Merlin's magic now includes NFL: Merlin-Net, an on-line photo management system, has made arrangements with the National Football League which allow photographers and papers to market images made at pro football games.

Digital assets, we have a few, but far too few to mention

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the matters of data blob herding, few temblors rattled NEXPO 2000's quake zone.

The two-year-old term "digital asset management" (DAM) now encompasses any file-management system, from image storage systems to editor-to-platemaker transmission systems, and the fashions of holding and retrieving multimedia files have settled into a tidy set of databases, keyword and text indexers, search engines, eXtensible Markup Language (XML), preview images and native file formats.

That's not to say this was an easy process, just that the result is the maturing products offered a year of enhancements rather than advancements. That fact may disappoint those of you holding out for magical storage transformations, but for most buyers it's a quiet bay in the otherwise confused seas of technology changes.

A glance over this year's NEXPO show models also created a surprising sense of uniformity -- rather like the auto industry's minivan designs. On the screen you'll find about the same look and feel from brand to brand. XML tagging, interchangeable database nameplates and multimedia claims further blur the distinctions. You have to really understand what's under the hood to figure whether performance and functionality are top notch. And with so many comparable features, just like in auto buying, it really does matter who services after the sale. This magnifies business deals and marketing partnerships even more than before.

Even though the big news was "nothing earthshaking," there were some attention grabbers at NEXPO 2000, held here June 17-21, especially for editorial system suppliers.

IBM tosses Preserver line
The rumble most soothing for owners of the Associated Press's Preserver archive was that Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp. has assumed customer support and a migration plan from the New York City-based news cooperative's nascent product. That's a natural fit, since Big Blue blood pulsed under the skin of AP's image archive.

Customers awaiting Preserver 4.0 will catch instead IBM's Networked Interactive Content Access (Nica) system, which supports many-media storage. Since AP passed along the Preserver source code and long-time product manager David Rocha, as well as its customer list, IBM promised in a release to make "the upgrade path for AP-member newspapers even easier." The new Nica will use the same RS/6000 hardware.

AP will continue to support Preserver Version 3.6 through Dec. 31, 2002.

For IBM, it's a small second path into the newspaper market, a mere trail compared with the new marketing autobahn being paved by CCI Europe.

The Kennesaw, Ga.-based systems maker is using Nica/6000 as the foundation for its MediaStore, which it will sell separately or as a component of its editorial system.

This is a fresh relationship for CCI, which is justifiably proud of its own development, but even more proud of its ability to hook together open systems. CCI promises to shape Nica just for newspapers, with full knowledge that video and audio are becoming part of newspaper parlance.

Although the architecture promises full multimedia capabilities, Nica currently supports just the print-centric formats and a smattering of native formats are in the works. So there's plenty to work on.

In a quick demo, the features you expect to find in a storage-retrieval system worked fine and looked pretty standard. IBM's representatives say that its strength is the automatic linking that happens when finished pages are processed.

It's the grouping and cross-referencing that organizes data more like users need or viewers expect.

For example, a "distiller" operation converts completed pages into linked page image and page component files. So by clicking a spot in an on-screen Portable Document Format (PDF) file, the archive will deliver the image or story in that spot. It works at the Orange County (Calif.) Register.

Links are key to the repurposing operations dear to every newspaper's heart.

A second kind of link is the ability for this software to see across separate archives and content databases. This makes distributed storage an attractive option.

If your operation speaks Sun rather than RS/6000, the system is very open-minded. And the clients can be Windows NT-based PCs, Macintoshes or browser-equipped PCs.

With a big name in computer technology and a big name in newspaper software, the result is worth a special look. However, there's big competition at work.

A part of the whole
One of the most interesting developments is the hardest to describe as a DAM system. Harris Publishing Systems Corp. unveiled its new long-term storage system that is so entwined with its revamped cross-media publishing system that it's hard to separate, yet deserves a mention.

The Melbourne, Fla.-based supplier leapt a systems generation with its new Jazbox database-centered product suite. It calls the archiving aspect J@zstor, and it features the same open-architecture, XML tags, multifield sorting and one-terminal display that define most modern storage systems.

It has a web client, security and user activity tracking. It supports text, images and PDFs, but developers promise they can track any format you need. It's the tight relationship to the Jazbox production tools that makes this product attractive.

But more on that next month.

Another DAM competitor, Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys, has few new twists on DocCenter, its multimedia storehouse. Its new feature is an access-way, a web-browser interface called MediaCenter, aimed at offsite editorial staff that needs access to wire, images and archives.

Suffice it to say that DocCenter Web can be a reporter's instant memory on the road. The best part is that the new interface is simple, fast and satisfying.

A web pathway to a storage center also was unveiled by Digital Technology International of Springville, Utah.

The biggest news in the T/One Inc. booth was the release of Merlin 4.0, described as a major rewrite of the photo archive software. The Quincy, Mass.-based developer is setting up to handle text, video and audio, although its strengths are still features customized to the newsroom's image-handling needs.

While the new version offers faster response and better search technology, this change in technology also signals a change in T/One's competitive arena. Not only will it be jousting with the rest of the news industry's DAM pack, it plans to target corporate customers and newspaper groups, where one server may fulfill the archiving needs for several small newspapers, via Internet or wide-area networking.

