NEXPO '95 listings

1. AD-STAR Publishing Technologies Inc.: Got a bunch of ad agencies submitting classifieds? Want 'em to be able to connect, rate the ads and submit them? Maybe you need AD-Star, the remote entry system that's installed at more than 1200 advertiser sites nationwide. The company also is moving into the world of digital display ad delivery. AD-Star sells newspapers its Telecommunications Complex, which receives liners and display ads, acknowledges their receipt, translates them, stores them, routes them and provides interfaces to various in-house systems. (310) 479-5458.

2. Adobe Systems Inc.: With its acquisition of Aldus last year, Adobe is now firmly established as a premiere player in the pre-press world. With the product line from Aldus Prepress Group (TrapWise, Color Central, PrePrint) in addition to the company's longtime hot products (Illustrator, Photoshop), Adobe will have a lot to show you here, whether you're interested in end-user applications or workflow solutions. And they may mention this Acrobat thing in the booth -- as we've detailed here recently, Acrobat (a system to provide cross-platform access to documents) can provide a number of publishing solutions, including a fully indexed database of newspaper pages. (415) 961-4400.

3. Advanced Publishing Technology: The company's Windows-based classified system provides an easy-to-use interface.

This company's nifty ACT editorial system -- glue software that links Windows applications such as Microsoft Word, Quark XPress and Adobe Photoshop -- will be offered in a pre-configured "shrink-wrap" package for 10 users at $2995. ACT Editorial provides built-in headfit routines, cutline and pull-quote management. It can support up to five publications with 25 sections each. The company also will be showing its Page Layout and Page Dummying programs, new for this year. They allow for ad dummying and "page splitting," which takes a multipage XPress document and breaks it into multiple single-page XPress documents. (818) 557-3035.

4. Advanced Technical Solutions Inc.: The piece missing from ATS' product line in years past -- a classified system -- will be rolled out at Nexpo '95: The company will introduce its Osiris Ad-Visor system at the show. A Windows-based solution, Osiris Ad-Visor will provide Wysiwyg text entry, graphics and logos in Microsoft Word, a choice of mouse or keyboard-driven commands and an unlimited number of rate structures. In addition, it will include communication interfaces to a newspaper's business systems for credit information, ad kill and expiration notices, phone number checking and credit holds -- and support for classified pagination via third-party applications such as Managing Editor's ALS. The company also will introduce its Osiris News Desk product -- which provides story, graphic and status displays for the company's Osiris II Publishing System -- and the newest version of Osiris QuikLayout. (508) 689-9161.

5. Agence France-Presse: Back when proprietary picture desks were All The Rage, AFP had a great one. Recently, though, we have seen little technology from this international provider of photos and graphics. This year the company will introduce its Macdesk data management system, which provides newsrooms with the ability to receive photos, graphics and text from AFP, other agencies and staffers in the field. Macdesk handles all the standard inputs and also deals with QuickTime and motion video files as well. The company also will introduce its Windit software for Windows-based photo reception and Mako, a Macintosh-based system that provides for remote digitizing, retouching and transmission of photos. (202) 861-8536.

6. Agile Enterprise Inc.: For the first couple of years that we saw Agile's TeamBase:SpecialEdition editorial system, we said, "MIS managers' dream; users' nightmare." But recent work with Newsweek magazine has put a lot of user-friendly features into this package and we now strongly recommend you take a hard look, especially if you're an Atex site not enamored of DewarView (SpecialEdition adopts the J11 metaphors of queues and groups). New for Nexpo '95 will be support for more operating systems (Power Macintosh, Windows 95, Windows/NT, OS/2) as well as the company's XAct Fit Quark XPress XTension that brings Quark composition over to Microsoft Word. And if you're not an Atexite, the company will show its Reference Lists and Page Collections metaphor. (603) 880-6440.

7. Applied Graphics Technologies: A Windows client for Digital Link Gateway allows photo editors to chose from an array of images.

