Like cars, which have such smart ideas as air bags and such doodads as headlight washers, classified systems have features that are good, bad and just plain ugly.

In touring the baker's dozen-and-a-half booths at NEXPO '95 displaying classified systems, we encountered competition at its finest. In this last bastion of newspaper-specific products, we found systems of all stripes -- little, big, dreadful, suave -- and we found features galore.

Each system had something unusual, even unique -- or shared with only a couple of other systems. And so we charted features found few places, a compendium of the best and the brightest ideas, many of which likely will spread to other systems in months to come.

One idea that is spreading rapidly is the all-in-one advertising system, incorporating ad entry for both liners and display ads, as well as access to billing info and in some cases circulation data. Some of the features we liked are in such systems.

Herewith, our newly found features -- some of them fabulous, some funky, some foolish. (And we apologize up front to those suppliers whose products aren't mentioned even though their systems may also have a feature in question.)

Interfaces
Graphical user interfaces varied widely in utility and attractiveness.

Using such things as Virtual Basic or 4GL, suppliers have developed distinctive Windows-based products, with our favorite from last year, Automated Complete Typesetting (ACT) from Advanced Publishing Technology of Burbank, Calif., continuing to please the eye as well as the pocketbook.

Another, Publishing Partners International of Manchester, N.H., created a customized toolbar for its Advertising Management System that's classified-specific -- the essential tools for establishing an ad record and creating an ad are all in one place, with large buttons instead of the usual tiny icons seen through many Windows.

The advent of Windows 95 brings a new style of GUI to the marketplace -- a pleasing kind of mix of Macintosh and Motif, at least as implemented by CompuText of Houston. Its new iteration of CompuClass has a soft blue screen and much-improved labeling; both are in stark contrast to what we Mac bigots consider the downright cheap-looking Windows interface.

CompuText noted that Windows 95's features include the ability to change field names, reorder them, even add and delete fields and columns in the database -- making for a highly customizable system.

All classified GUIs employed at least two windows, one for customer information and another for entering ad text. On the Mac side of the aisle, Baseview Products Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., said customer feedback showed that this one-two punch was preferred, so its ClassManagerPro has a window for customer information on the left and a WYSIWYG window for creating an ad on the right -- all tailored to fit in a 14-inch monitor screen.

At the other end of this spectrum, another Mac-based supplier, Digital Technology International of Orem, Utah, carved its ClassSpeed screen into four sections -- customer info, a text editing window, layout window for WYSIWYG and a rate/schedule window. This induced more jumping around than seen on a grade school playground.

In between was a nifty feature at Harris Publishing Systems Corp. of Melbourne, Fla.: automatic resizing. Make one of the two windows in its Windows-based Cash system larger, and the other shrinks in proportion.

Two suppliers stood out for their monochrome displays. Pongrass Newspaper Systems of Sydney, Australia, presented a gray-toned screen in its CMS-for-Windows whose cells became white when active -- making it easy to see where in the process of data entry one is.

Sadly, sticking out like a Yugo in a Chrysler lot was Freedom System Integrators of Wichita, Kan., whose Mac-based GUI was stark black-on-white without any hooks for the eye -- every cell looked like every other, and their labels were not easily discerned.

We say sadly, because FSI's antecedents were notable for some excellent GUIs a few years ago, especially a picture desk that was doomed at birth.

Customer data screens
Classifieds make money, but only if the buyer pays. Several systems had common ways of dealing with this potential headache.

For newspapers accepting payment by credit card, Baseview and others compute a checksum on each number. (We didn't know that each VISA card, for example, has an account number that must add up to a specific number -- a checksum. An incorrect checksum means it's a bogus -- or incorrectly typed -- account.)

At Linotype-Hell of Hauppauge, N.Y., the account number of a repeat customer whose credit card digits are stored in the LinoPress Advertising system is filled in automatically -- and the ID of the user is recorded, which can be helpful in reconciling such related items as cash in or adjustments to accounts.

