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Thank you for your interest in the OCPS effort.  The OCPS committee is
still getting organized.  The original press release includes all the
information currently available about the committee and its activities. 
However, I put your name on an e-mailing list and you should receive periodic
updates on the committee's progress.

At this point the committee is quite full.  We only have 3 spots left, and
will be adding members upon the agreement of the founding members.  The
first discussions should start taking place during the first week of June. 
I will bring up your request to be on the committee at that time. 

In the mean time if you have any questions, feel free to ask or call me at
(617) 273-6000 x325

Ted Eveleth
INDIVIDUAL, Inc.
ted@individual.com


Individual, Inc. and Founding OCPS Committee 
Members Invite Industry to Join Committee To 
Define an Open Standard for Electronic Content 
Publishers 


New standard will pave the way for the creation of a cyber 
market for knowledge


May 9, 1995 (Burlington, Mass.) -- 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 
Company, Los Angeles Times, Netscape Communications Corp., 
Phillips Business Information, PR Newswire, and Ziff-Davis 
Interactive.  The founders invite representatives from other 
content publishers, distributors and technology companies to join 
the OCPS committee to fill the remaining up to four vacancies.
	Encompassing not only text, but also multimedia graphics 
and sound, video, conceptual hypermedia links, multimedia 
advertising, 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 prohibitive.  As a result, knowledge workers are 
prevented from full access to relevant information in cyberspace.  
Through OCPS, one common format will enable publishers to 
quickly host their content on numerous distribution channels.  It 
will also open new revenue opportunities and increase brand 
exposure through flexible pricing and relevance-based advertising 
opportunities.  Multimedia 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.

What Founding Members Say
	"It's an important opportunity for Business Wire to serve 
on this committee as our commitment is to continuously create 
new global distribution channels for our client's news releases.  
The new frontier is the Internet.  It is certainly a key lifetime 
opportunity to partner with the leading information distributors 
that create and define the new information community of the 
future," said Deborah Pickering, vice president of Business Wire. 
	"We look forward to a day in which all of our information 
can be produced once and repurposed in every conceivable media 
and venue, without the high costs associated with reformatting 
and translations required today," said Michael Schroeder, 
manager of publishing technology at CMP Publications.
	"As an integrator of real-time newswires from around the 
world, COMTEX understands and has successfully dealt with 
many of the issues sure to face the committee," said Charles W. 
Terry, COMTEX president.  "We are enthusiastic about 
participating and supporting this important standard."
	"As electronic content providers with many outlets, 
Cowles and SIMBA are all too familiar with the difficulties of 
formatting in multiple standards," said Alan Brigish, president, 
SIMBA Information.  "We welcome the opportunity to work with 
Individual and other publishers and system operators to achieve a 
common data standard.  We encourage all content providers to 
band together in the development of such standards which will 
accelerate the acceptance, the growth and ultimately the 
profitability of interactive publishing"
	"Our work with more than 500 commercial publishers 
makes it impossible to ignore the need for standard information 
exchange formats," said Bruce Brown, vice president of Software 
Development for Folio Corp.  "Folio's `Author Once' strategy, 
allowing information from multiple formats to be distributed on a 
variety of media and platforms, will only be enhanced by the 
adoption of a universal interchange standard based on existing 
SGML and HTML specifications."
	"Gartner Group clients want direct and immediate access 
to quality IT research and advisory services," said Drew Seath, 
vice president of Interactive Services at Gartner Group.  "OCPS 
will offer the opportunity to be more efficient in how we 
accomplish that goal."
	"Here at the Reality Factory we are attempting to find 
tools and technologies that will help us create common text, 
graphics and other data formats for use by IDG companies 
venturing onto the Internet and other networks using similar 
technologies. Given that IDG has over 230 publications 
worldwide including various flavors of Computerworld, 
InfoWorld, PC World and MacWorld, this is an incredible 
challenge. Consequently, we are eager to investigate new 
approaches to the standardization of data for not only our 
companies, but all companies joining IDG as it blazes trails in 
electronic publishing. The time for standardized data formats is 
certainly due and we look forward to working with others to 
define those standards," said Amanda Hixson, Vice President, 
Technology and Platform Development. 
	"As an electronic distributor of information we currently 
must develop a special interface for each new content provider.  
This cost limits our ability to integrate small specialized sources 
which may be of interest to a small number of individuals," said 
Yosi Amram, Individual's chairman and CEO.  "The combination 
of OCPS with advanced agent technologies will create an 
exploding virtual market for specialized knowledge."
	"Open standards, protocols and publisher tools remain the 
missing link in the new media industry. One of our goals at 
Jupiter Communications has always been to find new synergies in 
the distribution and presentation of our newsletters, research 
reports, Web pages and conferences.  We are very excited by the 
degree to which the mandate of OCPS dovetails with Jupiter's 
vision," said Gene DeRose, president and publisher of Jupiter 
Communications.
	"If we can stop worrying about formats we can worry a 
lot more about what stories we have to tell,"  said Terry 
Schwadron, Deputy Managing Editor of the Los Angeles Times.
	"Netscape is committed to open standards that enable 
commerce and the exchange of information on the Internet," said 
Hugh Hempel, director of electronic marketing at Netscape 
Communications.  "We will actively pursue extensions to existing 
document standards, such as HTML, that will allow publishers 
and distributors to utilize our tools more effectively.  Once 
adopted, OCPS could facilitate more efficient distribution and re-
use of information."
	"PBI (Phillips Business Information) currently uploads 
their 70+ newsletters in as many as 8 different formats depending 
upon platform and application," said Gene Fuller, director, 
Phillips Business Information.  "We think that in the age of 
SGML and HTML the time is right for an industry standard that 
will ease the burden for the information provider, the information 
delivery service and eventually for the customer as the customer 
begins to manipulate and blend data from different channels and 
platforms."
	"This OCPS standard matches our long term objective of 
providing seamless multimedia exposure for our clients' news 
around the globe.  We look forward to active participation in its 
formulation," said PR Newswire president, Ian Capps.
	"For over a decade, Ziff-Davis and Ziff-Davis Interactive 
have been dedicated to delivering dynamic computing information 
services to our readers electronically.  We look forward to the 
establishment of an open standard which will serve both to greatly 
expedite our ability to grow our current services and to allow ZDI 
to seize new opportunities," said Alan Phillips, ZDI's Internet 
product manager.