A scanning system? A photo management system? An archiving system? AGT's Digital Link Gateway is all of the above (and, the marketing people say, more). The company's Digital Imaging Systems Division, made up of the former Kodak executives who created PhotoCD, has built a product that is used for such varied activities as processing all 3000 images shot each day by the New York Daily News, handling all the pool pictures for the O.J. Simpson trial and archiving the images of Time-Life Books' gardening series. New at Nexpo will be components of the system that will open it to more image sources and photo-editing platforms, and full database integration and storage management. (716) 277-1760.

8. The Associated Press: The PhotoLynx Pro 500 sports a built-in scanner attached to an Apple PowerBook 500-series laptop computer for remote transmission of photos.

Your friendly neighborhood news cooperative has decided to get into the comics business. No, your local chief of bureau ain't going to be writing Doonesbury or Peanuts; the wire service is testing AP Comicsend, a service that will deliver paginated comics in digital format. If you're not interested in comics pages, maybe a nice digital camera (the NC2000, gaining wide acceptance, or the Canon EOS DC3), a picture transmission system (AP PhotoLynx Pro 500), an archive (the AP Preserver, now with a search engine from Personal Library Software), a database of historical images (AP National Archive) or some digital display advertising (AP Adsend) might strike your fancy. The news service also will talk about fax, audiotext, stocks and other financial services. (212) 621-1720.

9. Atex Publishing Systems Corp.: Reeling from four top management changes in the last five years (not to mention three owners), Atex comes to Nexpo with Sysdeco Media Group, its newest swain. The new owners, who say they're a "solutions supplier and system integrator," will show Enterprise (the PC-based classified system developed by SyPress Oy; Sysdeco bought SyPress at the same time it bought Atex) and DewarView (the PC-based editorial system), as well as Classified Pagination, Architect publication design, EdPage and Press2Go pagination. Also on display will be some Sysdeco products, including Systemator (a tool for developing custom applications such as production tracking) and Tellus Vision (a geographic information system). (617) 275-2323.

10. Baseview Products Inc.: This division of Harris Publishing Systems Corp. says it has rewritten its ClassPro Macintosh-based classified system "from the ground up" to run on Power Macintoshes (though it runs on 68040 machines, too). The system has Wysiwyg placement of images and graphics as well as the ability to enter all the relevant information on one screen. The company will show its latest upgrades of its editorial products, NewsEditPro and NewsEditPro IQue, which easily handle photos and graphics for cropping and resizing. (313) 662-5800.

11. Cascade Systems Inc.: With some venture capital from a consortium lead by Adobe, The Boys from Britain have built on their suite of products: DataFlow (the company's production tracking system) has been upgraded and runs on Sun hardware, with clients for Macintosh and Windows; ImageFlow (a pre-press production control system) handles "pre-flight" checking of PostScript pages or ads; ViewFlow (a page status monitoring system) give a "virtual soft proof" of every page via Adobe's Acrobat technology, and MediaSphere (a digital archive) uses the Sybase SQL relational database. A sweet suite. (508) 794-8000.

12. CCI Europe: At this, its third Nexpo, CCI should finally gain the respect it has long deserved. The company will be able to talk about its new PC-based pagination system, its new PC-based editorial front-end, an Internet output option and its relationships with the Toronto Star, Phoenix Newspapers (Arizona Republic, Phoenix Gazette) and the Tribune Co. (Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando). A warning, though: This is one of the few suppliers that actually listens to customers. (404) 419-1588.

13. CE Engineering Publishing Systems Inc.: With a humongo order for Decade/33 from the Los Angeles Times and a co-marketing agreement with Harris Publishing Systems Corp., CE is picking up momentum. The company, founded as an alternate source of service and support for those Tandem-based systems from System Integrators Inc., has developed a way to connect PCs and Macs (Decade/Mac) to SII systems. In concert with Harris, CE has used this connectivity to move text from SII to a Harris XP-21 pagination server. CE provides alternatives that any SII site should consider. (916) 652-5263.

