by many applications.

NetForms 2.0 is Open Transport native, but is also fully compatible with MacTCP. Maxum may be visited on the web at http://www.maxum.com/.

MERCURY CENTER
Mercury Center, the first complete daily on-line newspaper, has announced it will leave its original electronic home, America Online, to focus on developing its web site. The change will occur Aug. 17, 1996.

Mercury Center is the electronic publishing division of the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Knight-Ridder newspaper in Northern California's Silicon Valley. Mercury Center subscription information is available at or by telephone at 1-800-818-6397.

NATURAL INTELLIGENCE INC.
Natural Intelligence of Cambridge, Mass., has announced that it has dropped the price of Roaster, an environment for creating applets in Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java programming language on the Macintosh.

The development environment was originally priced at $299 for a full subscription. Users will now have the option of buying a one-issue, non-developer release version for $129 or the full Roaster subscription for the lower price of $199. Educational pricing is set at $69. Those who purchased Roaster before this price change went into effect will receive an extension on their current subscription.

Natural Intelligence will demonstrate Roaster at Macworld Boston Aug. 7-10.

POTTSVILLE REPUBLICAN & EVENING HERALD
On July 1, the REPUBLICAN & EVENING HERALD of Pottsville, Pa., published its first e-mailed "Letter from Home," an electronic publication aimed at expatriates from Schuylkill County, Pa.

The goal of the monthly issues, written by R&EH Editor Jim Kevlin, is to keep former local people informed of happenings in their home county -- and to gauge how much interest there might be in a more comprehensive e-mail product.

The first letter went to 176 people -- residing as far away as California and Florida -- who had conversed with the newspaper via e-mail in recent months. The newspaper also solicited addresses via its web page, Schuylkill OnLine http://www.pottsville.com/.

SONIC SYSTEMS INC.
Sonic Systems, of Sunnyvale, Calif., has introduced a suite of software Internet access servers which run on any Macintosh, offering an easy and economical way for businesses to establish a presence on the 'Net as well as providing Intranet solutions.

The suite includes the E-mail Server, an SMTP/POP3 mail server with mail forwarding, group accounts and APOP security; FTP Server, which supports multiple simultaneous users; DHCP Server, which is designed to dynamically assign IP addresses and configuration information from a centralized server; DNS Server, which can act as a primary or secondary name server, and Web Server, which can handle an unlimited number of simultaneous hits.

All Sonic Internet Servers are configured and managed via InterManage, a common management interface application included with each server. Pricing is $495 for the first server, and $199 for each additional server. Sonic's web page is http://www.sonicsys.com/.

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COLE'S NEWSWIRE is compiled by Pete Wetmore and distributed by The Cole Group, publishers of THE COLE PAPERS, COLE'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING SYSTEMS and consultants to newspapers and magazines worldwide. To receive more information about The Cole Group, send e-mail to: info@colegroup.com.

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