I don't know if anyone caught the announcement excerpted below from PR 
Newswire, but it looks like an effort to dictate a new standard. 

Essentially, Individual, Inc. designed a format and invited up to 15 or so
other organizations to join them in declaring it a "standard." 

I'd be interested in what other providers and recipients of information 
think of this.

^bc-MA-Individual-Inc.< TO BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY EDITORS:

FOUNDING OCPS COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND INDIVIDUAL, INC.  INVITE  IN-
DUSTRY  TO  JOIN COMMITTEE TO DEFINE OPEN STANDARD FOR ELECTRONIC
CONTENT PUBLISHERS

        New Standard Will Pave the Way for the Creation of a
                   Cyber Market for Knowledge

    BURLINGTON, Mass., May 10 /PRNewswire/  --  Individual,  Inc.
and  a  group  of leading publishers, distributors and technology
vendors announced today the formation of an  open  committee  for
defining  a universal format based on existing industry standards
used to deliver electronic information.  The  committee  believes
the  new  standard,  called  the  Open Content Publisher Standard
(OCPS), will make information more affordable and  accessible  to
users  of  a broad variety of electronic services.  The committee
being formed includes 14 founding  members:  Business  Wire,  CMP
Publications,  COMTEX,  Cowles  Business Media/SIMBA Information,
Folio Corp., **Gartner Group**, Individual,  Inc.,  International
Data  Group's  (IDG) Reality Factory, Jupiter Communications Com-
pany, Los Angeles Times, Netscape Communications Corp.,  Phillips
Business  Information,  PR  Newswire, and Ziff-Davis Interactive.
The founders invite representatives from other  content  publish-
ers,  distributors and technology companies to join the OCPS com-
mittee to fill the remaining up to four vacancies.
    Encompassing not only text, but also multimedia graphics  and
sound,  video,  conceptual hypermedia links, multimedia advertis-
ing, universal resource locating and more, the OCPS is  currently
being  defined.  It will be released royalty-free into the public
domain within 90 days of  the  initial  organizational  committee
meeting.
    OCPS committee members believe the work currently required to
build bridges between content providers and consumers is prohibi-
tive.  As a result, knowledge workers are prevented from full ac-
cess  to  relevant  information in cyberspace.  Through OCPS, one
common format will enable publishers to quickly host  their  con-
tent  on  numerous  distribution channels.  It will also open new
revenue opportunities and increase brand exposure through  flexi-
ble  pricing and relevance-based advertising opportunities.  Mul-
timedia advertisements may include pointers to  the  advertiser's
home  site where prospects can receive additional information and
transact business thus shortening the cycle  time  from  customer
awareness to purchase.

 - comments from founding members - 

    The OCPS Advantage
    One clear advantage offered by OCPS is flexibility.  Based on
existing  standards  such as standard generalized markup language
(SGML) and hypertext markup language (HTML), OCPS  opens  up  new
multimedia  publishing  opportunities.  This includes interactive
"relevance-based" advertising where a publisher can "attach"  ad-
vertising  to each content element.  This advertising can be mul-
timedia in nature pointing users to the advertiser site  for  on-
line  transactions  thus  shortening  the cycle from awareness to
purchase.  Concept-based hyperlinks are also supported which con-
nect  various  parts of a publication together or to content pro-
vided by other publishers.  In addition, publishers will be  able
to  control  the  look and feel of their services, as well as set
the pricing of intellectual property.
    Electronic distributors of information will  also  realize  a
cost  savings  from  receiving  content  in a single format. As a
result of OCPS, distributors will be able  to  add  content  more
easily  to  their  services and increase the accessibility of the
information consumers need.
    Technology companies pursuing the  **e-mail**  and  groupware
markets  stand  to  benefit as well.  OCPS will bring a wealth of
new content quickly to these platforms,  potentially  serving  to
increase market size overall.
    The OCPS committee is looking for  feedback  from  interested
parties.   For  more  information write to ocps@individual.com or
call Ted Eveleth at 617-273-6000 X325.

 -    About The Founders

    -0-                       5/10/95
    /CONTACT:  Ted Eveleth  of  Individual,  Inc.,  617-273-6000,
ext. 325, or Beth Winkowski of WTM, Inc., 617-337-3633/

CO:  Individual, Inc.  ST:  Massachusetts IN:  CPR SU:


DP-JL -- NE020 -- 7580 05-10-95 17:54 EDT
 



=======================================================================
Mark Berns	Product Development Director	The Associated Press
		Phone: 212-621-7808	Fax: 212-621-1512
=======================================================================



From rballard@cnj.digex.net Tue May 16 01:15:21 1995