Vision Data Equipment Corp. of Rensselaer, N.Y., touts a sophisticated credit-verification scheme that cross checks the buyer's name, address and phone number for back credit problems. In addition, the first 35 characters of an ad are stored in the Integrated Customer Services System database, so if a phone number in the ad disagrees with the customer's number as listed in the header record, a warning appears.

Typing in customer data is a critical part of an ad rep's job, and having to flit from field to field is integral to the task. Advanced Technical Solutions of North Andover, Mass., is developing its first classified system, Osiris Ad-Visor, and one of its building blocks is form navigation without having to use a mouse -- playing to the users of keyboard-driven legacy systems.

Speaking of keyboarding, ad reps put to work on the Windows-based Cyber$ell system from Cybergraphic Inc. of Burlington, Mass., can establish an individual tab order for skipping through fields on a path they find most efficient.

Fewer keystrokes await users of Cams4, offered by Multi-Ad Services Inc. of Peoria, Ill. -- it auto-caps names as they are typed into a customer record -- and of SCS/AdEntry from Software Consulting Services of Nazareth, Pa., which takes a ZIP code and fills in the city and state.

Ad entry/creation
Money comes first, then ad creation.

A debate continues as to whether WYSIWYG or monospace text entry is preferable, and we found examples of both on the NEXPO floor. With the speed of today's work stations, the argument against WYSIWYG -- it takes too much time -- seems lost, especially when one consequence of monospace entry is having to introduce markup along the way.

Also, as we mentioned, many suppliers are moving toward single-system ad creation, whether it be one liner or a full-page display ad in color -- a point Harris dwelt on about its all-purpose Cash (Classified/Advertising System by Harris).

Two systems that do employ WYSIWYG text entry offered dynamic makeup. At Linotype-Hell, for example, a graphic element such as an oval that contains text would grow as more text was typed in -- no mousing around here. Similarly, Baseview offers a fit-to-box command for artwork used in an ad.

Getting data into an ad has been made easier, too. Click an icon on Advanced Publishing Technology's AdTech system and the customer's phone number and address are inserted into the ad.

What stood out this year at many booths was a feature long found in editorial front-ends -- spellchecking.

Synaptic Micro Solutions of Appleton, Wis., which has a customer base of 750 papers -- mostly weeklies and many in big cities -- is leagues ahead with a feature acknowledging our multi-cultural world: Its spellchecker can distinguish Spanish from English in the same text and correct accordingly. (Its hyphenation program is similarly worldly wise.)

Harris incorporated the same algorithm as in the pocket-sized Franklin Speller to come up with a spellchecker that sounds a tone if a word is misspelled, presents seven alternative words (not just the next seven in the alphabetical list, mind you), flags objectionable words -- and dynamically spells out abbreviations to speed text entry.

Calling logos into classifieds is pretty routine on most systems. System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, Calif., has the Land Rover of logo screens -- a hefty, handsome, full-color rendering of items in the graphics database of its OS/2-based AMTX. Just find what you want, click on it and drag into the ad window.

Upselling
Making more money off classifieds relies on persuading the customer to run a larger ad, or running one more often, or scheduling it in more than one zone, or. ...

While the ad rep must serve as The Great Persuader, the system he or she is using can help with the task with a series of prompts -- "Run this ad more than once and zillions more people will see it" -- and various pricing schemes.

Usually upselling is the norm -- get the buyer to spend more. But CText Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., reported that with its AdVision system, one site starts by selling all seven days. If the customer balks at the price, the rep can call up a table showing how to spend less. Of course, AdVision has a complete set of upsell scripts accessible at any time on its OS/2-based system.

Promoting ad sales is a whole new ball game on some systems. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring, some ad reps are equipped with tickler files and make calls out. Cybergraphic is working with a third-party supplier on a link to a predictive dialer so that when the phone is answered, the corresponding customer and ad records are brought to the screen instantly.

One supplier from across the Big Pond, attending its first NEXPO, has a comprehensive method for pursuing sales from the inside out. ISGI of Germany, a subsidiary of Siemens-Nixdorf, touts its ips Advertising system as having 25 working-years of development behind it, and it looked like it.

