The Cole Papers May 2003

Gannett Media Technologies International: The photo processing capabilities for editing images in the company's new Advanced Media Processor, allow for easy addition of captions and tags.

Mactive Inc. (left): The company's new InterClass product allows users to search without limiting themselves to one type of ad; the results can be displayed as HTML or as objects in a list.

MerlinOne Inc. (right): A completely rewritten photo and graphics assignment system, Trax 4 allows editors, reporters, artists and photographers to view assignments on a web browser.

Modulo Systems Corp. (upper left): Gadgets, an advertising suite, has a browser-based reporting and monitoring tool.

Net-linx Publishing Solutions (top): nxEdge is designed to help publishers manage the task of building display ads.

NewsEngin Inc. (left): EventTracker stores calendar and event data, which can be edited in a web browser.

17. Edeal Services Corp.: On-line auctions have always been an interesting aspect of the Internet. Not just because they're so successful, but because they didn't work out for newspapers in the first pass. Auction ADvantage uses a barter arrangement with advertisers, who trade products or services for ad credits in the paper for the retail price of their contribution. The products then go to auction, the paper keeps all the revenue and the advertiser handles customer fulfillment. The system is in place in Canadian newspapers as well as the New York Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times. (416) 504-3067, e-mail: info@edeal.com.

18. FastChannel Network Inc.: Billing itself as "the world's largest ad delivery network," FastChannel's TrafficChannel Print provides publishers with two ways to accept ad materials: using a standard web browser or using the adCasterAgent, which provides for automated ad ticket and ad file downloads but doesn't require a dedicated server. The instructions for downloading an ad off the web fit nicely onto a single sheet. (781) 898-6500, e-mail: info@fastchannel.com.

19. Gannett Media Technologies International: New for 2003 is AMP -- the Advanced Media Processor. The purveyor of the Digital Collections asset management system (aka, the electronic library), GMTI understood that pre-processing of digital assets can be a nightmare, requiring a large amount of handwork. The AMP client -- cross-platform, built in the coffee-lover's programming language (Java) -- not only provides an application that handles the editing of HTML text and tags (it does HTML tables as well), but also has tools such as a photo processor (for those times when a photo needs to be cropped, rotated, sized or converted to grayscale), a keyword manager (ensuring consistency) and a feature that links multiple records together into a single package. If you don't visit this booth, your librarian will kill you. (513) 665-3777, e-mail: gmti-info@gmti.gannett.com.

20. GDT-Nova: The company's web-based ad order entry system, AdEZ, is slated to get some new features with the addition of Pageflex's .Edit on-line, template editing application, which was announced in May. Pageflex -- which has a whole of lot newspaper antecedents -- developed a composition environment that works on the "web top" (its phrase), allowing a user and a web browser to develop and typeset a page. The company added a template feature, which is used in general business to keep -- for example -- all business cards at a company looking alike. GDT-Nova and Pageflex will adapt this technology to give AdEZ users the ability to choose ad templates when creating their masterpiece on-line. (866) 443-8462, e-mail: sales@gdtnova.com.

21. Harris & Baseview: It's clear there's still some friction between the Melbourne, Fla., campus (the original Harris HQ) and the Ann Arbor, Mich., campus (the original Baseview HQ), but ever-so-slowly the two product lines -- like the name -- are being integrated into a whole. The company is touting the fact that it's all Macintosh OS X-compliant (well, with all the products from Ann Arbor) and that the company is integrating Adobe InCopy into its systems (well, with the products from Melbourne, that is). The Jazbox editorial system not only supports InCopy, but it also has new high-speed background output. The IQue editorial system finally heard about these Windows machines and so the IQue client now runs there as well as the two flavors of Macintosh. Probably the niftiest idea is a new optional module from the Bits web-hosting division, which handles the ugly chore of elections -- candidates get their own user names and passwords, upload their own material and fill out editorial questionnaires. The result can be output in XML to Quark XPress or InDesign, (321) 242-5330, e-mail: marketing@baseview.com.

22. Hummingbird Ltd.: Hey, remember that convergence thing that everybody was talking about 20 or 30 minutes ago? Well, the keystone to convergence is going to be the ability for you and your (fill in blank: broadcast, on-line, wireless) partners to pour all your stuff in one bucket and to be able to fish a good report out of it. Perhaps what you'll need is something like the Hummingbird set of applications, that allow for the building and searching of textual data. These guys have also jumped on the caffeine bandwagon, so everything this year is Java. It's cool technology just waiting for you to get your hands on it. (416) 496-2200, e-mail: getinfo@hummingbird.com.

