PRAGUE, October 23 /PRNewswire/ --     A revolutionary way to share information about events has been given 
preliminary approval by delegates of the International Press 
Telecommunications Council at its regular meeting here.

The new standard, called EventsML-G2, allows news agencies and
information providers to easily encode highly detailed information about any
kind of event, such as a meeting, exhibition, election- anytime people
gather or something newsworthy happens. Aside from such obvious details as
dates and places, EventsML-G2 can carry such detailed information as the
likelihood of the event occurring as scheduled.

EventsML-G2 information can be shared in any language, using readily
available text editing tools. It can be viewed on the World Wide Web, if
desired, and EventsML-G2 information can be converted to and from the
less-expressive iCalendar format by using such popular schedule management
tools as Outlook, iCal or Blackberry devices.

As part of the IPTC's family of G2 standards, EventsML-G2 is based on XML
- recognized worldwide as the simplest and most universal method of
encoding text and data for sharing. EventsML-G2 will be used to help
newspapers and web sites build databases of such diverse content such as
calendars of community events and upcoming elections. The possibilities are
virtually limitless; for example, every detail of a child's school calendar
can be published in EventsML-G2.

Previously, event information (such as a concert schedule) was collected
and stored in a format that was usually invented by a local newspaper or web
site, since the widely used iCalendar format is not sufficiently structured.
Sharing such information was difficult and expensive; republication required
much manual processing and was prone to error. EventsML-G2 establishes a
lingua franca to make sharing as easy as e-mailing or transmitting an
standardized EventsML-G2 file.

Final approval of EventsML-G2 is expected in the first quarter of 2008,
but detailed information is available now at http://www.eventsml.org/.

More than 50 delegates representing Europe, Asia, the Americas and the
Middle East participated in the regular IPTC autumn meeting held in Prague.
They represented dozens of the world's leading news agencies and news system
vendors, all of which use IPTC standards to share, process and publish news.

In other business, IPTC delegates continued work on the upcoming
NewsML-G2 standard, which will be used to bundle news content for easy
processing by news outlets such as newspapers, web sites and broadcasters.
NewsML-G2 will enter its final stages of development and approval in early
2008.

The next regular gathering of the IPTC is scheduled for Beijing in March
2008, and will include a meeting with the Beijing Organising Committee for
the Games of the XXIX Olympiad to discuss news media issues for the upcoming
Olympic summer games.

The IPTC, based in Windsor, 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 upcoming IPTC G2 Family of Standards, the existing
NewsML, 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