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" advertising to each content element.  This 
advertising can be multimedia in nature pointing users to the 
advertiser site for online transactions thus shortening the cycle 
from awareness to purchase.  Concept-based hyperlinks are also 
supported which connect various parts of a publication together 
or to content provided 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
	Business Wire is the nation's premier media relations wire 
services used by more than 17,000 organizations - including a 
significant number of Fortune 500 companies - to accurately and 
effectively disseminate full-text news releases to the news media 
and information and investment community worldwide.  
Additionally, Business Wire reaches twice as many 
computer/electronic trade publications, key high-tech writers and 
industry analysts than anyone else.  The company's Strategic 
Information Services Division - featuring IndustryTrak, 
CompetitorTrak, BW DataSearch and BW Fax-On-Demand - 
provides relevant information to public relations and investor 
relations professionals enabling them to make authoritative 
decisions in a complex, highly competitive American and global 
business environment.
	CMP Publications publishes 16 magazines and newspapers 
on paper, including Information Week, Windows Magazine and 
Computer Reseller News.  The company is also a leader in 
electronic publishing, with the introduction of TechWeb on the 
World Wide Web, HomePC and Windows on America on Line, 
Computer Reseller News and Electronic Engineering Times on 
Compuserve, and MAX, the CD-ROM supplement of Computer 
Reseller News.
	Established in 1981, COMTEX is one of the early pioneers 
to integrate, enhance, and distribute hundreds of real-time news 
sources from around the world into customized newswire 
products for specific end-user markets.  Specializing in serving 
the reseller marketplace, COMTEX offers news distributors, 
online services and large corporate networks a sole source 
solution for computer enhanced worldwide news coverage.
	Cowles Business Media, Stamford, Conn., and SIMBA 
Information Inc., Wilton, Conn., publish magazines, newsletters, 
research reports and directories and host conferences on the 
media, information, marketing and advertising industries.  Cowles 
and SIMBA publications and products include the Cowles/SIMBA 
Media Daily; the Cowles/SIMBA Media Information Network and 
Inside Media Online on America Online; Inside Media, Folio:, 
Cable World, Directory World, Catalog Age and Direct 
magazines; and Folio:First Day, NewsInc., Multimedia Business 
Report, Electronic Information Report, Electronic Marketplace 
Report and Book Publishing Report newsletters.  Cowles 
Business Media and SIMBA Information are units of Cowles 
Media Company, Minneapolis, which also publishes the Star 
Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis.
	Folio Corp., a unit of Reed Elsevier, plc, is the world's 
leading provider of infobase software with its products installed 
on an estimated 30 million desktops in the form of Folio VIEWS, 
on-line help for various software products, and as the delivery 
mechanism for some 2,000 electronic titles from nearly 500 
commercial publishers.  Folio excels in providing the software 
needed to empower front-line service providers with instant 
access to information and the ability to adapt information to the 
unique needs of their enterprise.
	Gartner Group is uniquely qualified to help executives 
effectively manage their information technology resources.  For 
more than 14 years, Gartner Group has provided unparalleled 
research, analysis and insight on the information technology 
industry.  Our analysis is built on a proven research methodology 
based on the largest network of users, vendors and investors in 
the information technology industry.  Gartner Group has more 
than 30 offices worldwide and is headquartered in Stamford, CT.
	Headquartered in San Mateo California, the Reality 
Factory is part of Electronic Marketplace Systems (EMS), a unit 
dedicated to providing TCP/IP, Internet and HTTP-related tools, 
technology and buying services for use by IDG companies 
throughout the world. EMS is a wholly owned subsidiary of 
International Data Group, publisher of over 230 information 
technology publications in more than 54 countries worldwide. 
International Data Group's headquarters are in Boston, MA.
