Need to check the the broadcast contest rules in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont? How about a calendar of upcoming AP and NEAPNEA events?

Interested in the past 12 NNE Photos of the Month? Could you use a writing toolbox? A link to any broadcast or newspaper memberÕs Web site in northern New England?

Would a Web-site directory organized with regional news interests in mind be useful?

Go to www.ap.org/nne, the northern New England APÕs new, no-frills Web resource for all the above, and more.

The site is designed to be a quick contact point between AP and its members in the three states, and itÕs built to grow and, above all, to be useful.

Some of the features: Every month, we select a Photo of the Month and two honorable mentions from among the pictures offered to the network by NNE members. Our site includes a one-year archive of those winning photos complete with the photographersÕ comments on how they got the shots.

Keeping track of contests, broadcast and newspaper, can be a chore. When are the entries due? What are the rules, the fees? The site includes updated broadcast contest rules for each state as well as the public service, writing/photo/design and Web site contests run by the New England AP News Executives Association.

NNE Reports like the one youÕre reading also are archived. Some of the articles are timeless, and all editions contain technical information worth holding onto.

If you want to e-mail any AP staffer in NNE, just click on the live state map, click on the staff list and up pops the e-mail form, addressed and ready to go.

The Writing Tools link alone is a browserÕs delight. It provides quick access to a wealth of standard references as well as such less-than-standard items as the CIA Factbook and a virtual desk reference that is itself a multi-level mine of information.

A daybook prominently displayed on the home page will keep members posted on upcoming events.

Many stories on national wires already are carrying URLs that direct readers to Web sites of related interests, and the News and Navigation aids will be a regular part of NNE state reports in May.

The URLs began appearing on national copy March 6 to point readers who want more information to related sites on the Internet. The navigation tools usually provide one to three Web addresses.

The address of any Web site mentioned in the body of a story will appear in the copy. If the story is not about a particular Web site, AP is including relevant Òon the WebÓ citations at the end of the story.

For example:

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - NASA abandoned any real hope Tuesday for the Mars Polar Lander and promised to investigate every aspect of the failed mission to the Red Planet.

The last, best chance to make radio contact with the spacecraft yielded only silence early Tuesday ... ---

On The Net: NASA Mars site:http://marslander.jpl.nasa.gov

UCLA site on Marslander experiments: http://mars.ucla.edu

Some mechanics and guidelines for the navigation feature:

* We won't include Web citations on bulletin or urgent copy, to avoid delaying urgent material.

* Typically, we'll provide from one to three Web citations with a story, depending on the story itself and the availability of appropriate citations. We won't normally include Web addresses on briefs.

* We will base the use of Web citations on the same principles of appropriateness, balance and authenticity that we apply to news copy. We will not provide the URLs of sites that contain pornographic, hate, irrational or grisly material, or that contain links to such sites.

* Where an AP story requires a balance of perspectives, we will provide such a balance in our citations, too, or limit our citations to purely objective sites.

The courtesy titles Ms., Miss and Mrs. are no longer part of AP style, reflecting the practice of most members.

The change means both women and men will be identified on second reference by their last names only, unless a courtesy title is needed to avoid confusion, for instance, in references to a married couple who share a last name.

This change comes after a survey of newspapers by the AP Managing Editors Association and recent consultations with APME officials. It took effect Feb. 1.

In recent years, according to APME surveys, the vast majority of AP members have dropped these titles. Most members now identify a woman on first reference as, say, "Barbara Smith," then on second reference simply as "Smith." The style is the same as used for men.

Mike Eckel, most recently of The Times Record in Brunswick, Maine, is on temporary duty in the Montpelier bureau as legislative and vacation relief staffer.

A Massachusetts native and graduate of Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Eckel previously worked in Vladivostok, Russia, as a reporter for the Vladivostok News and as a stringer for The Associated Press.

Eckel began his journalism career as a reporter for the Norway (Maine) Advertiser Democrat and the Berlin (N.H.) Reporter.

Rebecca Mahoney of Londonderry, N.H., a journalism graduate of the University of New Hampshire, is the editorial assistant in the Concord bureau. SheÕs filling in for Ann Kim, who is on a nine-month upgrade as a newswoman in Portland, Maine. Kim had been the EA in Concord since February 1999.

Anne Allen is on a six-month family leave from the Montpelier staff after the birth of her second child.

AP Streaming news offers a flow of audio and video programming that broadcast and newspaper members can use to bring real-time life to their Web sites.

The new service was created to give members the chance to launch from their own pages the kind of audio and video content they've been accustomed to seeing on The WIRE. ItÕs jointly produced by AP and RealNetworks, the leading provider of streaming audio and video for the Internet.

AP provides the content; RealNetworks supplies the technology and hosts the content on its network, sparing members heavy technical expenses.

AP Streaming News provides anchored audio news summaries, regularly scheduled video newscasts, sound and video clips for major news stories and live links to selected events on a daily basis for AP's newspaper and broadcast members. All the video and audio packages are produced by APTN and AP Network News. The service offers members an immediate entry into the audio and video business without a major investment in staff or technology.

No special expertise, additional equipment or technical maintenance is required on the part of the host site. AP and RealNetworks do all the work, refreshing content around the clock and alerting each news organization's site by e-mail to updated links.