14. CompuText Inc.: The company's CompuClass advertising system has been upgraded to Windows on the user end and Windows/NT on the server, which is designed to run on dual Pentium processors. The classified system also supports a Sybase database, Raid (redundant array of inexpensive disks) and OLE and DDE (Microsoft interapplication communication). The latest version of CAT II, the Macintosh display ad makeup system, is one of the few products anywhere to rely on Apple's QuickDraw GX. The company also will show its Graphics Loader, an automatic picture replacement system. (713) 480-3494.

15. CText Inc.: That big sigh of relief you just heard came from a cadre of CText executives who just realized that this year they can go to Nexpo and not have to explain what's happening at the Chicago Tribune. After a seven-year gestation, the Dateline system is now being aggressively installed at the paper. This means CText will happily talk about Dateline, AdVision (the OS/2-based classified system), Alps (classified pagination that allows for multiple paginators to work on the same section simultaneously) and Expressline (editorial pagination based on Quark XPress). (313) 677-4700.

16. Cybergraphic Inc.: We haven't heard much from this Australian company in recent months, but the word is that the product line has been completely converted to Windows, SQL databases (you pick your favorite) and Alpha servers from Digital Equipment Corp. The new classified system is dubbed Cyber$ell, the new editorial system CyberNews -- and there are both editorial and classified pagination solutions (in addition to the Cybergraphic Component Manager, which seems to control the whole thing). (617) 221-0077.

17. Data Sciences Inc.: Good, solid newspaper business software -- including circulation/database marketing, single copy distribution, insert management, display ad accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, general ledger, cash register, classified transient billing and newsprint inventory -- is supplemented this year with Data Select, from On Target Media, a database marketing package with mapping and proposal output. (301) 622-6770.

18. Dewar Information Systems Corp.: Can you say "Internet"? C.E. Steuart Dewar can, and really understands what it means. Dewar's first foray into the Internet is an extension of the company's popular workgroup management package, DewarView (sold by Atex, EDS, Digital Equipment, et al.). The company says the new product "adds a seamless interface that provides direct access to any Internet browsing application" (not MacWeb, I bet). Anyway, the company will also show some other products, including LanPack (automated installation of a pre-set number of DewarView users) and CharmXT, a Quark XPress XTension that packs seven tools into one package. (708) 850-4350.

19. Digital Technology International: The company's latest offering is Javelin, an image database built on Sybase that will archive popular third-party file formats.

Don Oldham and the crew at DT have been Macintosh fans since before most newspapers had Macs. Because of this commitment, DT has prospered over the years and now is a major player in editorial and classified front-ends. New this year will be the latest version of the pagination database, the latest version of ClassSpeed (sporting native PowerPC functionality), the WAN Database and a new product, the Internet Web Publisher (a client application that changes DT typesetting tags to the HyperText Markup Language of the 'Net). Also, the company will be showing Javelin, its graphics database for third-party components, such as XPress, Illustrator, Photoshop and Multi-Ad files. Oh, and they'll have Javelin client software running on ... Windows. (801) 226-2984.

20. ECRM: Now that it can no longer build the 3850 imagesetter that Triple-I once had commissioned it to manufacture, Ecrm has introduced two high-speed imaging recorders (the VR36/HS and the VR45/HS) that run at 21 inches per minute at 1000 dpi, and the KnockOut 4450, an 18-inch-wide imagesetter with registration punches. The company also will show an FM screening module and a direct-to-plate system. (508) 851-0207.

21. Edgil Associates Inc.: With an installation of News Central under its belt at the Boston Herald, Edgil is waxing eloquent on the facets of this PC-based wire communications server. News Central can do phrase-searching on incoming wire copy and route it to specific queues on your front-end system or send it out as e-mail. Edgil also will show its EdgCapture system (PC-based check and credit card authorization) and its Ad Central system (which pulls data out of your proprietary classified system and puts it into a Sybase database). (508) 251-9932.

22. Electronic Data Systems Inc.: The General Motors subsidiary says it wants "to send a statement to the industry that we're serious and we're committed." In its first-ever Nexpo booth, EDS will have a wide variety of products it's willing and able to integrate into newspaper solutions, including the NewsEdge wire collection package, advanced macros for Microsoft Word, DewarView and a package the company developed for the New York Times that handles ad sales automation. (Conflict-of-interest alert: Though I have handled projects for the EDS/Dow Jones endeavor since 1991, I have not worked with the group that is now selling these services to the industry.) (212) 403-6010.