23. Innovative Systems Design Inc.: This company kind of fell off my radar for a while, which it shouldn't have. The leading purveyor of interactive voice response and call center systems for newspapers, ISD's Chatterbox product has 90 percent of the market. And while call center stuff might be old-hat (ISD has been doing newspaper systems since 1989), from one aspect of its work a new product has bloomed: the WebGateway system interfaces to your existing circulation system to give your customers the ability to handle starts, stops, vacation holds, wet papers and the like, all from the comfort of their home computer without requiring an actual live person on the business end. So for those who desire to cut back on call center personnel -- and improve business -- let these guys chatter at you. (514) 696-8377, e-mail: sales@isd.ca.

24. IPIX: I can't seem to get it through publishers' heads that photos and graphics mixed in classified liners increases revenue (well, let's say I can't get it through the heads I've tried to get it through). Nonetheless, iPIX is here to show you Rimfire for Publishing, a set of services that makes customer-uploading of images for use in your classified pages a breeze. The company does this as a service bureau, so no extra hardware at your shop. And if you're worried that they don't know what they're doing, take a stroll over to eBay and take a look at something that's for sale -- odds are it has a picture that's being stored and served by iPIX. (925) 277-9499, e-mail: rimfire@ipix.com.

25. IXIASOFT: A newcomer to NEXPO, Canada's Ixiasoft will be introducing its product and some partners: the product is Textml Server -- a content server that operates natively in XML, and the partners are Eurocortex and Ailink, European suppliers to the newspaper industry. Textml is designed to function at the various stages of editorial workflow, including content creation, aggregation, archiving and production to a variety of media, including print, Web and CD-ROM. The company's product supports Adobe's XMP metadata framework, which brings XML metadata tagging directly to applications including InCopy, InDesign and future versions of Illustrator and Photoshop. (514) 279-4942, e-mail: info@ixiasoft.com.

26. Mactive Inc.: Web-based ad order entry? Check. Java implementation? Check. Web-based ad-tracking module? Check. Digital ad verification? Check. Fax and/or e-mail proofing? Check. Web-based ad proofing? Check. Twenty contracts for advertising systems since last NEXPO? Check. Corporate commitment from Knight Ridder? Check. Total installation of more than 3000 workstations of classified and ad order entry since starting in 1997? Check. Growth from three guys in 1997 to more than 163 guys and gals today? Check. Pretty much everybody gets to live within sight of Cape Canaveral? Check. Looks to me like Mactive has completed its check list and all systems are go, mission control. (321) 254-5559, e-mail: info@mactive.com.

27. Managing Editor Inc.: From across the ocean, MEI brings the latest version of the K4 Publishing System (in addition to a boatload of other stuff). MEI, of course, is based within a stone's throw of the Liberty Bell, but it is the U.S. representative for the K4 product, which meets a lot of newspaper requirements (even if it was originally aimed at the magazine market): based on InDesign and InCopy, K4 is cross-platform and uses a relational database, so brings with it all the features that environment would have: version control, exact copy fitting, native XML support as well as a browser-based production monitor and system administrator. The company will also be showing its PublishNow! web browser-based ad creation tool and QuickSilver, its production workflow and tracking system. Oh, and the draft horses of the product line -- Page Director ALS and CLS -- will be shown on Mac OS X. (215) 886-5662, e-mail: info@maned.com.

28. MerlinOne Inc.: What distinguishes MerlinOne from its competition is its ability to listen to customers. When customers told the maker of news picture scanning systems that they needed to archive said news pictures, MerlinOne listened (and has sold lots of picture archives). When Rhode Island's Providence Journal said that with a little nip here and a little tuck there, the picture archive could become a text archive, MerlinOne listened (and has sold lots of text archives). When the Boston Globe said it needed a tearsheet management system, MerlinOne built it one (and has now sold the system to a consortium of 44 Tribune and Knight Ridder papers in addition to many others). I don't know who asked for a photo and graphics assignment system, but the result is Trax 4, the company's latest offering. Probably some guy will come up to me at the show and say, "It was my idea." (617) 328-6645, e-mail: info@merlinone.com.

