NICE (France) -- The International Press Telecommunications Council has announced the launch of its new web site, at www.iptc.org, which will better help the news industry understand and use the many free resources available from the IPTC.

The announcement was made at the IPTC's autumn meeting here, which was attended by some 40 representatives of the world's news media and news system vendors. Michael Steidl, IPTC's managing director, said that the new web site caps months of work to reorganize more than 40 years of accumulated knowledge, including the latest XML-based news exchange standards.

"Media converge and news exchange standards are becoming increasingly synchronized," said Steidl. "To follow this trend, the new website is an easy to navigate single point of information for all who are interested into the world of standards for news content."

The new web site will highlight IPTC's latest standards and help software developer better understand how metadata and XML technologies can be leveraged to add value to news content. The latest IPTC developments will be quickly seen, and finding a specific standard and its supporting documentation will be a much easier.

The launch of the new site coincides with the formal release of SportsML-G2 2.0, which features multimedia packaging options. As with all IPTC standards, SportsML -- used even outside the news industry -- is available without cost or royalties under IPTC's intellectual property license.

"With professional teams and sports leagues now using SportsML-G2, IPTC's member newspapers, web sites and news agencies will get more feedback about making SportsML-G2 even more complete," said Walter Baranger of The New York Times. "SportsML-G2 2.0 positions the news industry for the future since it handles almost any sport. We are even able to report results for sports that, today at least, don't get much attention from the world's news media."

Another IPTC standard that has found use outside the news industry, IPTC's NewsCodes metadata suite, also took centre stage at the meeting here when delegates approved the first of several steps to reorganize the IPTC Subject Codes to better work in an ever-changing news environment. Described as an evolution rather than a revolution, the new data structure will allow greater expansion and more specific assignment of terms to news content. For example, news stories about such complex subjects as parental upbringing or healthcare policy will have specific Subject Code assignments.

In other actions, the membership approved minor technical changes to IPTC's G2-Standards, an upgrade of EventsML-G2 to version 1.1 and approved the draft specification for NewsML-G2 version 2.2.

The IPTC's next event is a presentation entitled "Simplifying news exchange with IPTC-G2 standard" at IFRA Expo 2008 in Amsterdam on 29 October 2008. The session is free for IFRA attendees, and will feature a review of IPTC's major standards. A question-and-answer period is included.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the IPTC will be held in Porto, Portugal, in March 2009.

The IPTC, based in London, UK, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies, news publishers and news industry vendors. It develops and maintains technical standards for improved news exchange that are used by virtually every major news organization in the world.
Information on all IPTC standards such as the new family of IPTC G2-Standards, the existing NewsML 1, NITF, SportsML, IIM standards and the NewsCodes together with a list of existing members and information on how to join is available at http://www.iptc.org

For more information contact Michael Steidl, office@iptc.org