NEXPO IS TIME FOR PAPERS TO REFLECT ON TECH STRATEGIES

Big news at show is new editorial systems from Atex, DT, SII

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – The day before NEXPO started, I was asked at a small gathering of newspaper technologists what I thought the key technologies of the new decade would be.

NEXPO, the newspaper exposition and conference sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America held here June 14-17, is an opportunity to reflect on issues such as the fundamentals for the next decade. But it is also an opportunity to take a hard look at what the research and development crews at the various suppliers have wrought.

I'll get to some specifics in a moment, but first, an idle thought: week before last, eBay, the giant on-line auction firm, was off-line for something like 22 hours. Coincidentally, Senior Editor Pete Wetmore was writing a story about how newspapers are reacting to the on-line auction craze; it's inside this issue.

I live a few miles from eBay's headquarters, so I found it interesting that the outage was well reported in Bay Area media – it made the front page of at least three daily papers and was the third story on the 10 o'clock TV news.

Now, I know that lots of people were affected by the outage, but I think there is something smirky going on here. Newspapers and TV have learned how to run seven days a week, 24 hours a day; could they have been tweaking their on-line brothers and sisters?

Regardless, the CEO of eBay, who was interviewed on TV, looked strangely familiar to me. The dark circles under her eyes, and parka and T-shirt attire led me to believe she had come into the office in the middle of the night – much the same visage as I had seen when a newspaper publisher or two had come into the office in the middle of the night when the publishing system was uncooperative at 3 in the morning.

It's interesting that the key technologies being touted here at NEXPO address no real issue of reliability – those issues have been solved for many, many years. (Sacramento-based System Integrators Inc. has been selling a product for almost 20 years whose trademark includes "Non-Stop.")

The big news here is in front-end systems: Three suppliers have brought new editorial systems and two have collaborated on a new classified system.

Atex Media Solutions Inc. of Bedford, Mass., has written a new editorial system from scratch. Utilizing standard components such as an Oracle database and eXtensible Markup Language (XML), the company has written a lot of industry-specific software, making the new Omnex system a high-quality competitor to Unisys Corp. of Blue Bell, Pa., and the Danish supplier CCI Europe.

Meanwhile, CCI is showing a new classified advertising and billing system developed in conjunction with Neasi-Weber International of Northridge, Calif. The product shows promise and will be tested at London's Associated Newspapers.

Digital Technology International of Springville, Utah, has completely revamped its 'Speed products; they are now all based on Adobe Systems' InDesign. The user interface is much improved and the use of the Sybase relational database is more sophisticated.

The aforementioned System Integrators has a new lease on life with its Insiight editorial system, which is based on Lotus Notes. Customers will be given the choice of using either InDesign or Quark XPress as the page layout tool. SII has also made some interesting moves with its agreement with CompuText of Houston, allowing SII to exclusively market CompuText's classified system, which is being renamed WorldClass.

No, the highlight here at NEXPO is on new technologies, though there are not many buyers in the crowd. It's pretty clear that newspapers are going to wait out the Year 2000 problem before they purchase and install any new major systems. Many publishers plan to freeze all software and hardware from now until the end of the first quarter of 2000, just in case they get bitten by the Y2K bug.

The key new technologies of the next decade? Better systems that don't crash as much.

– David M. Cole

Inside ...

• Supplier offers $1 million to affiliates that promote sites
• Smaller papers' web chiefs offer resource tips on sites
• Chicago paper moves to put 150 years' of digital files on-line
• Papers tighten up subscriber lists for long haul
• L.A., Toronto top executives look outward, inward
• The coach goes onto the playing field
• Persons

From NEWSINC., June 21, 1999, Copyright © 1999, The Cole Group. All Rights Reserved.