	Formed in 1989, Individual's mission is to spread the 
power of knowledge by intelligently connecting people with 
information and uniquely relevant ideas. As an Open SMART 
Information Exchange (sm), the company offers business 
professionals the smartest, easiest and most cost-effective way of 
gaining current awareness in a rapidly changing world.  Its 
interactive, customized services include First! for corporate 
workgroups and enterprises, HeadsUp and iNews for single 
subscribers, and NewsPage on the World-Wide Web.  Individual 
has established alliances with many prominent industry leaders 
including Knight-Ridder, Lotus, Motorola, Apple, PRODIGY, 
Gartner Group, and AT&T.  Formed in 1989, the company is 
headquartered in Burlington, MA with offices in Burlingame, CA, 
New York City, and the U.K.
	Jupiter Communications, LLC, is a New York City-based 
research, consulting and publishing firm specializing in emerging 
consumer online and interactive technologies.  Our research 
reports, newsletters, multi-client studies and industry seminars 
provide clients and customers with focused research and strategic 
planning support as they develop interactive products and 
services.  Jupiter clients typically include major global companies 
from across several converging industries, including media, 
entertainment, technology, communications, and consumer 
marketing.  Jupiter's research mandate is to provide a 
comprehensive strategic view of the emerging consumer 
interactive world.
	Los Angeles Times is one of the largest papers in the 
country.  Owned by the Times Mirror Corporation, it is 
distributed to 1.1 million readers daily and 1.6 million on Sunday.  
The newspaper is experimenting with a variety of new business 
efforts including online, fax, audio, and a multimedia lab, and has 
a joint venture with Pacific Telesis for an electronic shopping 
service in California.
	Netscape Communications Corp. is a premier provider of 
open software to enable people and companies to exchange 
information and conduct commerce over the Internet and other 
global networks.  The company was founded in April 1994 by Dr. 
James H. Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics, Inc., a Fortune 500 
computer systems company, and Marc Andressen, creator of the 
NCSA Mosaic research prototype for the Internet.  Privately held, 
Netscape Communications Corp. is based in Mountain View, CA.
	Headquartered in Potomac, MD, PBI provides a broad 
range of business-to-business information resources including 
newsletters (both print and electronic), magazines, directories, 
and conferences in the communications, media, financial services, 
defense and aviation marketplace.  PBI is a subsidiary of Phillips 
Publishing International, Inc., the largest newsletter publisher in 
the U.S. with annual sales of more than $150 million.
	PR Newswire is the world's acknowledged leader in the 
electronic distribution of full text corporate, association, agency 
and institutional news releases to the media and the financial 
community.  After founding the industry 40 years ago, PR 
Newswire has been its innovating force, providing a constant 
stream of enhanced services to professional communicators.  
Through expanded newswire services, broadcast fax and fax-on-
demand products, and electronic bulletin board systems, PR 
Newswire continues to establish new benchmarks in the industry.
	Ziff-Davis Interactive creates electronic computing 
content products that are centered on information about buying, 
using, supporting and understanding computers, and that are 
distributed through multiple online services and other media.  
ZiffNet, with more than 275,000 paying subscribers on 
Compuserve, Prodigy and eWorld, ranks as the Number One 
special-interest online information service in the world.  
Interchange Computing, developed by Ziff-Davis Interactive, will 
be one of two premiere special services on the AT&T Interchange 
Online Network when it becomes commercially available in mid-
1995.  ZD Net, the Ziff-Davis site on the World-Wide Web, has 
doubled in usage every month for the past seven months to 
become one of the top five publisher-based sites on the Internet.  
Formed in 1991, Ziff-Davis Interactive is a division of Ziff-Davis 
Publishing Co., the leading publisher of information about 
computers and computing.





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