Goss Graphic Systems announced that on Dec. 1, an executive committee of the board of directors was formed to oversee the Westmont, Ill., company’s operations.

Former A.H. Belo President and Chief Operating Officer James P. Sheehan was named chairman of the pressmaker’s board of directors and chair of its new executive committee. Robert M. Kuhn remains Goss president and chief executive officer.

Alex Brnilovich, who recently joined Goss as head of North American operations, also assumed control of Latin American and commercial operations and was named executive vice president, Americas.

GMA Inc. of Bethlehem, Pa., last fall merged its customer-service and project-management operations into a single unit reporting to President and CEO Randy Seidel. Jim Golinski was named director of the combined unit.

The post-press manufacturer also continues developing its planned “GMA Academy” training program; Ron Frantz was named in-house administrator and Jim Baird will handle on-site efforts and follow-ups at customer sites.

As part of a larger corporate reorganization last fall, German pressmaker Koenig & Bauer-Albert AG’s two American units, sheetfed manufacturer KBA-Planeta North America and newspaper pressmaker KBA-Motter Inc., were made standalone divisions of a newly formed KBA North America subsidiary.

Already the majority owner, KBA purchased the remaining outstanding shares of KBA-Motter Inc. and renamed the York, Pa., company KBA North America Inc. Web Press Division.

Scott R. Smith, president and CEO of the KBA North America Web Press Division, says the move was part of a larger focus on the American market by the German pressmaker.

German-designed Colora newspaper offset presses are now being built at the York facility, he says.

	Monster Commando

It’s a war out there, and the mouse can be your worst enemy.

“The mouse is not your friend,” says Jeff Turner, chief executive officer of AdOut. “By bypassing the mouse and using keyboard commands, a computer user becomes much more efficient.”

To help pre-press workers win that battle, the Van Nuys, Calif., company developed two computer games—Key Commando and Monster Commands. Players battle monsters or military commandos, in the process learning the keyboard commands for such mission-critical applications as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, QuarkXPress and Multi-Ad Creator. Keyboard shortcuts for both Microsoft Windows and MacOS are also included in the games.

Key Commando

AdOut developed the games to train its graphic-design team as it geared up for outsourcing contracts from several Los Angeles newspapers (see story, p. 21). At The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, Creative Supervisor Deb Allen discovered the games have appeal beyond newspaper employees.

“I took my kids, Maggie, 9, and Wesley, 11, with me to the office on Sunday,” she says. “While I was working, they played Monster Commands. Both got 100 percent on level one in short order.”

The CD-ROM software, available for both PC and Macintosh, costs $29.98. Download a free demonstration version at www.adout.com.

Newsprint supplier Avenor, which was recently acquired by Bowater Inc., was rated 1998’s best newsprint supplier by the 217 members of the PAGE Co-Op.

Member responses were varied—Donohue Inc. came in “a close” second, while Newsprint South came in an equally close third, according to the Wayne, Pa., newsprint-purchasing cooperative.

Media Marketing Inc., developer of the imMEDIAte salesforce-automation software, was named to Deloitte & Touche’s Colorado Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the state’s fastest-growing technology firms. James Theall, Media Marketing’s chief executive officer, credits market readiness for the 11-year-old Boulder company’s 176 percent revenue growth during the past half-decade.

In Texas, the state’s Natural Resource Conservation Commission nominated Kaspar Wire Works Inc. for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Excellence Award. Sho-Rack was honored for a series of pollution-prevention initiatives, which include replacing heavy metals in primers and paints with less toxic, organic materials, as well as solvent-recovery programs. The Shiner, Texas, company also developed and installed an electrocoagulation wastewater-treatment system and a closed-loop recycling system that reduces water consumption.

	PalletPal Level Loader

Designed to improve productivity and safety when loading and unloading pallets, the PalletPal Level Loader from Southworth Products Corp. of Portland, Maine, provides fully automatic operation. Requiring no adjustment through wide load ranges, the loader maintains the top of the load at the 30-to-38 inch recommended working height.

The unit requires no power or compressed air and responds automatically as the load is increased or decreased.

Based in Teaneck, N.J., DYC also recently opened a new plant in Carson City, Nev., to better serve West Coast customers.

DiamondSetter 347 CTP

The Dallas Morning News is stepping up to the plate—computer to plate, that is.

The newspaper purchased a DiamondSetter 347 CTP laser plate- setter from Western Lithotech of St. Louis. Capable of producing up to 226 single-page plates per hour, the platesetter scans plates at a rate of an inch per second at 1,200 dots per inch. It boasts a standard resolution range of 1,000-to-1,270 dpi and a high-resolution of 2,540 dpi. Up to 800 single-page plates can be loaded into the automatic-docking plate trolley.

Equipped with two integrated laser imaging heads, the unit images with registration and repeatability to within .001 inches.

Accordingly, Canto Software, the San Francisco-based developer of the Cumulus media-asset manager, took pains to integrate a highly automated open pre-press interface developed by IPTech Inc. of San Luis Obispo, Calif.

IPTech’s CanOPI automatically generates low-resolution “for placement only” images for layout work, transparently replacing them with the original files when printing.

Howard Publications Inc. of Oceanside, Calif., earlier this year standardized operations around the OPI system (September/October 1998, p. 4).

Combining digital-asset management and OPI functions eliminates several time-consuming workflow steps, including searching for graphic files, manipulating high-resolution files during page layout, and repeating design adjustments such as cropping, resizing and placement.

The combination also reduces network traffic and the processing power required to crunch images.

“There is a real need for managing images when utilizing an OPI system, and now users can seamlessly integrate the technologies into their workflow,” says Jeff Cain, Canto’s director of new-business development.

TechNews Volume 5, Number 1: January/February 1999

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