QPS Enterprise "by Q1 2004"

Quark's Jurgen Kurz announced that the enterprise version of Quark Publishing System -- which will presumably run with XPress 6.0 -- will be released by the first quarter of next year. He also said that more than 500 commercial XTensions are now available for XPress 6.0 and that in future Quark's product upgrades would be more frequent: "I can assure you we're going to come out with a major revision (to XPress) every 14-18 months."
(From Macworld UK)

GU's paid services

Someone's not too impressed with GNL's announcement of various new paid services. I don't quite understand what the writer, Martin Conaghan, is saying -- he seems to suggest that people will stop using GU (which remains free) because they have heard that the site also provides subscriber products. His main line of argument is that charging for content will not pay for the cost of the website. Fine: that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if you're already footing that bill. He should read Emily Bell's explanation of the changes (here), which makes it clear that GNL is committed to a free GU. Anyway, it was the following rather throwaway paragraph at the end that interested me: "If they invested an integrated publication system that doubles for the newspaper and the website, they would tackle one of their major infrastructure costs -- and the method of subscription has to be a lot more subtle than asking someone to simply cough up their credit card details in exchange for no banner ads."
(From Google)

Name that system...

Everybody on the editorial project seems to call its goal by a different name. OPS, EPS, NGES, APS, TPS ... I decided this was all getting too personal and thought that what we really needed was a nice, objective, computer generated project name.
(From More Foma)

Winer watching watch

Scott Rosenberg in Salon on the spat between Dave Winer and Dive Into Mark's Mark Pilgrim. Pilgrim's site includes a Winer Watcher that document's Winer's many alterations to the content of his blog. Winer wants him to stop. Rosenberg feels that Winer's method of public self-editing is just a different form of journalism to that practiced by those of us steeped in more traditional media, and that it may be entirely appropriate to blogging. He doesn't, however, explore why Winer himself is unhappy to see this new method in practice. Furthermore there is little analysis of the legal implications of this public method.
(From Salon)

Wash Post to launch free tabloid

The Washington Post has announced that it will launch a free tabloid newspaper in August. The one-section paper, The Express, will feature short wire stories and entertainment news -- the usual "Metro" format (in the European sense of the word). The aim is to attrcat younger readers and to protect the WP against potential competition.
(From Newspaper Association of America)

GNL now "One of Them"

Now that we've introduced paid services, we have won the dubious honour of our own section on the PaidContent.org website ...
(From PaidContent.org)

GNL announces paid services -- including Project Jigsaw

We've finally come out about the raft of paid services we've been working to introduce. We went live with the new subscription system on Tuesday and announced the following paid services: 1, The Wrap and The Informer become chargeable on July 30; 2, Media Briefing will also become chargeable "later in the year"; 3, MediaGuardian.co.uk will become registration only (but still free) in the Autumn; 4, the Guardian/Observer Digital Edition will be launched soon(!); 5, "Ads Free" is on its way... The announcement is dicussed variously: BBC News, The Register, E-Media Tidbits, PaidContent.org, Web User News ...
(From The Guardian)

CCI and Saxotech integrate

CCI and Saxotech have announced a partnership wherein they will integrate the former's Newsdesk print editorial system with the latter's Publicus online publishing/content management system. Information will be shared between the two systems using NewsML.
(From Editor & Publisher)

The American Guardian

You didn't hear it here first...
(From New York Metro)

Pfeiffer on XPress 6, InDesign

Now that we've come out about going over to InDesign/InCopy, some more on the old debate: Andreas Pfeiffer, while conceding "many publishers around the world would probably be very happy to go on using QuarkXPress 3.x or 4.x for the rest of their lives were they given a chance", reckons that there will be a big takeup of Quark XPress 6.0. He suspends judgment.
(From Pfeiffer Report)