Reuters and WAVO Team Up to Launch Industry Tool for NewsML

NEW YORK. December 4, 2000.

Reuters, the global information, news and technology group, and leading news software developer WAVO, have joined forces to launch the NewsML Toolkit, a simple interface that facilitates the implementation of the newly ratified NewsML standard.

Developed by Reuters and WAVO with the assistance of XML expert David Megginson, the NewsML Toolkit offers developers with no prior XML knowledge, a fast and simple way to analyse and filter multimedia NewsML items using regular Java.

The NewsML Toolkit is being released as Open Source software under version 2.1 of the "GNU Lesser General Public License" and can be incorporated into commercial software packages royalty free, so long as any modification or improvements are released back to the public.

NewsML is the new industry standard for delivering multi-media news. Reuters conceived the idea for NewsML in 1999 and donated it to the news industry for further development. The International Press and Telecommunications Council ratified NewsML in October 2000. NewsML provides a common framework to publish news in any format. It can be used by news providers to combine their pictures, video, text, graphics and audio files into news output available on web sites, mobile phones, high end desktops, interactive television and any other device.

"Reuters is committed to taking an active part in the development of industry specific MLs, as demonstrated by our role as a leading architect and advocate of NewsML" said Mike Sayers, Chief Technology Officer, Reuters. "The NewsML Toolkit is a practical tool openly available, which will allow developers to concentrate on innovation in news rather than writing basic processing code."

"We plan to fully implement NewsML throughout our product line. Our MediaXpress service is based on open, industry-wide standards to insure that it delivers increased productivity for end-users of news and related digital media. Our support of XMLNews.org and its NewsML efforts will continue, with the goal of complete interoperability across all feeds, all protocols, and all content management systems," said Larry Rafsky, Chief Technology Officer, WAVO.

The NewsML Toolkit can be downloaded from the Reuters website at about.reuters.com/researchandstandards/firstcontact/newsmltoolkit and at www.xmlnews.org/NewsML/toolkit/.

About NewsML

NewsML is an XML-based standard that describes and packages news in various media formats for delivery to any platform. At the heart of NewsML is the concept of the NewsItem, which can contain various media, including text, pictures, graphics and video. NewsML is flexible and extensible and uses standard Internet naming conventions for identifying the news objects in a NewsItem. Content does not have to be embedded in a NewsItem; pointers can be inserted to content held on a publisher's website. This means subscribers retrieve the data only when they need to and makes NewsML bandwidth-efficient. NewsML is a standard of the International Press and Telecommunications Council (IPTC).

About Reuters

Reuters (www.about.reuters.com), the global information, news and technology group, plays a significant role in the functioning of the financial and media markets. Reuters strategy is to make the financial markets work on the Internet. Reuters is the world's largest international news and television agency with 1,957 journalists, photographers and camera operators in 185 bureaux serving 153 countries, gathering and editing news in 24 languages. Reuters premier position is based on a reputation for speed, accuracy and impartiality as well as for continuous technological innovation. Reuters supplies news and information to over 900 internet websites. Instinet, an independently managed subsidiary of Reuters, is the world's largest electronic agency brokerage firm. It covers the equities and fixed income markets. On 30 June 2000, the Group employed 17,067 staff in 215 cities in 98 countries.

About WAVO

WAVO Corporation is in the business of moving media. As a leading Internet media delivery company, WAVO partners with the foremost providers of news, business data, consumer content and multimedia programming. WAVO provides value added content management and electronic commerce services to media providers utilising the Internet to deliver quality content to an information dependent society. WAVO offers www.MediaXpress.com, the industry's leading solution for delivering streaming rich digital media to Web servers worldwide.

About David Megginson

David Megginson has been active within the SGML and XML communities since 1991. He led the initiative that created SAX, the Simple API for XML, which is now the most widely used streaming API for XML and has been implemented in products by IBM, Oracle, Apache, and Sun, along with many others. David's work includes many open-source software products, together with the book Structuring XML Documents, published by Prentice-Hall. David formerly chaired the XML Information Set Working Group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and served as a member of the W3C's XML Co-ordination Group. He also helped to organise the XMLNews initiative, which promotes the use of open standards for the exchange of news and information.

