The Cole Papers, Picks1-16, June 2000

June 2000

AdStar.com Inc. (left):
Advertise123.com, AdStar's on-line classified ad order entry service bureau, represents the reason AdStar became an IPO sensation.

Digital Technology International: A new palette comes up in DTI's latest verions of AdSpeed to allow the scheduling of ads for use on a newspaper's World-Wide Web site.

1. AdLizard: Display-ad makeup on the World-Wide Web with just a browser? No previous ad makeup experience necessary? Automatic delivery of the ad to the newspaper? With just any one of these three benefits, AdLizard -- a new product from Australia -- would be worth a stop at NEXPO 2000. But with all three, a mandatory visit for both advertising and production personnel. And that recommendation comes despite the fact that the company uses the phrase "genuine paradigm shift." {011} (61-2) 8920-9200; e-mail: brian@adlizard.com.

2. Adobe Systems Inc.: Never heard back from Adobe on what it plans to show, but you can rest assured that the phrases "InDesign" and "InCopy" will be uttered on more than one occasion. Though InCopy has been shown since last October, it wasn't quite ready for prime time last year in Las Vegas, so this will be the editorial tool's NEXPO debut. InCopy provides standard word processing functions, which are enhanced with ties into the InDesign page layout product as well as providing collaboration through WebDAV server technology. The company says that InCopy will be the basis for a number of products developed by other companies and system integration firms. (408) 536-6000; e-mail: info@adobe.com.

3. AdStar.com Inc.: Who would have thought that a company that sold a client/server remote classified ad entry system would successfully transition itself to become a dot-com IPO sensation? Probably not Leslie Bernhardt, the chief executive of AdStar, who founded the company in 1986. AdStar has developed Advertise123.com, a Web portal for purchasing classified ads for both the professional and non-professional advertiser. In addition, the company will be showing its new agency/contract application, which allows agencies and contract advertisers the ability to place classified ads directly into more than 43 newspapers using the AdStar DOS- and Windows-based applications (which sounds suspiciously like the traditional AdStar program). (310) 577-8255; e-mail: info@adstar.com.

4. Advanced Publishing Technology Inc.: We at The Cole Papers have always been high on APT, a supplier of Wintel-based editorial and advertising systems scaled for the smaller newspaper, but this year the company seems to want to bring more to the party than ever. APT apparently has developed a turn-key community on-line newspaper publishing system that handles a wide variety of the not-so-fun tasks of getting the paper out of a pre-press system and on-line -- automatically. In addition, APT will show its newly acquired AdMaster multiplatform ad tracking application, the latest version of ACT Advertising and PageMaster, the company's new page layout application. (818) 557-3035; e-mail: aptsales@advpubtech.com.

5. Advanced Technical Solutions Inc.: There must be something about the word "advanced" that gets our engines running. ATS, too, has been a longtime Cole Papers favorite and this year is no different: buttressing a new editorial system -- it's called MediaDesk and it brings a Microsoft Outlook face to an editorial application that can use either Quark XPress or Adobe InDesign for page layout -- are new offerings in ad order entry (the AdOnTime, AdFAX and AdFast products from Open Market - née FutureTense, née Mission Critical -- are now being handled by ATS), Windows classified and run-of-press pagination (ATS now represents Informatel's AdPlacer product) and circulation software (CNT Corp. of Phoenix -- a subsidiary of Central Newspapers -- is selling its Circ2000 product through ATS). (978) 657-6500; e-mail: lainal@atsusa.com.

6. Agile Enterprise Inc.: Now a division of Applied Graphics Technologies Inc. (the big pre-press house owned in part by New York Daily News honcho Mortimer Zuckerman), Agile remains, uh, agile. One of the first suppliers to get the integration of Microsoft Word and Quark XPress right, Agile now has moved beyond what it calls the "print-centric view of the universe" and says that the latest version of its TeamBase cross-platform workflow system now serves as an "asset manager" for text, pages and graphics (both high- and low-resolution) and an "automation engine" for producing HTML, XML and any other ML you might want. Here's an interesting sentence from the company's packet: "Bureaus can browse the database, import and export files and design Quark [XPress] and Web pages using only [Microsoft] Internet Explorer." You might want to see a demo of that. (603) 880-6440; e-mail: ttlynch@agileenterprise.com.

