The BYTE Virtual Press Room

What is The BYTE Virtual Press Room?
Nominate Your Product for Best of CeBIT!
Best of CeBIT Nomination Rules
Benefits of vpr
Mail-enabled vpr
Using the vpr input form
Questions and answers

What is The BYTE Virtual Press Room?

We've invented this system to extract more value from the thousands of press releases that flood into BYTE from the vendor community. It works this way:

You (a vendor or PR agent) submit a press release to vpr (BYTE's Virtual Press Room).How? Open two windows on your system. In one, fire up your word processor and load a copy of your press release. In the other, connect to http://www.byte.com, enter the Virtual Press Room, and click the Submit a press release link. Now just cut relevant items from the first window and paste them into the second.
vpr periodically updates and indexes a private Web archive. BYTE editors connect to this private archive in order to navigate and search the press release collection. If you've submitted a press release announcing a new telephony product, BYTE editors worldwide -- in New York, San Mateo, Peterborough, Frankfurt, or London -- will be able to find it.
Optionally, you may want your press release republished to a wider audience. For a small fee, we will verify the information you've submitted and move the press release from the private archive to a public one. Then, vpr will index the press release collection along with the BYTE online archive that appears on BYTE's Web site. When users of the BYTE online archive search for 'telephony,' they'll find a mixture of BYTE articles and vendor-supplied press releases -- including the announcement of your telephony product.

Nominate Your Product for Best of CeBIT! Announcing a new product at CeBIT '96? Be sure to nominate it for Best of CeBIT '96 awards competition! Award categories include Best Portable, Best Communication Software, Best Communication Hardware, Best Peripheral, Best Multimedia Software, Best Multimedia Hardware, Best System, Best Application, Best Application Development Software, and Best Technology. Winners will be chosen at the show. We prefer to receive ALL CeBIT press releases electronically on our Web site. Simply input your press release into vpr via your Web browser, following the instructions above. By posting your release on vpr you ensure that your message is seen by BYTE editors worldwide and, for a limited time, by thousands of BYTE Site users on the Net. The vpr includes both a public area, available to all BYTE Site users, and a private area available only to BYTE editors. We automatically post all press releases received to the private archive. This is a FREE service. For a limited time, your CeBIT press release will appear in the public area of the BYTE Virtual Press Room, which can be navigated or searched by both the BYTE editors and thousands of BYTE Site visitors worldwide. When users conduct a search, they will be able to pull up your press release along with relevant BYTE articles. During CeBIT and for the following two weeks, this service is FREE. We'll waive the normal $250 fee we charge to post press releases in the public area of vpr. Nominations may also be sent by mail to Best of CeBIT Awards, BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. Best of CeBIT Award Nomination Rules You are eligible to check the Best of CeBIT Award box on the vpr form, and thereby nominate your product for a Best of CeBIT award, if: Your product is being formally announced within 30 days of CeBIT and shown in a booth at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, March 14-20, 1996. Your company has its corporate headquarters in Europe or the Middle East. BYTE editors reserve the right to determine the eligibility of any company entering this competition. Benefits of The Virtual Press Room BYTE editors can find your information when they need it. So can all users of the BYTE Web site (60,000 so far, and growing every day), if you convert from the private archive to the public one. The vpr search engine integrates vpr information with the contents of the BYTE on line archive. So users don't rely just on navigational access (which vpr also supports) -- they'll see your press releases in appropriate contexts as they search the BYTE archive. vpr automatically converts URL-like strings in the text of your press release into active links, so your press release can refer vpr users back to your own site. The mail-enabled Virtual Press Room We realize that Web access isn't always a convenient option for everyone who might want to contribute to vpr. So we're building an alternative e-mail interface that will enable you to submit items by way of any Internet mailer. Try it! Send blank email to vprform@dev3.byte.com to request the submission form and instructions. The BYTE Virtual Press Release Form Thanks for participating! Here's what you need to know to use this form: About the fields About the rules Fields All fields are required. Here's what they are and how we'll use them: Announcement Date The date on which the information in this release became public. Usually appears also in the text of the release. but we need it here so we can present releases in reverse chronological order. Company The name of the company announcing a product, service, or technology. Product/technology The name of the product, service, or technology that you are announcing. Title The title of the press release. Typically, you can reuse the title of your press release by cutting it from your word processor and pasting it into the Title field. vpr will warn you that, if the Title exceeds 100 characters, it will appear truncated in search results lists. Summary A short summary of the press release. Typically, you can reuse the first paragraph of your press release by cutting it from your word processor and pasting it into the Summary field. Important! Text should be paragraph-delimited as in a word processor, not line-delimited as in a text editor, else it will appear double-spaced. Fulltext The body of the press release. Cut the remaining paragraphs of your press release and paste them into the Fulltext field. Again, you'll want to be paragraph-, not line-delimited. Contact This field is special: it will display as line-delimited, rather than paragraph-delimited. It's designed for the clusters of short lines -- Contact Name, Company, Phone Number, Email Address -- that typify the contact information found on press releases. Validation rules Announcement Date -Required. -Cannot contain HTML tags. Company -Required. -Cannot contain HTML tags. Product/technology -Required. -Cannot contain HTML tags. Title -Required. -Cannot contain HTML tags. Summary -Required. -Must be paragraph-formatted, not line-formatted. In other words, one carriage return per paragraph, not one per line. -Cannot contain HTML tags (however, we will automatically convert a URL such as http://www.byte.com into the equivalent link: http://www.byte.com. -Length of Summary and Fulltext fields cannot exceed 50,000 bytes (about 5,000 words). Fulltext -Same as Summary. Contact -Required. Questions and answers Can I edit what's in the multiline input boxes on the form? Not conveniently. Web browsers treat the paragraphs you dump into these fields as single, very long lines. If you see a problem on the preview that you want to correct, it's best to go back to your word processor, fix it there, erase the affected field of the form, and repaste. My text came out double-spaced on the preview. Why? Save a version of your press release without line breaks. And make sure you're set for single spacing. In Microsoft Word, for example, 1.5-line spacing will come out double-spaced on the vpr preview. To fix that: Select All->Format->Paragraph->Line Spacing->Single.