Subscribers receive URLs to the content, which are cut and pasted onto the host pages as links. When a user clicks the link, the RealPlayer is launched in the foreground and plays the content. The member's Web site remains on the screen in the background.

AP Streaming News also provides access to running reports on usage.

Testing already is under way and AP expects by April to begin moving graphics in PDF in addition to the FreeHand 7 format currently in use.

Both PDF and FreeHand 7 graphic files will move over ObjectStream into AP Servers worldwide.

PDF, AdobeÕs Portable Document Format, is the standard for electronic document distribution worldwide and is easily viewed in the AP Server, as well as in many third-party viewing systems.

PDF is a universal file format that preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colors, and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it.

Graphics in PDF can be viewed and printed using the free Acrobat Reader available at www. adobe.com and can be edited using Illustrator, Acrobat Exchange. It can also be can be viewed and printed in Photoshop 5.

Graphics will carry the suffix .PDF or .FH7 to identify the file format and make it easy to autoroute. With the new AP Server NT, members can configure browsers to see only their preferred filetype.

The State Photo Center is conducting an all-out, state-by-state campaign to assign all members FTP (file transfer protocol) accounts for transmitting photos via the Internet. This is the preferred method of receiving AP member and staff photo submissions.

Members may request FTP accounts by simply e-mailing statephotostech@ap.org.

Give your newspaper name, a contact name and phone number. You will receive instructions and a password by return e-mail.

Members are free to use any FTP software they wish, however AP recommends Netscape Navigator 4.7, as most computers already have it and using Netscape allows simple drag-and-drop sending after making a bookmark.

AP is also distributing a guide to the captioning of AP photos. A few items to note:

- DO NOT STOP OR ABORT an FTP transfer while the image is sending. This creates a corrupt file. Better to let it complete and promptly let us know to remove the bad file.

- Please send only RGB JPEG files with .jpg extensions on the file names.

- Try to avoid long file names with spaces. The best scenario is to name the file as the transmission reference number, i.e. NJTRT101.jpg

- Although you can send to AP in seconds it may be a few minutes before we get the image. You are sending to a server in Cranbury, N.J., and a computer in Washington, D.C. must transfer the image into the State Photo Center's system.

- Please call us and tell us you sent the image(s) a couple of minutes after they have cleared your computer.

- Please use Photoshop's "File -> File Info....." for captioning and save the file as a plain "Baseline Standard" JPEG.

DELIMITED SPORTS AGATE FOR AP BASIC

Members with AP Basic can now sign up to receive delimited sports agate.

The so-called "Z wire" provides sports agate separated by tabs rather than fixed spaces. This makes it easier for newspapers to lay out the statistic using desktop publishing programs such as QuarkXPress. Previously, the Z wire was only available to AP members with Datastream.

If you have AP Basic or Datastream and are interested in this agate wire, please contact your AP bureau chief. There is no extra charge PHOTOSHOP TIP

AP's digital camera master Toby Massey has weighed in with a new Photoshop tip:

DOUBLE ACQUIRING AN IMAGE TO BALANCE DENSITY USING KODAK 5.7.0 PLUG-IN

1. Open Photoshop, Click on File, drag to Import and select the Kodak Plug 5.7.0 (for Macintosh) or TwainDCS5_7.exe (for PCs). Select image and click on Exposure Compensation.

2. Move Exposure Compensation slider to left to darken background. Click OK and Acquire.

3. Click on Exposure Compensation and move slider to right until the desired foreground density is obtained. Click OK and Acquire.

4. Open both images and place side by side on desk top. Click on darker image and highlight image by clicking on Apple/A.

5. Click on Edit and make Copy. Click on the lighter image, File and Paste. This combines the images.

Karen Brown, news director at WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., has left the state's largest television news operation to spend more time with her family. She's been at WMUR since 1985, the last four years as news director. Jennifer Crompton, a member of the WMUR news staff, was named as her replacement.

Mike Pride, editor of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, has joined the 19-member Pulitzer Prize Board. Pride, Monitor editor since 1983, was one of three journalists added to the committee that makes recommendations on the annual awards.

``My Brave Boys,'' a book written by Pride and Mark Travis, the Monitor's editorial page editor, is scheduled for publication in May 2001. The book tells the Civil War story of the 5th New Hamsphire Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

Barbara LeBlanc, formerly associate editor of the San Juan (Puerto Rico) Star, is the new managing editor for news at The Union Leader in Manchester, N.H. She previously was a reporter at the Transcript-Telegram and Hampshire Gazette in Massachusetts. Pat Sheerin is now the newspaper's managing editor for operations.

Bob Wertz, assistant metro editor for weekends of the Gainsville (Fla.) Sun, is The Union Leader's new Sunday Editor. His career also includes a stint as local news editor of The Hour in Norwalk, Conn. Tom Lynch takes on new duties as the UL's design editor.

Michael Sexton has left Central Maine Newspapers to become publisher of the Anchorage Daily News. Sexton was publisher of the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and the Kennebec Journal in Augusta..

Linda Fullerton has returned to the Portland Press Herald as city editor after stints as a legislative reporter at the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press and as assistant city editor at the Miami Herald.

The Sun Journal of Lewiston, Maine, was among six U.S. newspapers in its circulation category cited for being among the world's Best-Designed Newspapers by the Society for News Design. The Sun Journal won a gold medal in the 49,999 and below circulation group.