While perhaps more appropriate for display-ad sales, ISGI's ad campaign module was heavy on ways to please customers, with a focus on make-goods and responding to complaints of errors. But the database also was set up so that a campaign could be designated, then contact lists could be built (based on such categories as the title of a person at the target advertiser) and shared among the sales staff, reminders to call back could be stored and automatically distributed at the right time, and letters could be written in Microsoft Word and printed (sorry, no faxes or e-mail).

(Speaking of customer contacts via snail mail: At Advanced Publishing Technology, an ad is proofed to a form that includes a tear-off label for delivery.)

Scheduling and costing
Getting an ad into the right edition or zone on the right day is crucial, and the range of calendar designs attests to the creative ways this task can be done.

The appearance, functionality and ease of use varied tremendously. Some systems used mouse-driven calendars, while others mixed data fields with calendar clicks. Some showed a month at a time, others two or even three months.

Baseview's calendar was unique in that it showed four weeks at a time, in a rolling screen that jumped across months -- a far more sensible approach for the end user. A single click on the day of the week at the top of the calendar instantly registered all the corresponding dates as run times.

We didn't think to ask how long it takes to create for a site, but the Land Rover at SII (AMTX) comes with a map for skedding multi-zone ads -- click on a zone and the ad is skedded. A great idea, but it might add a bit to training time -- and pity the poor rep who can't read a map.

Telling the customer how much an ad will cost is a daunting task for the ad rep who has just skedded a multi-part run over several days and zones -- it sure can add up. Giving consumers choices can be a big help here, so APT's AdTech can display two ads side by side for pricing to find the most acceptable price.

Two suppliers, SII and CompuText, have rate tables that can compute costs for running one ad not only in several zones but also in different formats, so that one ad can be sold in one sitting to run in both the main broadsheet daily and the weekly tab shopper, each of which has its own mechanicals to take into account.

And that new mechanical, cyberspace, can be reached from several systems quickly and easily. The DOS-based SunType Classified System at Synaptic Micro Solutions is one of the smallest products to have a HyperText Markup Language converter, while SII's Czar features an Internet logo on which an ad rep need only click once to direct ad copy to an information highway on-ramp.

And CompuText points out that with Windows 95, fax output and an Internet connection are part of the package.

More conventional output -- pagination -- has not seen any great leaps forward in the last year, but speed certainly is of the essence.

Northwood Publishing Systems Inc. of Merrimack, N.H., is working on a package that will take ICL code from a legacy classified system, then generate paginated PostScript output. Its tests so far have used a Pentium processor to whip through 13 pages of liners in 37 seconds.

So, if you can keep that big iron dinosaur happily fed, you could use it while longer -- until all of our features found few places move to one address.

-- Pete Wetmore

Advanced Publishing Technology,
(818) 557-3035;
Advanced Technical Solutions,
(508) 689-9161;
Baseview Products Inc.,
(313) 662-5800;
CompuText Inc.,
(713) 480-3494;
CText Inc.,
(313) 677-4700;
Cybergraphic Inc.,
(617) 221-0077;
Digital Technology International,
(801) 226-2984;
Freedom System Integrators Inc.,
(316) 722-8100;
Harris Publishing Systems Corp.,
(407) 242-4220;
ISGI,
(404) 640-6463;
Linotype-Hell Co.,
(516) 434-2000;
Multi-Ad Services Inc.,
(309) 692-1530;
Northwood Publishing Systems Inc.,
(603) 595-1507;
Pongrass Newspaper Systems,
{011} (612) 369-3111;
Publishing Partners International,
(603) 644-3339;
Software Consulting Services,
(610) 837-8484;
Synaptic Micro Solutions,
(414) 734-6535;
System Integrators Inc.,
(916) 929-9481;
Vision Data Equipment Corp.,
(518) 434-2193.

From THE COLE PAPERS, September 1995, Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved.