Cole's Newswire, June 21, 1995

June 21, 1995
Vol. 1, No. 4

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ACCU-WEATHER
The AccuNet service for bulletin boards, from Accu-Weather of State College, Pa., now makes available platforms for distributing weather data and seven other kinds of information. Using AccuNet, bulletin board users now can access weather, sports, lottery results, soap opera summaries, news headlines, horoscopes, financial headlines and entertainment stories from just one source.

AD EXPRESS
An electronic ad delivery service, Ad eXpress of Milford, Ohio, has introduced a flexible billing policy for newspapers. Clients now may elect to have the $8 Ad eXpress delivery fee billed directly to advertisers who use the service to distribute ad copy digitally.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York-based news cooperative has introduced several new products:

-- FaxStocks provides readers with in-depth stock and mutual fund reports via fax on demand. Readers pay with credit cards; newspapers receive royalties on each transaction.

-- AP SmartSaver, another fax on demand product, offers readers a one-page fax listing of some of the nation's highest yielding CD and money market rates.

-- The AP plans to deliver more fully-paginated stock tables throughout 1995, having successfully delivered 10 pages of year-end tables to more than 45 newspapers at the start of the year.

-- The AP has enhanced its image transmission system with the introduction of PhotoLynx Pro 500, incorporating a redesigned docking station to accommodate Apple PowerBooks, upgrading the PhotoLynx software to release 1.5 and adding such features as an on-screen toolbox and the ability to resize preview images.

-- Canon's digital still camera, the Canon EOS*DCS 3c, will now be marketed by the Associated Press, providing an alternative to the Nikon-based NC 2000. -- In a collaborative effort with Personal Library Software Inc., the AP Preserver digital archive system has been enhanced to add text capability and Internet support.

AUTOLOGIC INC.
Autologic of Thousand Oaks, Calif., has licensed software called APS-PreFlight from Systems of Merritt Inc. that tests output files before they are sent for final imaging. Files are viewed on a workstation monitor, or are sent to an inexpensive laser printer, simulating a production imagesetter. This permits imagesetter operators, graphic designers, layout artists and typographers to test files for imaging problems or PostScript errors before committing a job to an imagesetter, thus saving time and materials.

BASEVIEW PRODUCTS INC.
Baseview of Ann Arbor, Mich., has introduced the first and only all-Macintosh circulation system, CirculationPro. A major feature is called Future Change, which provides for making changes to addresses, pay types, delivery types and statues as often, and as far into the future, as needed.

CirculationPro even checks new addresses against old, and if it finds customers already at an address, it will close out their accounts and place any unearned income on account.

Baseview also announced price cuts in some of its popular classified advertising software. A publication using one to three workstations running the Accounts Receivable module of ClassManager/Plus now will pay only $500, down from the $1000-per-workstation fee charge previously. The Accounts Receivable module for DisplayManager, Baseview's display ad billing software, also is on sale: Up to three workstations for a flat $1500, down from the previous price of $2800 per workstation.

CASCADE SYSTEMS INC.
Cascade of North Andover, Mass., and Managing Editor Inc. of Jenkintown, Pa., have formed an alliance for cooperative software development The two companies plan to build on Managing Editor's Quark XPress-based pagination software and Cascade's DataFlow system architecture.

ISLAND GRAPHICS CORP.
The Quark XPress XTension IslandTrapper 2.0 has been upgraded. The first PostScript trapping application for the Apple Macintosh now runs as much as five times faster as before, taking advantage of the PowerPC with a native mode version. New features from the San Rafael, Calif. company include automated batch processing, post production editing of text and graphics, a job file format that makes it easy to make changes to individual traps, and ink settings defaults.

COLOREXPERT
ColorExpert of Toronto and Peachpit Press of Berkeley, Calif. are co-publishing three of ColorExpert's multimedia ColorCourse titles: ColorCourse/Photography, ColorCourse/Illustration and ColorCourse/Imagesetting. The packages provide instruction in digital scanning and retouching, electronic art and preparing files for output.

COMMON GROUND SOFTWARE INC.
The company formerly known as No Hands Software of Belmont, Calif. has upgraded its software for creating and distributing portable documents, Common Ground 2.0 for Windows. It includes three components -- a maker, a viewer and a search application -- enabling users to convert any document into DigitalPaper, Common Ground's platform-independent file format, view them, and index or search text in such documents locally or across a network.

Enhancements include improved document fidelity, preserving the exact appearance of all fonts as seen in the source document; copy and paste functions; Verity TOPIC search technology; electronic stapling for joining distinct documents into a single Common Ground document, and an upgraded mini-viewer.

Common Ground also has introduced the Internet Publisher, for publishing graphical documents on World-Wide Web servers.

DAYSTAR DIGITAL
DayStar of Flowery Branch, Ga., has redefined its strategic alliance with Eastman Kodak Co. to allow Kodak to concentrate on enhancing color management technologies while Daystar focuses on accelerating image processing operations across multiple processors.

FREEDOM SYSTEMS INTEGRATORS INC.
The Wichita, Ks., company now provides Internet access to its support division, marketing department and general manager through America Online or other e-mail. The addresses:

support -- rrepp@irco.com, fsisuppport@aol.com;
marketing -- fsimktg@aol.com;
General Manager Terry Borchers -- fsi@irco.com or fsigenmgr@aol.com.

LASERMASTER CORP.
LaserMaster of Eden Prairie, Minn., is now shipping the Halon System, a PostScript Level 2 RIP for Canon CLC, Kodak ColorEdge and Xerox MajestiK color copiers that allows users to print directly to the copier from a PC or Macintosh computer. The Halon System includes LaserMaster's new ColorMark Pro 1000 Print Server with a 100 MHz superscalar processor, and the company's ColorMark color management system for accurate and consistent color reproduction. LaserMaster also has introduced a high-speed, 54-inch digital color ink-jet printer, the DisplayMaker Express. Its new print head technology allows it to print up to 10 times faster than aqueous ink-jet printers.

LEXIS-NEXIS
PhotoView, the photo archiving tool, has been upgraded to version 4.0, featuring significant improvements in speed and increased functionality. A major enhancement now enables publishers to transmit both high- and low-resolution images to on-line suppliers. PhotoView 4.0 also supports automatic creation of GIF thumbnails in creating electronic publications. Lexis-Nexis, of Dayton, Ohio, also has introduced same-day availability of the New York Times News Service -- a step forward from before, when access to Times copy was limited to articles distributed the previous day and before.

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COLE'S NEWSWIRE is written by Pete Wetmore and distributed by The Cole Group, publishers of THE COLE PAPERS and COLE'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING SYSTEMS and consultants to newspapers and magazines world-wide. To receive more information about The Cole Group, send e-mail to: info@colegroup.com.

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