Bit bucket ...
Thirty: Nineteen-ninety-five was a trying year for Dr. Gianni Smaniotto. His Hyphen Group of companies was forced into bankruptcy or receivership (depending on the country) and, ultimately, had to assign its key technology -- PostScript RIP clones -- to another business last summer. But by fall, Smaniotto had bounced back as the managing director for Europe of Canada's Escher-Grad Technologies. In early December, while traveling in Germany, Smaniotto died. ... At Seybold San Francisco last fall, I met Dr. Yuri Rubinski, the founder of SoftQuad of Toronto, Canada. We chatted for a few minutes, then he went his way and I mine. Later, I was scheduled to be a panelist in some session but there weren't enough chairs on the stage, so I ended up sitting in the audience to wait my turn to speak. Rubinski, arriving late, sat down next to me; we shared a bar of chocolate while ridiculing the speakers. You should have seen his face when I got up to speak; it was a prank worthy of Rubinski's grand sense of humor and mischief. Rubinski and Standard Generalized Markup Language inventor Charles Goldfarb literally brought SGML into the publishing world (Rubinski edited Goldfarb's seminal work on the subject, The SGML Handbook, and he also wrote three others). The software that Rubinski's SoftQuad created turned SGML from a concept into a product. His recent work in HTML -- including SoftQuad's HoTMetaL product -- was at the leading edge of the World-Wide Web. Rubinski, 43, died of a massive heart attack Jan. 21. ...

New media mavens: The founder of Project Cool of Palo Alto, Calif. (http://www.projectcool.com), is Teresa Martin, who had been with the Knight-Ridder New Media Center in San Jose as well as the Knight-Ridder New Media Lab in Boulder, Colo. Martin, a former typesetter who used Compugraphic systems in the '70s, has been a frequent contributor to many industry publications (including this one). Martin's partner: Glenn Davis, the guy who invented Infinet's Cool Site of the Day. ... At the Associated Press's new multimedia department, Karl Tate was named design manager (he came from AP Graphics); David Beck was named content manager (he came from the Los Angeles Times, where he was an on-line producer), and Geoff Hayes was named news editor for on-line services (he'd been assistant to the managing editor of the AP). ... At Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., Dan Fisher has been retained to handle "information projects separate from the news operations of the Microsoft Network," according to people in the know (Microsoft and Fisher declined to say what his role would be). Fisher is the former chief of the TimesLink on-line operation at the Los Angeles Times. ... At Digital Ink, the on-line service of the Washington Post, Founder Don Brazeal has taken a sabbatical. Brazeal, the paper's former assistant managing editor for the Style section, left the organization shortly after its platform provider, AT&T Interchange, announced it would be phasing out the system. Post Technology Veep Ralph Terkowitz is filling in. ... At Star/News On-Line, the service of the papers with those names in Indianapolis, Joe Shoemaker has been named creative director; he comes to the paper from a background in creative and art direction for print. ... At the Chicago Tribune, Leah Gentry has been named Internet editor; she'd been on-line guru at the Orange County (Calif.) Register. .. At Best Internet Communications Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., Alan Mutter has been named chairman, president and CEO. Most recently the chief operating officer of InterMedia Partners of San Francisco, Mutter is the former metro editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and was an editor and reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Daily News. ... At the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, Bill Prewitt was named assistant managing editor for on-line; he replaces Carl Crothers, who was named editor at sister paper the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal. Prewitt, who most recently had been the paper's special projects manager and systems editor, has a long, colorful career that includes stints in technology at the Chicago Sun-Times and on-line work at Dow Jones and the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch (where, in 1980, he was the paper's editor of the CompuServe/AP project). ...

Real bits: At San Francisco Examiner, my old system editor's chair now is occupied by Joshua Zucker, who's been with the paper for 15 months as an assistant systems editor. ... At the Boston Globe, Monica Hubert has been named communications manager, a new job that will supervise all aspects of digital ad reception; previously she'd been systems manager for advertising. ... At the American Press Institute of Reston, Va., Mary Lynn Martin has been named associate director; previously she had been advertising manager at Dear Newspapers of McLean, Va. ...

