COLE'S NEWSWIRE, Sept. 29, 1999

Sept. 29, 1999
Vol. 5, No. 41

COLE'S 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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ADVANCED PUBLISHING TECHNOLOGY INC.
APT, a advertising and editorial publishing systems developer based in Burbank, Calif., has announced its AdMaster ad production management tool. The company will integrate the Ad Tracking Product from DPS Inc. of Rocky Hill, Conn., with APT's order entry and ad layout programs. In AdMaster, the status of any page, or page element, will be immediately available from one screen.

A debut installation is scheduled for November, and a demonstration CD is available. APT is on the Web at http://www.aptpubtech.com/.

AUTOLOGIC INFORMATION INTERNATIONAL INC.
AII, an supplier of imaging workflow tools and output devices based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., has announced that its variable-resolution APS 3850 CTP has been installed at DRUCKHAUS BONN, a contract printer and independent daily and weekly newspaper publisher for the area around Meckenheim, Germany.

Two new models were added recently to the line: the APS 3850 CTP/E, an economy model yielding 50 broadsheet plates per hour at 1000 dpi, and the APS 3850 CTP Wide, rated for 160 double-truck U.S. portrait plates per hour at 1000 dpi, or utilizing its rotating feature, 240 single broadsheets per hour.

The company may be visited on the World-Wide Web at http://www.autologic.com/.

BIDDER'S EDGE
Bidder's Edge, an Internet auction service based in Burlington, Mass., recently received a $9 million investment from Landmark Communications Inc., a privately held media company based in Norfolk, Va., and active in newspapers and on-line publishing.

Bidder's Edge aggregates item listings from the leading on-line auction sites, including eBay, Amazon and Yahoo. Using its own database, the company said it provides bidders with the on-line tools to easily find items as they become available for auction and historical pricing to make informed bids.

Landmark is founder of InfiNet Co., also of Norfolk, an Internet service and software provider, which it owns with Knight Ridder of San Jose and Gannett Co. Inc. of Arlington, Va.

The auction site is on the Web at http://www.biddersedge.com/.

COMPUTER ASSOCIATES INTERNATIONAL INC.
CA, the provider of software, support and integration services to a variety of industries, will unify customer service databases at NEWSDAY, the 573,000-circulation daily serving Long Island and Queens in New York.

The Islandia, N.Y.-based company's Opal system is expected to give customer service representatives a single look into a number of individual databases, without rewriting or replacing the existing systems. When a subscriber or advertiser calls the newspaper, the reps will query Opal, which will generate simultaneous queries and display all pertinent information about the customer on a single screen.

In addition to Opal, NEWSDAY will install Jasmine, CA's pure object database system. Jasmine will provide increased functionality beyond what is available in the existing legacy applications.

NEWSDAY's legacy applications include an International Business Machines CICS mainframe and client/server systems operating VSAM, Sybase and Oracle databases.

CA is on the Web at http://www.cai.com/.

DIGITAL ART EXCHANGE INC.
DAX, a Boston-based provider of Internet services to the graphic arts industry, is offering a new "always on," managed Internet service, DAX DSL (digital subscriber line).

A midrange service, DAX DSL is aimed at small to mid-size businesses looking to expand from ISDN without jumping to an enterprise class T-1 service. The symmetrical digital subscriber line service, which is in limited roll-out in major metropolitan areas in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and West, is available in either 192 or 384 kilobits-per-second, and includes a 250-megabyte File Transfer Protocol drop box, five megabytes of web hosting space and e-mail.

DAX is on the Web at http://www.dax-it.com/.

GEAC COMPUTER CORP. LTD.
Geac, a software and systems supplier based in Markam, Ontario, Canada, has announced its financial results for the first quarter ended July 31. Revenues for the three-month period rose 17 percent to C$202.5 million, or US$138.4 million, and earnings before interest and taxes were C$51.7 million, or US$35.3 million. Net income for the period was equal to the previous year's first quarter.

In the past six months, Geac has acquired several software developers in a move to consolidate "mission critical software that builds niche leadership" in selected industries, its announcement said.

In the first quarter, it acquired Australia-based Cybergraphic Systems Ltd. and U.K-based Matrix Systems, both in the publishing systems industry, and in the second quarter moved to acquire the financial and human resources systems assets from Clarus Corp. in the United States and all of JBA Holdings PLC. in the United Kingdom. The acquisitions are expected to nearly double annualized revenues, the company said.

Geac is on the Web at http://www.geac.com/.

PUBLISHING BUSINESS SYSTEMS INC.
The Barrington, Ill.-based supplier has said that Thomson Newspapers of Stamford, Conn., has licensed its new Circulation InSight product for use in 40 newspapers.

Circulation InSight is a PC-based graphical information analysis tool for identifying trends, opportunities and problems that affect a newspaper's circulation business. The product interfaces to PBS Circulation Management.

PBS is on the Web at http://www.pbs.com/.

SHIRA INC.
This maker of NT-based digital pre-press and printing workflow software, based in Woburn, Mass., has launched its "Right-to" line for pre-RIP quality control.

The Right-to-RIP and Right-to-Proof software solutions will prepare, produce, and proof industry standard film and platesetter-ready files, the company said, so that users can eliminate costly procedures such as preflighting.

Privately held Shira Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of Shira Computers Ltd., headquartered in Kfar Saba, Israel.

You can visit Shira on the web at http://www.shira.com/.

SPANLINK COMMUNICATIONS INC.
The Minneapolis-based developer of automated customer interaction solutions has announced FastCall.commerce, call center software specifically optimized for managing business-to-business e-commerce applications over the telephone and the Web.

As an option, FastCall.commerce uses new voice-enabled commerce technologies for natural language voice recognition, recently announced by Nuance.

Spanlink is on the Web at http://www.spanlink.com/.

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This issue of COLE'S NEWSWIRE was compiled by Marion J. Love. It is 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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