Only it seems someone forgot to tell the Blogrunner webmaster, because according to the homepage and About page, The Annotated New York Times is "NOT affiliated with The New York Times". Huh?

In any case, it turns out NY Times plans to add Blogrunner/Annotated NYT to their own website, which is a fantastic idea. It will bring blogs well and truly into The Gray Lady's orbit, not to mention remix culture.

This is great news for us, because it brings our brand of web technology news, reviews and analysis to a much wider audience. It also means that the innovative and often little known startups we write about daily get a chance to be seen in a mainstream publication. The New York Times has a reputation for quality and in-depth journalism, attributes that we strive for on ReadWriteWeb - so we're excited about this partnership.

Along with ReadWriteWeb, The New York Times will also syndicate content from our friends at VentureBeat and GigaOm. The New York Times re-design is now live, although syndicated content won't go live until October.

Andy Plesser from Beet.TV had the scoop on this story, along with a video interview with Vindu Goel, deputy technology editor at The New York Times.

I want to especially thank Bernard Lunn, ReadWriteWeb's Business Development Manager, for getting this deal. We at ReadWriteWeb are proud to have our growing brand associated with the prestigious New York Times - maybe now our families and friends will understand what we do for a living ;-)

The app feels somewhat similar to the paid Times Reader application - especially if you use an application like Fluid or Prism to pack it into a standalone app.

One nice feature of the app is that it smartly rearranges stories according to the size of the browser window. Times Skimmer also features keyboard shortcuts.

Times Skimmer features a separate section for blogs, as well as a section for collections of articles about special topics, e.g. swine flu, credit crisis and bacon. According to Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer at the New York Times Media Group and general manager of NYTimes.com, Times Skimmer is meant to give "online readers another way to view the latest news and updates in a choice of formats that best suit their preferences."

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb has an existing syndication arrangement with The New York Times.

As Andre Behrens points out in the announcement, the Times is trying to recreate the skimming experience of the physical newspaper, where you often discover random articles that you would probably never notice in the online version.

The layout of the new online application is somewhat similar to that of the Times Reader desktop application, but the team is also trying out some new features. Older articles, for example, gradually fade out as they get older. The newest articles just have a white background.

Overall, the app feels very fluid and lightweight, and the article skimmer provides a great interface for browsing the site's content. It is just a shame that you can't actually read the articles in the same interface.

The New York Times has done a lot of interesting things on the web lately, including opening up an API that allows developers to search the newspaper's articles.

The newspaper business is clearly struggling to reinvent itself on the web, and this experiment is only a small step in this direction - but it is experiments like this that make it clear that there is still a lot of life left in the online newspaper business.

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb has an existing syndication arrangement with The New York Times

Now, this may seem like a relatively insignificant step for people who live and breathe the Web every day. But for traditional media companies, this sharing of column inches with other publications is not only difficult, it's something they have feared (emphasis is mine):

"The days when content sites were afraid to link to other sites are over," said Marc Frons, chief technology officer for digital operations for The New York Times Company.

So it comes as little surprise that NYT is dipping its toe in the water rather cautiously. Rather than replacing the default front page, Times Extra will serve as an additional version of the NYT front page that users can activate by clicking a link. However, that version only remains active for 24 hours, at which point the user will have to activate the Times Extra front page, again.

Whatever the case, this is a step in the right direction. A small step, but a good step nonetheless. Hopefully, the next move to be open will involve NYT sharing the metrics about how many users opt to use Times Extra and - given the options - where they choose to go for their news.

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb has an existing syndication arrangement with The New York Times

The Times has announced that it will publish two lists, one for e-book fiction and one for e-book nonfiction, "in an acknowledgment of the growing sales and influence of digital publishing."

Forecasts for e-books have grown increasingly sunny, as of late. The Association of American Publishers recently reported an increase in e-book sales of more than 190%, while Amazon announced that e-book sales had not only surpassed hardcovers on Amazon.com, but that Kindle books were outselling print best-sellers by a two-to-one margin. Last week, analyst firm Forrester did some polling and predicted e-book sales to surpass $1 billion by the year's end.

