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Photos in the round: The web site of
the Washington Post displays an IPIX
image. Click on it and with the help of a
plug-in, you can see 360 degrees in all
directions.
Production scoreboard: A tally of pages
and their status in the production process
is shown on a multi-colored board
made by Miracom Computer Corp.
Postcards from the edge of
the annual newspaper trade show
ORLANDO, Fla. -- For kids, getting mail is a really big deal. For some of us adults, it still is.
I never know what's going to be in my box. From Monday through Saturday, I anticipate this mundane event in the flow of my life, because amid the predictable bills, notices, catalogs and junk/direct mail, sometimes I still get a wonderful surprise -- occasionally a postcard from China; once, a package from Vienna.
Checks are always a delight, as is the once-in-a-while letter from a friend or a love that leaves me so content that I spend an hour or so rereading it before resuming the rest of the day.
Despite the fact that I'm no longer a NEXPO neophyte after somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 Anpas/Anpa-Tecs/Nexpos (whatever), I still look forward to the possibility of discovering something deliciously stimulating and innovative -- for nearly every part of the newspaper -- mixed in with the comfortably familiar booths of trusted and dependable suppliers that meet a newspaper's most basic needs.
OK, so maybe I need to get a life. Maybe I've been in graduate school too long. But just like the out-of-the-ordinary jewels that show up in the mailbox, every NEXPO -- including the one here June 20-23 -- leaves me pondering about what these innovations say about how we've changed, as well as about how we may evolve.
CollecTech Systems
For example, as an industry, maybe we've gained the tiniest smidgen of humility in our dealings with customers.
CollecTech of Calabasas, Calif., moves the historical battleground between debtor and debtee into new, win-win territory. The company, twice a winner in INC. magazine's list of the 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America, recognizes that the need to retain a customer base ranks as highly as payment and receivable needs -- while keeping cost efficiencies in mind.
CollecTech sees itself as a "connection service" rather than a collection agency. Strategies are flexible and customizable; collection approaches typically begin with written requests followed by thank-you letters when payments arrive or accounts are resolved.
The company will also use predictive dialing to deliver a custom phone script -- typically two weeks after a second demand has been mailed -- at different times of the day and week, including weekends, until an actual contact has been made. That contact means that an agent speaks with your customer, not his or her answering machine.
The company also provides consultants to work with your in-house staff to develop an effective policy, and provides statistics and trend analysis (including monthly management reports with individual location summaries as well as corporate totals) to ensure that your collection/connection program is optimal.
Faith Popcorn, an author and marketing guru who has spoken to and observed the newspaper industry, probably would be inclined to view this approach to bill collecting as a paradigm shift resulting from an increased feminine influence on business dealings.
Southern Co.
One of the new kids on the NEXPO block offers to tame the triple-loop roller coaster of the newsprint market into a kiddie ride.
It's called hedging, and is intended to create a win-win relationship between newsprint buyers and suppliers. Atlanta-based Southern Co. is one of two businesses in the United States (the other is Houston-based Enron Capital and Trade Resources Corp.) to provide financial risk management for the paper and pulp industry. In the last two years, markets have also opened in London and Helsinki.
Southern is the largest electricity producer in the United States. In that capacity, it provides energy marketing, trading and financial services to wholesale and retail customers. Through financial/price risk management -- swaps, collars and price caps -- Southern provides its commercial customers with a less volatile energy market, making it easier to budget energy expenses.
Southern, which has traders working around the clock, received the National Account Management Association's 1998 Strategic Innovation Award for turning its attention to the pulp and paper industry. Through Southern, which also serves the energy needs of over 50 paper mills, newspapers can gain a guaranteed price on paper supplies without affecting existing paper supply agreements.
What's the short version? You decide how much paper for how long (one to five years) and pick a pricing option. The most common financial risk management transactions are:
Swaps, which provide paper buyers with a guaranteed purchase price. If prices go above the agreed-upon fixed price per ton, Southern sends you a check. If prices drop below the fixed price, you put a check in the mail.
Collars, which ensure that prices remain within an acceptable price range, making them "collared." As above, when prices fall outside that range, either you send a check to Southern or it sends one to you.
Price caps, which is Southern's premium service. Pay once for price protection and you don't pay for anything else -- Southern picks up the difference between your top price and the market price per ton.
Basically, then, Southern guarantees the price for the term and the volume. Protected from price swings, you can budget more accurately and stabilize your costs, which will likely improve your credit rating, thus lowering your cost of financing (as well as the need for paper inventories).
Southern publishes a 100-page, spiral-bound primer on the workings of financial risk management for the pulp and paper industry, with chapters covering market structure and financial performance of the industry, financial risk management, applications of financial risk management to the pulp and paper industry, benefits of financial risk management, risk control and management oversight, and a glossary.
IPIX
If your on-line customers are too impatient to wait for those astonishing video clips to download, but you want more pizzazz on your site than traditional stills provide, you may want to consider Ipix, immersive photography technology from Interactive Pictures Corp.
