COLE'S NEWSWIRE, June 9 1999

June 9 1999
Vol. 5, No. 23

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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AD-STAR SERVICES INC.
Ad-Star, a supplier of multimedia classified advertising solutions based in Marina del Rey, Calif., has teamed up with Los Angeles-based CareerPath.com to launch an on-line job posting service. Using Ad-Star's Advertise123, web-based recruitment advertisers can create, schedule and pay for ads on the site at http://www.careerpath.com/.

Accessible by clicking on "Post a job online" on the CareerPath.com web site, Advertise123 is another in a series of Ad-Star remote ad entry products. Ad-Star is on the Web at http://www.adstar.com/.

AGILE ENTERPRISE INC.
Agile, a publishing solutions supplier based in Nashua, N.H., has announced a reseller agreement with Compaq Computer Corp. of Houston. Under the arrangement, Agile will work with Compaq's MultiMedia Publishing Services group of Piscataway, N.J., to market newspaper pre-press systems in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Agile, a subsidiary of Applied Graphics Technologies Inc. of Rochester, N.Y., will contribute its TeamBase editorial front-end, which runs on Windows and Mac platforms, while Compaq will add integration services, building on its experience at several daily newspapers in the East and Midwest.

Agile is on the Web at http://www.agilent.com/.

B-LINKED INC.
B-Linked, a provider of digital ad transmission services based in Chapel Hill, N.C., has announced a strategic partnership with iPrint.com of Redwood City, Calif., through which they will offer advertisers and publishers access to the Visual Ad Design Studio, a web site where ads can be created, produced and distributed.

National advertisers will be able to localize ads, then generate Portable Document Format (PDF) files and send them to newspapers using B-Linked's free ad delivery service at http://www.b-linked.com/. Local advertisers will update the PDF ads with local information they send to newspapers as EPS files, which are then digitally added to the PDF file for output. The service will help to move ad creation and updating from newspaper ad alleys to the Web.

INTERACTIVE DIGITAL INTELLIGENCE GROUP INC.
IDIG, a provider of computer-related instructional materials based in San Rafael, Calif., has released two more videos in its PHOTOSHOP INSIDE & OUT series of videos detailing how to use Adobe Photoshop.

Part of the PHOTOSHOP FUNDAMENTALS series, segments one and two provide new users with the basics in how Photoshop works, as well as the steps to use in completing routine tasks. The videos explore scanning basics, retouching, web graphics preparation and layer functions.

Each one-hour closed-captioned tape is available for $39.95. IDIG is on the Web at http://www.idignet.com/.

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
The NAA, a trade group based in Vienna, Va., is gearing up for NEXPO '99, the annual technology exposition and conference which will be held June 14-17 in Las Vegas. More than 215,000 square feet of booth space has been sold to 373 exhibitors for positions on the exhibition floor, an increase of 8.6 percent over NEXPO '98, which was held June 20-23 in Orlando, Fla.

The conference portion of NEXPO '99 will feature a keynote address by Charles Geschke, president and co-chairman of Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose, which recently introduced its newest page layout program, InDesign. Geschke will speak on June 14, the first day of NEXPO which this year falls on a Monday-Thursday schedule for the first time ever.

The NAA is on the Web at http://www.naa.org/; NEXPO has its own web site at http://www.nexpo.com/.

NEWSINC.
When the family business is the newspaper business, good things can happen for shareholders, writes NEWSINC. Editor-Publisher David M. Cole in the June 7 issue. Cole reviews the history of now-public companies that families once closely held, then introduces a story by Correspondent Marion J. Love about how revealing proxy statements can be. (Love finds, for one thing, that families still control large blocks of voting stock.)

Also inside, Senior Editor Pete Wetmore talks with two executives about the state of the newspaper acquisitions market, examines declines in circulation at four newspapers, reviews participation in the National Time-Out for Diversity, and outlines the latest efforts to take newspaper companies into cyberspace.

For more about the June 7 issue of NEWSINC., visit The Cole Group on the Web at http://colegroup.com/.

POWERADZ.COM
PowerAdz.com, an on-line provider of web support services based in Rensselaer. N.Y., has launched Zwire, a turnkey package providing smaller newspapers with a complete web presence, including classifieds, community activities, editorial content, business directories and auctions.

Zwire, which can be updated without having to use HTML coding, offers advertisers a range of opportunities, from classifieds to display and banner ads. The product, which has been in beta testing at a half-dozen newspapers for six weeks, is due for release this month.

PowerAdz is on the Web at http://www.poweradz.com/.

TRENDWATCH
TrendWatch, a monitor of trends in the graphic arts industry based in Harrisville, R.I., has calculated that the number of professional creative businesses has grown 2.5 percent in the last year, with more than 62,000 establishments now in operation.

Nearly 229,000 seats are in use at operations run by designers, publishers, commercial graphics photographers and ad agencies. TrendWatch reports that web-related work is probably responsible for the 3.5 percent growth recorded by businesses with 10 or more employees.

TrendWatch is partnering with The Cole Group to produce the TrendWatch/Cole Group Newspapers surveys, a five-year research project to determine the buying trends in newspaper capital equipment and consumables. The Cole Group, publishers of this newswire, has recently released COLE'S NOTES -- TRENDWATCH NEWSPAPERS 1998.

This information is drawn from the 1999 TRENDWATCH CREATIVE ATLAS. For more about TrendWatch, visit http://www.trendwatch.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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