COLE'S NEWSWIRE, April 21, 1999

April 21, 1999
Vol. 5, No. 16

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.

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ATEX MEDIA SOLUTIONS INC.
The provider of editorial and classified newspaper systems has announced that LA REPUBBLICA of Italy has selected the Prestige editorial system for the entire production of its national newspaper. LA REPUBBLICA has purchased more than 400 workstations to connect to its host system in Rome. The first LA REPUBBLICA section is scheduled to go into production sometime this month.

LA REPUBBLICA, part of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso Spa, has a circulation of approximately 600,000 nationally. It produces a variety of daily editions in major Italian cities. The Prestige system uses enhanced Microsoft Word linked to Quark XPress to write text, hyphenate and justify stories against page layouts, perform automatic headline copy fitting, and view and print pages in a multi-user environment. All users in the remote locations have direct access to the full view of all pages.

The Prestige system at LA REPUBBLICA runs on IBM RS/6000 servers. The Bedford, Mass.-based Atex supports the Oracle database with the parallel server option. The client/server architecture is configured with Windows NT clients, and all workstations are connected to the central database in Rome via a wide area network.

Atex is on the Web at http://www.atex.com/.

BASEVIEW PRODUCTS INC.
The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company has announced that its latest version of NewsEditPro and NewsEditPro IQue -- 3.2 -- support a number of Macintosh OS 8.5.1 features, including contextual (control-click) menus, the ability to insert special characters by choosing a menu command, Appearance Manager for different themes and more.

The new versions of Baseview's main editorial products also have more built-in keyboard shortcuts to speed up copy management and the ability to display the length of your story in lines, paragraphs, words or characters, in addition to depth.

The company says that with the new contextual menus in version 3.2, a user can control-click anywhere in a story to bring up a menu that offers destinations for moving and/or copying files. The contextual menus also let the user check spelling, look up words and insert notes into a file, all without leaving the body of the file itself.

Baseview, a division of Harris Publishing Systems, is on the web at http://www.baseview.com/.

HARRIS PUBLISHING SYSTEMS CORP.
The Harris Corp. subsidiary said it received an order from Ad Group W.C. Inc., publishers of the weekly COURIER-GAZETTE and NEWARK PENNY SAVER in Newark, N.Y., for the Harris Data Center for the Microsoft Windows NT operating system.

Ad Group W.C. will also upgrade to DASH (the Display Ad System by Harris), AdPower! Classified Pagination, NewsMaker Pagination, and will add three NewsMaker Editorial licenses in addition to installing the new Data Center. The papers also use Harris CASH (Classified Advertising System).

Ad Group W. C. has been a customer of Melbourne, Fla.-based Harris for more than 25 years.

Harris Publishing is on the Web at http://www.ess.harris.com/hpsc/.

OPTRONICS INTERNATIONAL CORP.
The imaging systems manufacturer has announced the release of, and a price reduction to, the Macintosh version of ColorRight Pro v1.5 scanner software, and a price reduction to the ColorGetter Eagle external drum scanner.

A ColorRight Pro 1.5 interface kit, which includes the software, PCI board, and cable, has been reduced from $6000 to $4250. What the company calls "significant changes" have been made to the Macintosh version of ColorRight Pro 1.5 to assure exceptional results for beginner or expert users.

Chelmsford, Mass.-based Optronics said the U.S. list price of ColorGetter Eagle scanner has been reduced from $43,000 to $36,000.

Optronics is on the Web at http://www.optronics-intl.com/.

PAGEFLEX INC.
The Cambridge, Mass. division of Bitstream has announced that it is shipping Version 1.5 of the Pageflex Applications Suite. Pageflex is an on-demand XML based publishing solution consisting of three components: Pageflex Designer, Pageflex Producer and Pageflex Server.

The company says that each component of Pageflex is available as an independent software application, and, together as one package, constitute a total solution to on-demand printing.

Pageflex is on the Web at http://pageflexinc.com/.

PREPRESS SOLUTIONS INC.
The company has said that the "principals in the business success" of IPA Systems, Monotype Systems Ltd., Scangraphic PrePress Technology, Alpha Media and Freedom Systems Integrators have now acquired strategic interest in Billerica, Mass.-based PrePress Solutions.

The "substantial investment" will form one of the largest industry networks, the companies said.

The companies said that technology of IPA Systems and Monotype Systems is compatible with the PrePress Solutions product line through existing cooperative development.

PrePress Solutions is on the Web at http://www.prepress.pps.com/, while IPA Systems is on the Web at http://www.fsi-ipa.com/ipa/.

SYSTEM INTEGRATORS INC.
The Sacramento-based supplier of editorial and classified systems says that the five papers from the Los Angeles Newspaper Group (LANG) are live on SII's System/77 classified advertising solution, which features SII's Complete Zoning and Rating classified advertising system running on the latest generation ServerNet technology from Compaq/Tandem.

LANG, a division of the MediaNews Group of Denver which includes the SAN GABRIEL VALLEY TRIBUNE, the LONG BEACH PRESS-TELEGRAM, the LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS, the PASADENA STAR-NEWS and the WHITTIER DAILY NEWS, will centralize its advertising applications on a single server to meet the zoning requirements of the Southern California region.

This installation of SII's CZARII advertising client and System/77 marks the completion of Phase One of SII's two-phase advertising and editorial implementation at LANG. SII's System/77, currently supporting 177 classified advertising clients, is scheduled to support a combined total of 550 advertising and editorial clients at the five newspapers in early fall. The SII System/77 currently resides at the VALLEY TRIBUNE location in West Covina and networks to the other locations. In addition to its advertising solution, SII is installing DualSCOOP, the company's OPI (Open Pre-press Interface) and routing software with duplicated server for high availability.

SII is on the Web at http://www.sii.com/.

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COLE'S NEWSWIRE is compiled by Pete Wetmore and distributed by The Cole Group, publishers of THE COLE PAPERS and NEWSINC., 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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