XML Standards for News: The View at Halftime

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XML Standards for News The View at Halftime

• Deren HansenDirector, News Technologies XML
  EvangelistWAVO Corporation

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What is News on the Internet?

• Continuously updated third-party content.

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Kinds of Continuous Updating

• Real-time (seconds)
• Near-time (minutes)
• Some-time (hours)

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News Distribution Models

• Syndication (black box) Drop-in content
• Wire Service (white box) Content elements -
  some assembly required.

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Kinds of News Services

• Wire Services AP, UPI
• Publication Newspapers
• Aggregation COMTEX
• Transcription FDCH
• Tabulation stocks

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Current Standard for News

• ANPA 1312/IPTC 7901
• Examplet7727fnsadu i krm-schedule
  advisory 10-01 0043krm-schedule advisory

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XML Standards Initiativesfor News

• NITF
• NML
• XMLNews
• NewsML

• PRISM
• IPTC 2000

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Working Group IPTC-2000

• International Press Telecommunications Council
  has a 30-year History
• IPTC-2000 Initiative, with Multiple Working
  Groups, Launched Summer 1999 to Review News
  Interchange Formats
• Members Include The Associated Press, Dow,
  Reuters, UPI, NY Times, PR Newswire, Business
  Wire, etc.

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Working Groups PRISM

• Metadata, Controlled Vocabularies, and XML
  Frameworks for Complex Media
• Launched Summer 1999, Recommendations
  Specifications Due Summer 2000
• Membership includes Vendors - Quark, Adobe,
  Vignette Publishers - Time, Conde Nast, IDG

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Organizations Involved in News Standards
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NITF-News Industry Text Format

• Began in early 90s as an SGML replacement for
  ANPA 1312/IPTC 7901
• Roughly 8 years in the making
• Converted to XML in 1998
• Ratified by the NAA and IPTC summer of 1999
• IPTC is currently considering maintenance
  proposals

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NML - News Markup Language

• Genesis - Second Conference on New Grammars
  Sponsored by the New Media Center at the American
  Press Institute
• I have a barn! Lets put on a show!
• Initiated by journalists, subsumed into NITF by
  the IPTC

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XMLNews

• Created by WAVO Corp. and Megginson Technologies,
  Spring 1999 to support WAVOs NewsPak Service
• Two XML Documents per Story XMLNews-Story
  NITF XMLNews-Meta - RDF metadata
• Open to Interested Parties - Supported, but not
  controlled by WAVO

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NewsML

• Currently being defined
• Chartered as a replacement for the IPTC
  Information Interchange Model (IIM)
• May or may not produce an alternative to NITF
• Aggressive (for IPTC) Schedule

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Relations Among Standards
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Relations Among Initiatives
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Content in Context

• Custom Views (personalization)
• Cross-referencing (linking)
• Collection (dossier) - parallel display of
  multiple sources.

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Next Frontier Analysis Services

• Monitoring (alerts)
• Abstracting/Summarizing (digests)
• Synthesis - characterization, tabulation,
  extrapolation - (reports)

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Data, Information, or Knowledge

• Data Service Serving up information as-is.
• Information Service Profiling, filtering,
  cross-referencing
• Knowledge Services Analysis, Synthesis,
  Editorial perspective

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WAVOs Case

• WAVO is in the business of moving media.
• Were actually extraordinarily high-tech
  paper-boys.

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WAVOs Data Network Business
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Normalizing News

• Syntax (form)Every story, regardless of
  provider, is delivered in the same format.
• Semantics (meaning)Metadata codes mean the same
  thing, regardless of provider.

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NewsPaks XML Documents

• Goal Use open industry standards. News Industry
  Text Format (NITF)
• Reality NITF had most, but not all the
  elements we needed.
• Breakthrough Use two XML documents instead of
  one! (XMLNews-Story and XMLNews-Meta)

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Normalization Transformations
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Normalization Pattern Spectrum