23. Foley, Torregiani & Associates Inc.: This group of CSI refugees has concentrated on output solutions (RIPs, OPI, recorders) but also handles sales and marketing for Northwood Publishing Systems Inc., the developers of the Universal Translation Interface (UTI) which converts traditional typesetter code to PostScript. Three new UTI modules are ClassPage (an automatic classified pagination system that utilizes galley output from traditional or desktop systems), Clip+Color (an image acquisition system that adds spot or process color logos and display ads to classified galleys or ROP pages) and HyperCopy (an extension that translates typesetter output into HyperText Markup Language). (603) 434-5100.

24. Freedom System Integrators Inc.: As the U.S. sibling of IPA Systems Ltd. (a merger of the old U.K. companies QED and GB Techniques) and the makers of the Freedom Series systems that rose from the ashes of Mycro-Tek, FSI provides both Macintosh- and PC-based solutions. New in the booth will be the Mets Windows-based editorial system (Microsoft Word and Quark XPress), LiveWire (a Macintosh-based wire collection system) and ADvance (a series of modules that handle ad sales in both Mac and Windows, and classified pagination for Macintosh). (316) 722-8100.

25. Gannett Media Technologies International: Say you've got 80-plus newspapers and they're all trying out new technologies every day. Some of them even create their own new techno whizz-bang stuff. Well, maybe you should have a way to sell this stuff to the rest of the newspaper world. This is what Gannett has done with Gmti -- the fruits of the various Gannettoids' labors will be shown for the first time at Nexpo. Products include AdLink (both the real estate and automotive versions; they automate ad taking at the Realtor's office or auto dealership), Mobile Advertising Sales System (Mass -- a PowerBook-based system that allows ad sales people to bring a wealth of information to the customer site), DiGiCol PaperDesk (a joint venture between Gannett and Digital Collections of Germany, this is the much-heralded digital archive system that's being installed at all Gannett papers) and PI (Gannett New Media Lab's personalized information system that incorporates audiotext and fax). (513) 665-3777.

26. Graph-X Publishing Systems Inc.: New this year is AdPlacer, an ad dummying product co-developed with Informatel of Canada. AdPlacer works in conjunction with Graph-X's AdTaker software, a classified or display ad order entry system, and Quark XPress, for page layout. (215) 797-5515.

27. Graphic Enterprises of Ohio Inc.: The longtime provider of large-format plain-paper laser devices will be showing its Neg Setter 1000, a chemical-free film negative imaging system that also doubles as an 18-by-24-inch plain-paper proofer. A sister product is the Pro Setter 1000, which does just plain paper. And the company will also show the latest version of its G.U.S.S. OPI and output management system. (216) 494-9694.

28. Harris Publishing Systems Corp.: Who would have thought a decade ago, when Harris was struggling to get back into the newspaper industry with a display ad makeup system, that today it would be the leading provider of pagination systems? Not only has it achieved that status, Harris has a full complement of other products, including Windows-based offerings in editorial front-end (NewsMaker), classified (Cash, and for the big players, Metrocash), image database (Imagelink), object archiving (Vantage) and page status monitoring (PageTrak). New in the booth will be Dash -- the Display Advertising System by Harris -- which migrates the company's warhorse proprietary product to Windows. (407) 242-5000.

29. Information International Inc.: Finally finding a focus, Triple-I comes into the show with additions to its 3850 imagesetter line (the Aspen, which can be set to a 3600 dpi resolution) and what the company claims is the "fastest RIP on the market" (a Harlequin running on a Sparcstation 2061 or 2071). The company also will show its Ad Manager software (which now has ad tracking features that were formerly available in its Cats product) and Output Manager. Also in the booth will be three Triple-I subsidiaries: Camex, showing an Spdl-to-PostScript converter; DigiFlex, which will patiently explain that it has more advertisers signed up to use its digital ad delivery system than any of its competitors, and Xitron, displaying its new RIPs and imagesetters. (310) 417-8400.