To demonstrate how it can handle that assignment, T/One has taken its networked storage capabilities into application service territory, in this case as a photo sales gallery called Merlin-Net.

Think you have some great pictures that people would buy? Merlin-Net will peddle them for you. Clicking through from your newspaper's web site, the customer can gaze upon on-line displays of your pictures. If one pleases, the order is placed via the web site, then printed on a top-of-the-line Kodak imager on real exhibit-quality paper. Depending on the customer's preference, the finished photo can be shipped overnight to the customer. You get a royalty fee, and your staff didn't lift a finger except to supply Merlin-Net with high-resolution image files.

Need to buy a photo for publication? Merlin-Net plans to ship high-resolution files within minutes of order and handle billing out reprint rights licenses.

The National Football League uses Merlin-Net to offer photos taken at any NFL game. The Boston Globe has also posted a gallery. Take a look at how it works at http://www.nfl.com/ or http://www.bostonglobe.com/.

Preparing the past for the future
If you are happy with the returns from people rifling your electronic archives, why not let them rove your morgue? Let's say, back to your Volume One, No. One?

A few intrepid newspapers are working on just that. Last June, the Chicago Tribune began work with Excalibur Technologies, a supplier of digital archive tools based in Vienna, Va., on a three-year project to store in digital form its microfilm and newsprint clips back to 1849. The cost is expected to reach millions and millions of dollars.

The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle has similar ambitions on a more modest budget. Enter iArchives, a NEXPO debutante company with headquarters in Lehi, Utah, and roots in Belo Corp. of Dallas.

The Augusta paper expects to have its ante-digital materials, all the way back to 1786, ready for on-line search and display in less than a year for as little as 40 to 50 cents a page.

The Dallas Morning News is headed for a live date this summer.

Whether starting with microfilm, microfiche or hard copy, iArchives promises to index every word on the page. After digitizing and storing a page image, iArchives isolates the text. Then, using iArchive's own search engine, a web site visitor can request a list of pages that contain favorite key words, appeared on a particular date or carried a topic of interest. With a click on the list, up pops a page image with orange highlighter on the article that fits the search.

OK, that sounds easy. But how do you charge for it?

It isn't the ability to resell content that delights iArchive shoppers. It's the prospect of visitors spending hours and hours looking into their grandfathers' notoriety -- what's termed a "sticky" activity that keeps visitors glued to their screens -- while banner ads flip into their peripheral vision.

The service, which can be bought outright or hosted, has a few interesting quirks. For example, it retains the crinkles and blotches of the original newsprint, for an authentic antique feel.

The company offers this cost example: A 100,000-circulation newspaper that wants to convert 100 years of back issues on microfilm can be converted in six months for about $250,000. Collecting returns from library and institutional customers, as well as individual service subscribers, the company projects a return in less than three years. Afterward the trickle of income will go on and on.

Distillation
That's the quick-and-simple approach. Then there's the high-tech, artificial intelligence approach.

In another corner of the Newspapers 2000 displays (this at Connections, not NEXPO ), Olive Software Inc., an Israeli firm with North American offices in Altamonte Springs, Fla., plans to make much more of the newsprint and microfiche sources by starting with more digestion power.

Its ActivePaper product suite clips apart the page image, draws conclusions about how the elements are arranged and applies everyone's favorite tags through its XML Distiller.

So instead of simply reading and converting the copy, the distiller tries to figure out which picture went with what caption and which story. For each story, the software isolates the title, the byline and the text, and slips those pieces into related, but separate tags. Ads and graphics join the process. It's sort of like your library staff taking old graphics files and manually adding keywords and interpreting data, only Olive Software promises it won't take your staff time.

The XML Distiller isn't just for hard copy either. If you have PDF, PostScript or TIFF, XML can disassemble and recognize the file.

Further, Olive Software proposes to speed that newly dissected information in any of the most fashionable distribution methods. Its Multi-Channel Publisher reworks those XML tags like any modern DAM for delivery as HTML, WML or LIT (if that acronym appeals to you). Multi-Channel Broadcaster, on demand, generates interfaces for any non-print device your customers can request. So you have a visitor through AOL TV? The visitor gets AOL TV-enhanced presentation.

This all-purpose end product doesn't come as cheaply as the iArchive. One estimate was $1.50 to $2.50 a page. The system, marketed as a series of modules, for which license fees are assessed, can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $400,000.

-- Marion J. Love, mjl@colepapers.net

The Associated Press,
(212) 621-1500;
CCI Europe Inc.,
(770) 420-1101,
e-mail: edeasley@mindspring.com;
Digital Technology International,
(801) 853-5000,
e-mail: dtinfo@dtint.com;
Harris Publishing Systems Corp.,
(407) 242-5330,
e-mail: hpscmktg@harris.com;
iArchives,
(801) 766-8288,
e-mail: edrowley@iarchives.com;
IBM,
(415) 545-2187,
e-mail: ktnguyen@us.ibm.com;
Olive Software Inc.,
(407) 788-6386,
e-mail: info@olive-soft.com;
T/ONE Inc.,
(617) 328-6645,
e-mail: pleabo@t-1.com;
Unisys Corp.,
(215) 986-4080,
e-e-mail: williamhstroud@unn.unisys.com.

Also see DAM business

From THE COLE PAPERS, August 2000, Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.