29. Modulo Systems Corp.: The former keeper of Quark CopyDesk and Quark Publishing System (QPS), Modulo had an ownership change in January and is now a system integrator pointed at applications across the publishing enterprise, of late most specifically advertising. The system unveiled last year, Gadgets, is a group of products interfaced together to provide classified and display order entry, production tracking, ad layout, pagination, billing and accounts receivable. It all runs on a Sybase or Microsoft SQL server. And, this just in to NewsScene: Stars & Stripes, the 175,000-circulation paper for military personnel, has signed a contract for a Gadgets system. In addition, Modulo will be showing QPS and QPS XTensions. (617) 234-4414, e-mail: info@modulosystems.com.

30. Morris Digital Works: The on-line division of Augusta, Ga.'s Morris Communications Corp., MDW has built a set of tools to help its own papers, radio stations and magazines get on-line. For a while company executives have kicked around the notion of selling these products to the general industry and here they are. (This foray into vendorhood is not unusual for the company; in the 1980s it sold an editorial system it had developed in-house to the general industry.) The company will be showing its Site Weaver product (easing the daily production of a newspaper's web site using desktop applications), MdReal Estate (for on-line real estate sections), MTL (which brings classifieds on-line), MdDisplay (same for display) and Digital BackFile (an archive that works with whole pages in either PostScript, Portable Document Format (PDF) or microfilm format). (706) 828-4335, e-mail: connie@morris.com.

31. Net-linx Publishing Solutions: It always seemed logical to me that Net-linx -- which started out life as a maker of systems for the Yellow Pages industry -- would be able to leverage some of the stuff developed there for newspapers. Finally, here's a product: nxEdge, a display ad production and workflow tool. Running on a variety of platforms (Mac OS 9, OS X, Windows and in browsers), nxEdge provides a lot of production and management information and can be easily integrated with XPress, Adobe's InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop. In addition, the company will be showing some customizations of the Adobe Graphics Server, specifically working with the company's legacy products (SII, CText, CompuText). (916) 830-2400; e-mail: info@net-linx.com.

32. NewsEngin Inc.: For a bunch of refugees from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, these guys have quite an impressive customer list: the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post (to name just three). Latest in Post news is two-fold: NewsEngin has been selected by the Post to develop a calendar and event listings database that will be used both by the print edition and the on-line operation. Called EventTracker, the product will be based on Open Source code such as PHP and MySQL software and will run on browsers. Also, NewsEngin has acquired the rights to an instant messaging program that the Post developed in-house (it's the handiwork of Ed Holzinger, late of the San Jose Mercury News). Since it was developed by a longtime user of an SII system, this instant messaging environment will be familiar to traditional systems users. They've also got a lot of other announcements to make at the show and once again fall onto my "must visit" list. (636) 537-8548, e-mail: jim@newsengin.com.

33. NewsStand Inc.: One of the pioneers in the world of replica newspapers, NewsStand has an advantage above the others: it got to the New York Times first. As such, not only did the Times become a customer but the parent company bought a piece of NewsStand and the paper's circulation director sits on its board of directors (a list that includes a former top executive of Thomson Newspapers and a former top executive of the Dallas Morning News). As every supplier knows, hauling in a big fish like the Times just does nothing but help growth: the company represents 32 newspapers worldwide, which range in size/prestige from Le Monde in France to the Independent Journal in Marin, Calif. (512) 334-5100, e-mail: gpryor@newsstand.com.

34. Olive Software Inc.: Combining not only a replica newspaper product (ActivePaper Daily) but also a whole-page archive (ActivePaper Archive), Olive has put itself in a unique position allowing a publisher to have one workflow to solve both problems. The archiving system uses some fancy algorithms to break down a page into components and stores the data in XML, keeping the files lean and mean. New this year is AdLauncher, a tool that allows for digital delivery of display ads, special sections and pre-prints from PostScript or PDF with the result being XML. In addition, the company will be showing its entry into the tearsheet world with ActiveTearsheet and touting the fact that the Washington Post has signed up for that product. (720) 747-1220, e-mail: kim@olivesoftware.com.

More NEXPO choices ...

From THE COLE PAPERS, May 2003
Copyright © 2003, All Rights Reserved.

Top | ColeGroup.com | Consulting | Cole Papers | NewsInc. | Cole's Store | Miscellanea | Search
Copyright © 1990-2008, The Cole Group. All Rights Reserved. Contact us.
Modified date: 06/12/2003, 06:59:43 PM.
URL: http://www.colepapers.net/nexpo03/picks-17-34.HTML