30. Info-Connect: This division of the Pottsville (Pa.) Republican has offered a pretty solid audiotext system for the last couple of years and is now expanding into on-line with its Info-Connect OnLine System, a turnkey bulletin board system (BBS). Features include electronic mail, on-line chat, forums, polls and questionnaires, arcade games, fax information, wakeup calls and a gateway to Internet text services. A 16-line system runs on a '486 66 MHz PC. BBSes are the key for small- to medium-sized newspapers to begin exploring on-line services and since these guys publish a medium-sized newspaper, they probably have all the features you need. (717) 628-6017.

31. John Juliano Computer Services Co.: The people who pioneered connectivity between legacy front-ends and Quark XPress have two new products -- Atan Express CD, a Quark Copy Desk XTension that allows users to import marked-up copy from an Atex system to Quark Publishing System, and Atan Html, which translates Atex markup to HyperText Markup Language. (404) 377-9450.

32. LEXIS-NEXIS: So you're supposed to deliver your newspaper's copy to a couple of commercial databases, your in-house electronic library and a supplemental wire service. And then the boss says you've got to support a commercial on-line service and a World-Wide Web server, too. Sounds like you need an army of people -- or NewsView Connections, the system that allows you to prepare the copy once and have it automatically distributed to a variety of destinations in the format demanded by each of them. Lexis-Nexis also will be showing new features for its PhotoView image archive, including support for 30 image types, four levels of preparation screens that support all NAA/Iptc fields and a Macintosh client (!). Probably kicking around the booth somewhere will be NewsView, the company's text archive. (513) 865-1819.

33. Linotype-Hell Co.: Now you see it, now you don't, now you do. That's what happened with LinoPress, the company's Macintosh-based editorial and classified front-end system that was shown in 1993 and withdrawn a year later. It's back, with more than 41 installations worldwide (two in the United States). Also in the booth will be Linotype-Hell's newest scanner, the flatbed Topaz, and the company's venerable line of imagesetters, including the Herkules Pro and the Mark series of Linotronic RIP/recorders. (516) 434-2000.

34. The Loki Group: For the last five years, Dave Rose and the gang at Loki have been doing a good job of supporting those orphaned CSI systems. Now the company has developed the Loki Ad Server, a classified ad routing system and SQL database that runs on mostly Microsoft stuff (Windows/NT, Windows for Workgroups, SQL Server). The Ad Server connects to Crosfield (née CSI) 2400 and Atex classified systems (Atex connectivity is achieved through Pcmplus from Computerease Software of Warren, R.I.) and will accept the new Naa 841 Edi Lite standard ad orders. The company is also providing 841 Edi Lite clients for newspapers to distribute to agencies and advertisers so they can send in compliant transactions. (312) 761-4654.

35. Managing Editor Inc.: With an influx of cash from Adobe's venture capital arm and a big win at the Seybold Boston new product competition, MEi will be pushing the latest version of its Ad Layout System -- which is now PowerMac native, allows for scripting, has conflict checking, an enhanced print manager, unlimited codes and classes, an enhanced pagination manager and a views palette. ALS, along with MEi's other Page Director products (Classified Layout System, Editorial Layout System, Managing Editor XT Pro and AdForce), all automate the use of Quark XPress in making up a newspaper. (215) 886-5662.

36. Metro Creative Graphics: This leading supplier of advertising clip art has finally realized that its biggest competitor -- Multi-Ad -- has a computer application that makes up display ads. MCG went a slightly different route: It has developed a Quark XTension -- AdCreation Toolkit -- that provides a number of features to QXP to make it more ad makeup friendly (layouts expressed in standard advertising units, job information including AdTraX time logging, star bursts, shadow and 3-D shadow, format price and automatic save as EPS). For newspapers that want to standardize on XPress, a good choice. (212) 947-5100.

