AP exchange - the desk's next nightmare

So is anyone out there having to depend on this for all your wire? I've heard at least one company was trying to get out of an AP contract. I also know of one where the powers that be at the paper said that AP was trying to get away with using a satellite system which drops it onto the news servers at member papers. What I really think there is that the company and not AP was trying to get out of paying for the service.


We've used it when our system has been down and it sucks...adding three or four steps to placing the material on a page. Also, the top lines of the entries (example: East Division for Major League Baseball standings) isn't in the file when they post it to the site. Last week when we were down I could not find the AP Sports Digest for that afternoon - not once but three times. I called NY and was told to look under "advisory." Still, no luck. Also on some days, you can't find the TV listings (Thursday's were obtainable only through the advance TV listings that moved. And again, if you look at those, the time of the first event does not appear.

I would shudder to think of a news organization dumping the direct feed and using AP exchange.

 

I don't know how much it costs to lease the satellite space, but it isn't cheap. That being said, AP Exchange isn't the same as the direct feed and hopefully the more people complain, the issue will get fixed.

 

I don't mind AP Exchange so much, because it has far more options far photos than we get with our system.

 

I wish AP Exchange would have a button that lets you turn off the auto-update. I really hate that.

As an aside, I wish AP would put up more "stand-alone" pics. Maybe they're not paying for them anymore (as bucky has been known to say), but it's AP; how they don't have the ability to display some kick-ass art is beyond me. Stop with the 58 facial-expression shots of Obama at a presser and post some off-the-beaten-path shots.

 

I agree with Songbird on the pictures. I like for AP exchange for limited uses, but for the most part it is bulky and difficult to navigate and times out in the middle of searches.

The helpful feature is the related art.

 

With photos, AP Exchange keeps them on file for two weeks, while AP Server NT cycles them out after 36 to 48 hours.

 

I must say, AP Exchange sent over tremendous shot from Piqua, Ohio, of the backs of triplets staring at their Nicklin school sign on the first day of kindergarten.

 

I get errors in Exchange that often force me to repeat searches two or three times, and their agate doesn't come over in a format that my system can read, but other than that, it's fantastic!

 

And, when you hit "more" while scrolling down pages, it'll stop after the second page even though it says there are 50 or 60 pages.

And I have an updated version of Firefox, which is supposed to work well with AP Exchange.

 

How do you get the missing first few lines of agate off any file?

 

For text and agate, I use Exchange as a backup to the main wire. Our modem turns a lot of boxes into pure gibberish when lots of things are moving at once, even doing tricks like combining a game story with, say, the weather forecast or war coverage. I copy and paste box scores (Safari browser) and text, rather than downloading a file, and they seem to need minimal massaging ... or, much less than expected. I like the wider choice on photos as well, especially when we use a feature off a supplemental wire that may not move their own photo.