7. ASTech InterMedia: Maps and mapping are the Next Big Thing in marketing and sales and ASTech -- a longtime provider of newspaper marketing software, including AnalytiX, a database marketing system -- has co-developed a product, Media Sense, pointed at newspapers. The product automates the direct marketing selection and insertion process, allowing sales reps to help advertisers make more cost-effective direct marketing buying decisions. Newspapers can customize the software for their markets and even open it up to advertisers for their own use. (303) 296-9966; e-mail: ter@astech-intermedia.com.

8. Atex Media Solutions: The venerable newspaper system supplier encounters the same problem as so many others in the industry have in the past -- it has to convince you to come to its booth to see the product it announced last year. In this case, Omnex -- the "revolutionary" editorial and content management system -- will undoubtedly be further along in its development and maybe (just maybe) there will be a real domestic beta site announced. Also on display will be Prestige -- Atex's Microsoft Word and Quark XPress editorial system that heretofore had been marketed exclusively overseas, but which now will replace DewarView -- as well as Atex Online Advertising (a product that allows advertisers and the public to "conveniently" book and search ads from the publisher's web site), based on the company's Enterprise classified advertising system. (781) 275-2323; e-mail: info@atex.com.

9. Autologic Information International Inc.: Rather than just trying to sell you a computer-to-plate (CTP) device, AII has built an entire workflow solution for CTP -- ranging from the Aps 3850 CTP Wide Imager to the company's APS Plateroom Manager software. The company says that a "clear picture" of each edition and page status can be tracked from input through to the press-start; the software provides deadline warnings as well as the fact that it will support barcode-readers to log non-digital steps along the way. (805) 498-9611; e-mail: ldavis@autologic.com.

10. Baseview Products Inc.: A new suite of e-commerce functions will be the highlight of this longtime Macintosh-based system supplier's exhibit. Both LiveIQue -- the company's dynamic web page creation system -- and ArchiveIQue -- Baseview's editorial library product -- will support features that will allow newspapers to sell archived files and images or require users to pay for access to a site (which can be broken down into time components, charge per file or charge against a line of pre-paid credit). In addition, Baseview will show its "Liners Online" product (allowing for classified ads to be entered on-line), as well as its latest version of its circulation management product (there's Web access there too) and its production digital asset management system. (734) 662-5800; e-mail: steve_trombino@baseview.com.

11. Camera Bits Inc.: So, you just went out and bought a bunch of digital cameras (doesn't matter if they were for editorial or advertising) and the publisher is complaining that the color reproduction from them is lousy. Maybe it isn't your cameras or your shooters -- maybe it's "color noise." This and other artifacts from the all-digital process can hamper quality reproduction; Camera Bits has developed a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop -- called Quantum Mechanic -- which will remove these artifacts. The company also has a nice image browser. (503) 531-8430; e-mail: info@camerabits.com.

12. CCI Europe Inc.: Can newspapers like the Chicago Tribune, the Arizona Republic, the Washington Post, USA Today or the Los Angeles Times be wrong? (Don't answer that.) All are CCI customers and all have been pushing CCI to come up with a variety of Internet publishing and on-line media functions. The company will be showing its new XML-based import and export facilities for CCI NewsDesk, along with its new CCI MediaStore (a "future-oriented" archive solution for newspaper and multimedia publishing co-developed with IBM). Also, the company will show its CCI WebAccess product, which provides -- surprise -- access to the CCI NewsDesk system from the Web, as well as an example of wireless communication with "full CCI NewsDesk functionality." (770) 420-1100; e-mail: info@ccieurope.com.