37. Micro Systems Specialists Inc.: We've always had a soft spot for Mssi, a small provider of business applications that sticks by its customers. The product portfolio -- Circulation Manager, Advertising Manager, Newsprint Manager and Accounting Manager -- all run on DOS in either stand-alone or networked mode. They're solid apps from a solid company. (914) 677-6150.

38. Mission Critical Technologies Inc.: Is the classified department awash in faxes that someone has to key in? Maybe you need AdFAX and Adfast, Mcti's products for converting faxed material into ads that are logged and stored on Mcti's server and then passed to your classified front-end system. New features of the products will include fax acknowledgment of receipt and processing of the ad, a new optical character recognition engine (TextBridge from Xerox), user-tunable directories and a new spellchecker. (508) 287-0018.

39. Monotype Systems Inc.: An internal drum recorder, the company's new EM6000, has an image area of 20-by-25- inches and supports a resolution of 1016 dpi at 29.5-inches per minute.

After a brush with a potential merger and the loss of a popular product (Triple-I's 3850), Monotype has rebounded with three new internal drum recorders (the EM8000, EM6000 and EM4000; the last is 14.8-by-25-inches, 1270 or 2540 dpi and priced at $59,500) and enhanced features for its Monotype Graphics System (MGS-3), a RIP-to-recorder router/OPI/PostScript error-checking system that now supports e-mail warnings of error conditions. (708) 427-8800.

40. Multi-Ad Services Inc.: New versions of almost its entire product line -- Multi-Ad Creator, Multi-Ad Search and Cams (a Macintosh-based classified system) -- will be highlighted in the booth. Creator will be at Version 3.8 (supporting drag-and-drop, a new interface and Adobe Acrobat compatibility); Search will be at Version 3.1 (sporting native PowerPC code, drag-and-drop and support for Quark XPress thumbnails), and Cams will be at Version 4 (with an improved rate table, unlimited customer discounts and Managing Editor Classified Layout System support). Also shown will be the company's ad clip-art systems. (309) 692-1530.

41. NewsCom: A full complement of information providers (Agence France-Presse, Federal News Service, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, New York Times News Service, NYT Syndicate, Solo Syndication, UPI Photos) is supplemented by a sophisticated communications network (Isdn, 28.8 dial-up, Internet access) and a good user interface (based on the First Class system) to give NewsCom a solid base for offering information and communication services to newspapers worldwide. The company will talk about its new, low-cost dial-up access in 75 countries, enhanced browsing of photos and graphics, and a World-Wide Web server. (305) 448-8411.

42. Publishing Business Systems: If churn and retention reports are your bread and butter (or, as Woody Allen once said, one of your various breads and butters), PBS has a new feature in its MediaPlus line of business applications for you: a churn and retention analysis based on the NAA's benchmark study. The company says that the MediaPlus line -- including Advertising Management, Circulation Management, Insert Management, General Accounting and Computer-Based Training -- also has new features that provide for consumer profiling, penetration reporting, target marketing for managing inserts, alternate delivery and direct marketing. (708) 699-5727.

43. Publishing Partners International: The company that started life as a Hastech support group now has a full-fledged classified system based on Windows. Options include transient billing, advertising receivables, contract management, month-end invoicing and classified pagination. Demonstrations will focus on some "special projects," including multiproduct cross-selling, intra-site ad cross-selling, and classified graphics and logos. (603) 644-3339.

44. Quark Inc.: Probably the most interesting thing in either of the company's two booths will be the new Orion multimedia creation tool, which those in the know think is "way cool." If you're not creating multimedia, though, you might want to look at Quark's new image-editing application, XPosure. As for the company's editorial front-end, Quark Publishing System (QPS), the plans are to show QuarkConnect for Windows, a module that allows newspapers to use Microsoft Word for Windows in a QPS environment, and Apple Remote Access also running in QPS. The company also will be giving a boost to our friends from QuickWire Labs in Hamilton, Ontario, who've written a nice wire-collection program that feeds QPS (and other systems as well). (303) 894-8888.