Vendor variations: At American Computer Innovators of Amherst, Mass., Daniel Crough has resigned. Crough, an executive vice president and founder, didn't mention his future plans. ... At Cascade Systems Inc. of Andover, Mass., John Tangney has been named project manager. Tangney is the former vice president of engineering at Atex Publishing Systems Corp., and was a founder of Production Management Technologies and an engineer at Linotype-Hell and Xenotron. ... At ECRM of Tewksbury, Mass., Ed Kitchen has been named an account representative in Southern California; Kitchen most recently was with Envirochem Supply, but has been with Linotype-Hell and Compugraphic. ... At Euromax A/S of Denmark, Carol Toner and Michael Rossau have been named to lead the U.S. office, which is being established in Wilder, Ky. Toner is formerly an executive with Gannett Media Technologies International of Cincinnati (as well as Harris and Atex); Rossau, a nine-year veteran of Euromax's parent, DDE, has been responsible for DDE and Euromax sales in the United Kingdom and Ireland. ... At Linotype-Hell of Hauppauge, N.Y., Fred Alvord has been named business manager of the desktop solutions division; Alvord has worked for IBM and Momentum Corp. ... At Monotype Systems Ltd. of Surrey, England, Dennis Nierman has been named managing director. Nierman, who is president of Monotype Systems Inc. of Rolling Meadows, Ill., will continue as president of Freedom System Integrators of Wichita, Kan. (All are members of the IPA group.) ... Also at Monotype Systems Ltd., David Hedgeland has been named deputy managing director; he will continue in his role as technical director. ... At Sysdeco Media Group of Bedford, Mass. (a k a: Atex, Dewar), Allen Miller has transferred to the operation in England to handle sales and marketing there. Taking on at least some of his duties is Ron Stephens, who will be director of sales (Stephens, most recently sales director at System Integrators, did five years at Atex in the '80s). ... At System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, Jack Pritchard has been named director of sales. Pritchard is the company's former marketing director and once ran the European operation out of England; he left SII in 1989. ... Also at SII, Sue Aimes has been named assistant to the chief financial officer. Aimes is the former director of customer support and is a 15-year SII veteran. Taking Aimes' job in customer support is George Salidas, who has spent most of his six years at SII in system engineering and installation services. ...

Confabs: The Digital Technology International Users Group will be held Feb. 19-20 in Provo, Utah. Along with the meeting, DT will be sponsoring a contest to give users the opportunity to "display their creativity and expertise in the use of DT systems." Contact Jim Roe at Cox Arizona Publications, (602) 898-6484, for more details. ... The Internet Expo, Web World & EMail World Exposition will be held Feb. 20-21 in San Jose. Send e-mail to exporeg@dciexpo.com for more information. ... The best little conference in the industry today, the Digital '96 meeting, will be held Feb. 21-24 in Denver. Speakers include Greg Anderson, of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.; Bryan Burnett of the Durham Herald Co. in North Carolina; Mark Crosten of the San Jose Mercury News; Nick Didlick of The Sun in Vancouver, British Columbia; Consultant and Educator Kurt Foss; Karl Kuntz of the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio; Brian Masck of the Muskegon (Mich.) Chronicle; Dan Neville of Newsday of Long Island, N.Y., and Consultant Steve Outing. For more information, e-mail planners@plink.geis.com or call (513) 728-4671. ... Interactive Newspapers '96, the Kelsey/Editor & Publisher conference, is Feb. 21-24 in San Francisco. Speakers include Diane Burley of the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, Peter Cooney of the Montreal Gazette, Howard Finberg of Phoenix Newspapers Inc., Chris Jennewein of the Knight-Ridder New Media Center, Christy Jones of the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, Timothy Landon of the Chicago Tribune, Hala Makowska of People magazine, Bob Olinto of the Orange County (Calif.) Register, Jason Seiken of the Washington Post's Digital Ink, Sharon Smith of the Pottsville (Pa.) Republican, Chris Tucher of Netscape Communications and Peter Winter of the New Century Network and Cox Newspapers. For background, call (609) 921-7200. ... Seybold Boston, the annual meeting of publishing technology for the Northeast, is Feb. 27-March 1. Speakers include John Cranfill of the Dallas Morning News, Monica Hubert of the Boston Globe, Consultant Garrett Queen, Frank Scott of Time Inc., Kathy Yates of Knight-Ridder New Ventures and the aforementioned Howard Finberg. Words also will come out of the mouth of Cole. For more stuff, call (415) 578-6900. ... The Spring Publishers Conference for the Suburban Newspaper Association -- dubbed "Back to the Future" -- will meet March 2-6 in Tarpon Springs, Fla. Topics include "Niche Publishing Update," "Building Readership in Print and Cyberspace," and "On-line Update: Now What?" Again, The Guy Named Cole will talk. Details are available from SNA at (312) 321-6869. ... The Newspaper Association of America is combining its three technology workshops -- pre-press, press, and materials and post-press -- into what it calls the SuperConference, to be held March 3-8 in Miami Beach, Fla. Topics include "Hot New Technologies," "The Uncertain Path to Pagination," "Archiving Digital Information," "Going to a 50-Inch Web," "Newsprint Outlook" and "Microzoning Has Arrived." For more information, call NAA at (703) 648-1223. ...

Errors and Omissions: We seem to have had a degree of difficulty last issue in consistently spelling the name of the photographer responsible for the "24 Hours in Cyberspace" project. The story was right; the cover essay and caption were wrong: it's Rick Smolan. We regret, etc. ... #

From THE COLE PAPERS, February 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.