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Automated-posting tools, offered by a host of new and traditional newspaper vendors such as System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, Seattle-based Pantheon Inc. and the newly-renamed New Horizons Team, now make their way into newspaper plants.
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The next step in the process, dynamic posting, generates HTML pages on the fly as users request them.
One example: Digital Technology International of Orem, Utah's new Web-client software, which sits alone on the newspaper's Web server, serving up templates that make dynamic SQL calls back to DT's content-neutral editorial and classified databases. With Internet and print information residing on the same server, the Web "becomes just another edition," said DT Chief Executive Officer Don Oldham.
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Ad tools that automate the classified front-end to the Web abounded, and some took an additional step with added-value products.
Uses for online Yellow-Page technology, as offered by providers including Electric Classifieds Inc. of San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Zip2 Corp., expanded this year to include real-estate and automotive sites.
Other providers seek to improve connectivity between newspapers and advertisers in the critical automotive, real-estate and recruitment categories. Edgil Associates Inc. of North Chelmsford, Mass.' recruitment-center product, Associated Information Systems International Inc. of Auburn, Calif.'s AdBase, and Cincinnati-based Gannett Media Technologies International's Celebro Advertising Solutions all link newspapers directly to auto-dealer inventories, Realtor databases or recruiters' job banks.
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The Internet buzzword of the year, "push," arrived at NEXPO in full force. Microsoft demoed the new push-enabled version of its Internet Explorer Web-browsing software, while Israeli Zebra Pushware Solutions showcased its "newspaper-centric" infoPager software.
Also touting online-transaction technology: Salt Lake City-based Tribune Solutions, which unveiled a Web subscription-management system to be tested at The Salt Lake Tribune this summer.
NEXPO Features Web's Next Threads
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Web vs. print publishing: "My contention is that they are very much the same, just two different ways of looking at the world," said Howard Finberg, Phoenix Newspapers Inc.'s director of information technology, at a NEXPO workshop. "Print has deadlines; online, we're always publishing. Editors vs. publishers. Space vs. plenty of space. And profits vs. expenses."
To grasp that odd combination of duality and commonality, however, newspapers need to rethink workflow dictated by decade-old technology, Finberg contended. "If we are looking to build online systems as extensions, we need to change the paradigm."
The solution? "Build systems that handle multiple media," advised Matt Cohen, chief technology officer of the New Century Network. Then build components around that central, "content-neutral" database.
No complete system exists today, Cohen conceded. "You can't build large systems by yourself, but you need to see the pieces as they emerge and put them together," he said.
Many of those pieces, big and small, were on display in NEXPO's first-ever New-Media Pavilions. Among them:
Such developments aside, Peter Cooney, assistant managing editor of systems for The Gazette in Montreal, offered a warning: Newspapers need to develop multimedia content, and multimedia skills, before moving forward with flashy Web widgets.
"The slow limits of the Internet suit us just fine because of the text-based nature of newspaper content," he said. "Newspapers are not ready to produce the content people will be demanding 4-5 years from now."
Mark Toner, Presstime staff writer. E-mail, tonem@naa.org; phone, (703) 902-1684; fax, (703) 902-1690.