45. Reuters America Inc.: This worldwide supplier of news, information, graphics and photos will be talking about its revamped North American Business Report, which provides newspaper editors with access to breaking company news as it's delivered to the financial community; its News Pictures Service, which along with the Bettmann Archive has built a database of more than 30,000 photos accessible on PressLink, and its News Graphics Service that is now available via satellite (any newspaper with a Reuter Photo satellite receiver will be able to get graphics in Illustrator and EPS formats six days a week -- seven days in the event of breaking news). And the company is finally allowing papers to install its Reuter Terminal, which provides the same information that's sold to traders and brokers. (202) 898-8413.

46. Scitex America Corp.: With last year's addition of the P.INK Macintosh-based editorial system, Scitex now has a complete soup-to-nuts set of publishing solutions: front-ends, imaging and output. From the tail end of the process, Scitex will be having a hands-on workshop to demonstrate the advantages of its ResoLUT NewsImage Mac board which handles lower quality images (i.e., wire service pictures) better through RGB-to-Cymk lookup tables. More toward the front, the company will show P.INK Media, a publication archive, the new Iris Realist inkjet printer, the Dolev 4press imagesetter and a line of servers and image archive solutions based on the IBM RS/6000 workstation. (617) 275-5150.

47. Siemens Nixdorf/ISGI: He's b-a-c-k -- Danny Chapchal, that is. After losing out on a last-minute bid to keep Atex from the clutches of the Norwegians, Chapchal has resurfaced with Siemens Nixdorf/Isgi (a consortium of those big German companies, Linotype-Hell and Siemens) and what he describes as "sensational" PC-based editorial and advertising systems developed in Germany. Chapchal and the consortium promise a sales-and-support organization on this side of the Pond; expect to find some familiar (you used to see them at Atex) faces in the booth. (404) 640-6463.

48. Softek USA: Speaking of Atex, if you haven't been enamored of WinPref (Atex's Windows client), then maybe you should look at WinText, Softek's much superior implementation (there are also MacText and OSText for those who aren't fond of Windows and prefer the Macintosh or OS/2). The small company will show its new Unix/Atex Toolbox -- which permits manipulation of the file system from the Unix environment, enabling users to copy, move, delete and retrieve Atex files -- and its Compression/Archive Manager, which allows the off-loading and compression of Atex files onto any PC or Unix database. (214) 980-2890.

49. The Software Construction Co.: The merger of two Atlanta-based software houses (one of them was IronMike Software) has produced SCC, which specializes in photo distribution management software. The product line includes SCC PhotoGrid Pro, a Mac or Windows application that monitors a folder or directory, producing a grid of thumbnails to view the photos that have arrived; Offline, a set of utilities that integrate a Kodak Professional PCD 100 CD-ROM jukebox with an AppleSearch image database, and the Reception Kit series of products that handle background batch-processing of incoming wire service images from AP, Reuters and AFP (all come in Mac versions; the Reuters product also comes in a Windows version). If you're trying to manage your photos in-house, SCC may have the solution for you. (404) 457-7661.

50. Software Consulting Services: New at SCS will be its Internet Server, providing full Internet services (World-Wide Web, etc.) in a turnkey package at less than $9000. Also on display will be the company's Customer Focused Integration, a suite of database products that includes classified order entry, display ad order entry, ad tracking, ad management, classified pagination and circulation, allowing a publisher to have one customer-service room. The rest of the SCS product line -- Layout 8000, Newsprint Inventory, Editorial with Personal Librarian and SCS/LinX -- also will be displayed. (610) 837-8080.

51. SRA International: A bigtime software development house and systems integrator, SRA built the core software for Picture Network International's Seymour on-line stock photo archive, which provides natural-language searches, search-by-example and concept-based searching. The company has the rights to market that software for in-house use at businesses that have lots of photos -- like newspapers. SRA has dubbed the software PhotoFile and will be showing it along with IntelliSearch (for querying multiple databases from the same client) and NameTag (a system that recognizes important elements in text such as names, places and monetary values). (703) 803-1605.

