COLE'S NEWSWIRE, Dec. 24, 1996

Dec. 24, 1996
Vol. 2, No. 55

The NEWSWIRE is a weekly distribution of information about the sales and installations of publishing technology and the latest news on new products developed by suppliers to the industry.

This is the last distribution of the NEWSWIRE in 1996; it will next be transmitted on Jan. 8, 1997.

4-SIGHT INC.
4-Sight, a pre-press software supplier based in Woburn, Mass., has begun shipping its new Quatro PCI device and the new PRI PCI ISDN device to be bundled with 4-Sight's iSDN Manager file transfer solution.

The new Quatro PCI device, a four-port ISDN file transfer card, is backward compatible with all other 4-Sight Nubus solutions. The device handles up to eight simultaneous sessions for file transfer, using each of the eight channels of 64 kbps. By aggregating the eight channels, the Quatro PCI device can provide transfers up to 3.5 megabytes per minute.

4-Sight also has begun shipping its new PRI PCI ISDN card. This new device also supports AppleÕs new PCI architecture for ISDN, PRI (Primary Rate Interface). The PRI PCI ISDN card supports up to eight simultaneous connections, or can aggregate all 23 channels of a PRI connection to achieve throughput in excess of 10 megabytes per minute.

4-Sight iSDN Manager bundled with the Quatro PCI card retails for $5495. 4-Sight iSDN Manager bundled with the PRI PCI card retails for $12,995.

ATEX MEDIA SOLUTIONS INC.
Sysdeco Group AS of Oslo, Norway, has announced that it has acquired sufficient financing for it to spin off its former Media Group as a stand-alone company.

The new business will be named Atex Media Solutions Inc. and it will be based in Bedford, Mass.

Sysdeco will hold an "extraordinary" shareholders meeting on Jan. 6, 1997, to ratify the spin-off.

For a copy of Sysdeco's press release, point your web browser at http://colegroup.com/sysdecopr.122396.html.

GEAC VISIONSHIFT
SoftAd Inc., an advertising automation software supplier based in Mill Valley, Calif., and Geac VisionShift, a division of Geac Computers Inc. based in Tampa, Fla., have entered into a non-exclusive marketing and technology-sharing alliance.

Their product integration will provide advertising sales executives with the benefits of SoftAd's Windows-based Media SalesExcelerator software and the rating and ad scheduling functionality of VisionShift Attache. This partnership will provide advertising representatives with a mobile system on their laptop for ad quoting, proposal development, sales presentation and management.

With SoftAd's Media SalesExcelerator, sales reps can create interactive sales presentations with live data, design spec ads, compare various media, and manage sales administration with expense and sales call reports.

VisionShift Attache, a mobile ad sales system, can be used to create ad quotes and perform what-if analyses in a client's office. Quotes can be automatically converted into a formal proposal or ad order. The product is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office, so ad history can be displayed and exported to Microsoft Excel for analysis in a custom graph or PivotTable. When integrated with Media SalesExcelerator, Attache salespeople will be able to analyze a customer's advertising strategy more readily.

Geac VisionShift may be visited on the World-Wide Web at http://www.geac.com/offices/vs/. SoftAd's address is http://www.softadgroup.com/.

INCOMMON LLC
San Mateo, Calif.-based inCommon has introduced Downtown, an open framework for publishing and consuming information on the Internet. Downtown gives content providers new options for packaging and delivering news, entertainment, stock quotes or other information, while giving consumers more control over how they select and retrieve information from the ÕNet.

Downtown's core technologies integrate advanced push capabilities -- such as webcasting, personalization, delivery and acceleration -- into a solution designed to increase the Internet's responsiveness for delivering information. Companies now using Downtown include Yahoo! Inc., USA TODAY, NEW YORK TIMES, Movielink, Informix Inc., Excite Inc. and CBS News' "Up-to-the Minute."

Downtown features look-ahead, with which it learns a user's browsing pattern, "looks ahead" to the next page or object, and brings it across the Internet in anticipation of its use while the user is reading the current page. Downtown's technology allows users to subscribe to channels from publishers anywhere on the Internet, and provides automatic delivery of content to ensure that fresh content is automatically delivered to subscribers without users having to check for what is new.

The current version of Downtown is compatible with Windows 95. Support for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 3.1 will be available early next year. A beta version of Downtown may be downloaded from http://www.incommon.com/. Downtown is free to users.

KOZ INC.
COX Interactive Media has agreed to implement the KOZ Community Publishing Solution in more than a dozen COX markets during the next six months, executives from Cox, KOZ and IBM have announced. A pilot installation is under way at Cox's Atlanta papers, the JOURNAL and CONSTITUTION. With the KOZ program, users are not required to know a computer language in order to post information, noted Harry Bailes, president of KOZ, which is based in Greensboro, N.C.

MORPH TECHNOLOGIES INC.
Morph Technologies of Reston, Va., has released DynaMorph 1.0, an extension to the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) that supports major web servers on Windows and Macintosh platforms. A web site constructed with DynaMorph is transportable between servers and platforms. DynaMorph is a server-side document processor which takes an HTML document with embedded DynaMorph commands and converts it into standard HTML.

DynaMorph, designed to ease large-site construction and maintenance, provides more than 100 commands, allowing people to embed into their HTML documents programmatic constructs which would otherwise require an external CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and to run programs from within HTML documents.

Its extensive library of preconfigured macros provides such features as page counters, dynamic graphic selection, username and password security, visitor access counters and tracking, and e-mail and network connectivity from within an HTML document.

DynaMorph normally costs $749 per license, but for a limited time is available for $249. Corporate site licenses are available. Morph may be visited on the World-Wide Web at http://www.morphtech.com/.

SOFTQUAD INC.
Toronto-based SoftQuad, maker of Internet and intranet publishing tools, has announced the second annual MetalWorker's Web Site Design contest. SoftQuad has added a category and will award a total of over $100,000 in cash and prizes to contestants who design the best web and intranet sites using either HoTMetaL PRO or SoftQuad's newest offering, HoTMetaL intranet Publisher (H.i.P.).

Entries will be judged by a panel chosen by David Fiedler, editor of WEB DEVELOPER magazine in five categories: commercial/business, not-for-profit/public service, academic/research/government, individual/home, and intranet.

Other contest details, including judges, rules and additional prizes, will be announced early in 1997. Contest information will be regularly updated on SoftQuad's web site at http://www.softquad.com/.

UMI
The local Rotary in Bryan, Ohio, has donated $5000 to help Bryan High School and the Bryan Public Library acquire and install UMI's on-line information system, ProQuest Direct. Launched on the World-Wide Web in October by UMI, a Bell & Howell company based in Ann Arbor, Mich., ProQuest Direct enables users to search the electronic archives of UMI and its DataTimes subsidiary.

Additional information about UMI is available on the Web at http://www.umi.com/.

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

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