Finally, someone has figured out that everyone in the world doesn't surf the Web while sitting in an air-conditioned office equipped with a T-1 line. Ipix allows site visitors to either self-navigate or view auto-rotated, three-dimensional, 360-degree-by-360-degree photographic images for an interactive feel that challenges video (at around 200 kilobytes per file).
Since February, Interactive Pictures has been working with Eastman Kodak Co. of Rochester, N.Y., to incorporate the Ipix imaging accessory kit into Kodak's Digital Science DC200 camera for as little as $1000, which was in use at the show. The kit includes a fish-eye lens, tripod and mounted rotator, and Ipix software.
The 360-degree effect is achieved when two opposing 180-degree shots -- front and back views -- are precisely aligned and combined to provide one full image.
Media industry users of Ipix include CNN, Discovery Communications, the New York Times, Houston Chronicle, Salt Lake City Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post. Several of these sites won awards at February's Interactive Newspapers Conference, including St. Petersburg (http://www.sptimes.com/ipixgallery/gallery.HTML), CNN Interactive (http://cnn.com/world/9708/diana/mourns/), and Chicago (http://chicago.digitalcity.com/entertainment/holiday/traditn/windows/htm).
The technology also has potential for some classified sites, where prospective renters or home buyers could see a digital walk-through of residences on the market. A Java version of the Ipix Viewer is available which makes viewing possible without installing a plug-in.
Interactive Pictures Corp. got its start as Omniview Inc., commercializing remote robotic systems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where the company maintains its headquarters. Customers can purchase any or all of the Interactive Pictures hardware and software necessary to capture, process and view the images.
Products include an 8mm wide-angle lens which captures a 180-degree view of the scene; the Ipix Rotator for standard camera tripods, which swivels 180 degrees to create the whole picture; the Ipix builder software, which combines and "dewarps" the two images to eliminate distortion and includes an "auto-seamer" and photo touch-up tool; Ipix Keys, which allow users to construct each Ipix and are sold in bundles of 10 to 1000; the Ipix Viewer, a free plug-in which allows users to download images on Windows or PowerMac systems, and the digital camera system, which produces Ipix images in minutes.
Miracom Computer Corp.
You know that humongous sign at the Las Vegas Convention Center with little lights spelling out a series of messages? You know, the one that always says something like "Welcome NEXPO Attendees"?
Well, Miracom Computer Corp. of White Plains, N.Y., came to NEXPO '98 to introduce the same concept on a somewhat smaller scale as a way to improve internal communication at newspapers, especially in the production areas. Among its current customers are the New York Times and the New York Daily News.
Miracom creates a specialized solution for each site. On the low end, signs range from one to three lines. There are indoor (readable up to 150 feet away) and outdoor models, powered by either electricity or solar panels.
Messages are generated via computer software, and can be presented in multiple colors. As you move up the scale, signs are larger and can present a great deal more information. At the College Point production facility of the New York Times, Miracom replaced walkie-talkie communications with the Smart Alec intelligent messaging application to provide real-time press and inserter information, which is distributed throughout the plant.
Workers can tell at a glance what jobs are running, how many pages are out and how many are complete. Process status is indicated by color -- red for stop, green for running and yellow for make-ready. Information on processes and equipment is routed from several strategically located PCs through a Miracom-designed server which uses an Oracle database and a DDE link.
The Daily News installed a similar system, BayCount, when its mailroom totalizer system wasn't accounting for a considerable number of papers. The new system monitors loading dock conveyors to track waste, helps coordinate production shutdowns and helps drivers meet their schedules.
How do the newspapers know the system is effective? Workers complained when management turned it off.
If I had mailed postcards to myself from this year's NEXPO, I think they would have mentioned these products. The changes they represent are subtle -- evolutionary rather than the revolutionary technological dramas to which we, as an industry, became addicted in the '70s and '80s.
They're less about figuring out how to shut down the paper across the street (anyone who's still publishing probably has done that already) and more about finding ways to work together -- to partner -- with our customers, other industries and inside our own plants.
And these changes are also about enhancing communication -- doing a better job of providing workers with the information they need to use sophisticated technology in a sophisticated way, or treating customers with respect and being aware of the context in which they use our products.
When you come down to it, these changes reflect a new sophistication, and maybe even a longer-term view than we've taken before. After all the excitement of the first, second, third, fourth and fifth waves of technology -- and scads of nervous energy that drove videotex, audiotext and on-line newspapers -- we're increasingly conscious of both the processes and people that make us important to, and effective within, our communities, and of how very important our communities are to us.
-- L. Carol Christopher
Collectech Systems Inc.,
(818) 878-6900;
Interactive Pictures Corp.,
(408) 562-6059,
e-mail: sales@ipix.com;
Miracom Computer Corp.,
(914) 682-2188,
e-mail: questions@miracomcomputer.com;
Southern Co.,
(770) 393-0650,
e-mail: web@southernco.com.
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