52. System Integrators Inc.: Nine months out of Chapter 11 and with two reorgs under its belt, SII will show its new Amtx classified system client running under OS/2 with the latest version of its Czar (complex zoning and rating) Advertising System. The latest version of the company's MTX Layout (a.k.a. INL) system will be shown, along with a prototype of SAL, the company's new edition design and ad dummying client. (916) 929-9481.

53. T/One Inc.: The latest offering from this small New England company is Trax, a photo assignment database that was co-developed with the New York Times. Trax provides reporters and editors with the ability to create a photo assignment and pass it off to an assignment editor, who can keep an entire "daybook" view of potential assignments. This information can be attached to the completed photo and ultimately archived along with the scan. You don't have an archive? Well, T/One does -- it's called Merlin, and more than a dozen newspapers have purchased it. If you'd like to bring some cohesion to your photo department, then the combo of Trax and Merlin really can't be beat. (707) 778-9282.

54. Tribune Media Services: New at TMS this year will be TV Week Interactive (a software package that can be delivered to users via a newspaper's on-line service, allowing them to be alerted when particular shows, movies, actors or other categories of programming will be airing) and WebPoint (a World-Wide Web initiative). The company also will show its TMS TV Listings, Stocks and Weather, Voice News Network, Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, Picture Network International (the on-line stock photo agency) and US/Express, the canned Total Market Coverage package. (312) 222-4444.

55. TV Data Technologies: If Tribune has an interactive TV package, so must TV Data -- it's called TV Data OnLine and it's a Windows-based listings application that provides readers with "the ability to interact with and customize their TV listings." Part of TV Data's sales point is that since TV Data handles information for more than 7000 cable systems, readers can choose the channels available on their cable system. Also on display will be the company's latest version of TransEdit, the television book publishing application that now has automated editing tools, a floating tool palette and the ability to edit rolling logs using a variety of specifications to customize the log until the desired amount of text has been cut. (518) 792-9914.

56. Unified Publishing: This wildly inexpensive editorial system -- the Publishing Manager -- is based on Word for Windows and glue software; the company will explain how it replaced an Atex system at American Banker/Bond Buyer in New York City with the Publishing Manager (three months from signed contract to Quark pagination) and its 14 other installation stories. The company also will be touting its training course, "Photoshop for News Photographers." (617) 367-0907.

57. Vision Data Equipment Corp.: The company will be showing its new Preview Display Advertising Management System, which uses a fourth-generation language graphical user interface and a customer's choice of relational databases. In addition, the company's Integrated Customer Service System (circulation, display and classified) allows the applications to run simultaneously on one screen (combined phone room) -- and the Classified System has acquired a new user interface. (518) 434-2193.

58. Vu/Text Library Services Inc.: This longtime supplier of service bureau electronic libraries seems to have successfully made the transition to a software company, with a group of packages that work around the core Save product. New this year are Saveweb, a gateway providing access to a Save system via the World-Wide Web; Savexporter, a Quark XTension for extracting text out of XPress pages and moving them to the electronic library; Savextract, which allows sites to pull a group of stories from a database, cut a tape and send it off for CD-ROM writing or such, and Savefax, which allows stories to be faxed out of the Save system. (215) 587-4410.

59. WeatherData Inc.: Whether your weather feature desires run to Georgie Global (a cartoon character that provides a daily weather or environmental tip), or Skywatch (a daily astronomical fact), or just a plain old weather map, the folks at WeatherData are for you. (316) 265-9127.

60. Wieck Photo Database Inc.: Images and captions can be browsed in Wieck's newspaper software, making choices easier -- and the newspaper doesn't pay for download time.

This distributor of photos -- which collects money from the companies that maintain the databases, not the papers that download the images -- will be demonstrating its ability to deliver photos and display advertising via the Internet, in addition to showing off its new bulletin board software. Picture providers include the New York Times News Service, AFP, Kyodo, Universal Press Syndicate and Empics (sports and special events coverage). In addition, the company says that it will start offering editorial cartoons and other feature material on its Internet service. (214) 392-0888.

-- dmc

From THE COLE PAPERS, July 1995, Copyright (c) 1995, All Rights Reserved.