The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel last month began offering readers the ability to move digital photographs of homes, vehicles and other goods they want to sell from their home computers to the newspaper’s online and classified ad pages.

The News-Sentinel’s readers are pulling off this feat using Rimfire, image management software marketed by Internet Pictures Corp., or iPIX. The newspaper earlier used Rimfire only for its online classifieds.

IPIX’ move to engineer its software so it can support images slated for print classifieds reflects the company’s strategy to move beyond its online roots.

In June 2002, the eight suburban newspapers of MediaNews Group’s Los Angeles Newspaper Group became the first to use Rimfire to manage image-enhanced print classifieds.

Gives choice

Rimfire permits News-Sentinel classified customers to direct their product images either to the newspaper’s Web site, www.knoxnews.com, the daily’s print classifieds, or both.

Customers who need help uploading images can call the newspaper’s customer service centers, where reps trained by iPIX can answer questions.

The product is easy for most advertisers and users, said Jack Lail, The News-Sentinel’s managing editor-multimedia.

“Uploading their photos is not usually a problem,” Lail said. “Sometimes (readers) forget to hit the ‘end’ button to save their ad text, but the photos will be there for us.”

In most implementations, Rimfire users go a Web page that contains boxes that read, “Click here to select a picture.” When users click, they are prompted to pick a picture from their hard drive to drag and drop into the box. When the picture is in place, users can crop, resize and rotate the images.

All that’s left is to hit “submit,” and the image is uploaded via ActiveX or Java software to a remote iPIX server.

Within seconds, the completed ad is transmitted back to the local newspaper; iPIX’ server processes more than 1.5 million images per day and even with a 28.8 kilobit-per-second modem connection, iPIX estimates uploads take an average of three seconds. (For an online demo, see www.ipix.com.)

Papers determine next step

What happens next depends on the newspaper’s needs. Rimfire can either generate a TIFF-format image in grayscale suitable for the newspaper’s print edition or it can create thumbnail and enlarged JPEG versions of the user’s photos for online display.

Once the Rimfire package is integrated with the newspaper’s classified ad system, enabling any combination of these images for online or print distribution is a matter of newspaper staffers clicking a command on their Web browser.

Because iPIX charges newspapers a flat fee for the software, newspapers can preset their profit margins for upselling photos with classified ads.

Tribune Co. unit Recycler.com, an Internet classified ad site, saw its volume of photo-enhanced classified ads rise six-fold after adopting Rimfire. Response was so positive the online publisher was able to raise its prices by about 40 percent, said Kevin Klein, automotive product marketing manager. “Everyone met the whole thing with astonishment,” he said. The dotcom’s parent, Recycler Classifieds, plans to begin using the software for its nine print editions throughout Southern California this fall.

Message resonating

IPIX executives pointed to a series of U.K. signings as proof the company’s message is getting across to newspaper publishers.

The most significant likely is a pact inked with pcsdotNet, a leading British newspaper industry software supplier, to integrate Rimfire into its classified ad system. PcsdotNet is part of the U.K.-based Claverley Group. It includes the Wolverhampton Express & Star and the Shropshire Star newspapers, which will use Rimfire for their print — and not online — editions.

Claverley notwithstanding, most newspapers still elect to use Rimfire only for their online efforts.

That’s because many newspapers still find it costly to integrate Rimfire with existing print-oriented ad-ordering software.

That integration will become less difficult, said iPIX chief executive officer Don Strickland, leading him to believe that the bulk of future Rimfire sales will come from newspapers electing to use Rimfire to oversee images for both online and print editions.

By 2006, Strickland said a growing percentage of Rimfire’s revenues will be as a result of newspapers using the software to manage their printed classified images.

“My vision is that five years from now, we’ll be talking about Rimfire being a standard,” online and in print, Strickland said. “That’s huge.”