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See "NewsML and IPTC2000."

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The NewsML Toolkit is being released as Open Source software under version 2.1 of the "GNU Lesser General Public License" and can be incorporated into commercial software packages royalty free, so long as any modification or improvements are released back to the public. NewsML is the new industry standard for delivering multi-media news. Reuters conceived the idea for NewsML in 1999 and donated it to the news industry for further development. The International Press and Telecommunications Council ratified NewsML in October 2000. NewsML provides a common framework to publish news in any format. It can be used by news providers to combine their pictures, video, text, graphics and audio files into news output available on web sites, mobile phones, high end desktops, interactive television and any other device. "Reuters is committed to taking an active part in the development of industry specific MLs, as demonstrated by our role as a leading architect and advocate of NewsML" said Mike Sayers, Chief Technology Officer, Reuters. "The NewsML Toolkit is a practical tool openly available, which will allow developers to concentrate on innovation in news rather than writing basic processing code." "We plan to fully implement NewsML throughout our product line. Our MediaXpress service is based on open, industry-wide standards to insure that it delivers increased productivity for end-users of news and related digital media. Our support of XMLNews.org and its NewsML efforts will continue, with the goal of complete interoperability across all feeds, all protocols, and all content management systems," said Larry Rafsky, Chief Technology Officer, WAVO. The NewsML Toolkit can be downloaded from the Reuters website at about.reuters.com/researchandstandards/firstcontact/newsmltoolkit and at www.xmlnews.org/NewsML/toolkit/. About NewsML NewsML is an XML-based standard that describes and packages news in various media formats for delivery to any platform. At the heart of NewsML is the concept of the NewsItem, which can contain various media, including text, pictures, graphics and video. NewsML is flexible and extensible and uses standard Internet naming conventions for identifying the news objects in a NewsItem. Content does not have to be embedded in a NewsItem; pointers can be inserted to content held on a publisher's website. This means subscribers retrieve the data only when they need to and makes NewsML bandwidth-efficient. NewsML is a standard of the International Press and Telecommunications Council (IPTC). About Reuters Reuters (www.about.reuters.com), the global information, news and technology group, plays a significant role in the functioning of the financial and media markets. Reuters strategy is to make the financial markets work on the Internet. Reuters is the world's largest international news and television agency with 1,957 journalists, photographers and camera operators in 185 bureaux serving 153 countries, gathering and editing news in 24 languages. Reuters premier position is based on a reputation for speed, accuracy and impartiality as well as for continuous technological innovation. Reuters supplies news and information to over 900 internet websites. Instinet, an independently managed subsidiary of Reuters, is the world's largest electronic agency brokerage firm. It covers the equities and fixed income markets. On 30 June 2000, the Group employed 17,067 staff in 215 cities in 98 countries. About WAVO WAVO Corporation is in the business of moving media. As a leading Internet media delivery company, WAVO partners with the foremost providers of news, business data, consumer content and multimedia programming. WAVO provides value added content management and electronic commerce services to media providers utilising the Internet to deliver quality content to an information dependent society. WAVO offers www.MediaXpress.com, the industry's leading solution for delivering streaming rich digital media to Web servers worldwide. About David Megginson David Megginson has been active within the SGML and XML communities since 1991. He led the initiative that created SAX, the Simple API for XML, which is now the most widely used streaming API for XML and has been implemented in products by IBM, Oracle, Apache, and Sun, along with many others. David's work includes many open-source software products, together with the book Structuring XML Documents, published by Prentice-Hall. David formerly chaired the XML Information Set Working Group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and served as a member of the W3C's XML Co-ordination Group. He also helped to organise the XMLNews initiative, which promotes the use of open standards for the exchange of news and information. Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See "NewsML and IPTC2000."