"Pak"ed to Order

Some Web portal developers have learned a lesson from the newspaper business: It's easier and less costly to pull information off the wires than to hire a staff to gather the content. That's where Internet syndication software firms enter the picture. One such company, Wavo, offers a program called NewsPak to let value-added resellers, portal developers, and systems integrators to pass along their subscription services.

For every NewsPak sale, partners will receive license fees from feeds their client sites use. They also earn money from consulting, installation, and application development fees. Wavo will help partners get started by providing individualized account support, comarketing opportunities, and sales training.

Of particular interest to those making vertical business-to-business sites, NewsPak uses XML, and Wavo has chosen the news industry text format (NITF) as the standard NewsPak document format. NITF has been put forward by the NAA (Newspaper Association of America, formerly ANPA). NewsPak also relies on the resource definition format (RDF) for transferring metadata documents.

NewsPak is available for a one-time server software fee of $995, plus a monthly fee for basic or premium newsfeed service.