The fact that The Times has added an e-book best-seller list just adds some more fuel to the fire. According to its announcement, several major publishers have said that e-books now accounted for 10% of total trade sales, with predictions of growing to a quarter of total sales in the next few years.

Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review, is quoted as saying an e-books lists is needed to give a full picture.

"To give the fullest and most accurate possible snapshot of what books are being read at a given moment you have to include as many different formats as possible, and e-books have really grown, there's no question about it," said Tanenhaus.

Disclosure: The New York Times and ReadWriteWeb are syndication partners.

Using various open source technologies such as jQuery, the Yahoo! User Interface Library and the Maintainable Framework, Reading Radar lets you scan the New York Times top sellers and read reviews and related book information from Amazon; all without the distractions of other content on both the New York Times and Amazon sites.

Inspired by the release of The New York Times Best Sellers API, Herren decided to try and create a site that could be on "auto-pilot."

"I designed the site to use extensive caching of the NYT and Amazon APIs to minimize remote calls, but update the data often enough so that the information would be fresh."

The Maintainable Framework and the Zend framework provided a means to create the PHP based site, and jQuery, the popular JavaScript library along with YUI were used to present the data and provide the user interaction.

"The NYT API was simple enough to use. The REST API offers three response formats, XML, JSON, or serialized PHP. I did find a bug in the API, and was very pleased how reactive the NYT API team was to resolve the problem. Kudos!" Herren wrote on his blog.

If you're interested in more technical details, take a look at Herren's post announcing the release.

As we wrote last week, Foursquare is competing in an increasingly crowded space. These partnerships may help it attract a whole new audience and remain competitive against other services like Yelp that are just joining in the location-based arena.

In addition to its partnership with Zagat, Foursquare just announced this afternoon a partnership with the New York Times, which will start this Friday. Working together, Foursquare and the Times will put out special badges and features for the Winter Olympics. One such new feature will be "recommendations for visitors and local residents on restaurants, popular attractions, shopping and nightlife in Vancouver, Whistler and the town of Squamish ... The tips will be pulled from the Times' travel and entertainment coverage on the cities."

We have to say, with partners like these, Foursquare seems like its not only here to stay, but it won't be long before you hear even your less techie friends and family talking about this app.

Times Wire is the first NYT product built with its own Newswire API. The product will be officially launching tomorrow with a tab on the NYT homepage, but you can see it in action now.

Times Wire is a useful new product and shows that the NYT is actively tapping into two big trends on the Web currently: real time information and personalization. The 'river of news' format isn't as overwhelming as it is on the new FriendFeed page, where a torrent of content will scroll past the bewildered user in the blink of an eye. I blinked a lot of times over the course of a couple of minutes before I saw an update to the 'All News' section in Times Wire. This is probably a good thing for a news site, because people need at least a bit of time to digest news.

The New York Times is proving itself to be a leader among the big newspapers in not only keeping up with the latest Internet trends, but sometimes extending them. This particular product probably won't be hugely useful for the general public, it seems more like a product that info junkies (like bloggers) and newshounds would enjoy. But it's definitely a worthwhile experiment.

Disclosure: The NYTimes is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb.

But once you click on that 21st article, you'll have to pony up a new subscription fee for online viewing - $15 per month for access to the website and a mobile phone app, $20 for Web access and an iPad app, and $35 for an all-access subscription plan. If you're a subscriber to the paper version (remember paper versions of newspapers?), this digital access will be included.

Are People Willing to Pay for Digital News?

"A few years ago it was almost an article of faith that people would not pay for the content they accessed via the Web," said The New York Times Company Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., calling the move an "investment in our future." The new revenue sources will help the newspaper maintain its "journalistic mission and digital innovation."

Despite Sulzberger's contention that people are now willing to pay for digital news, a recent Pew study found that few people do. Only 18% of respondents in its most recent survey indicated they'd be willing to pay $10 a month for online access to local news. The New York Times can't really be described as a local newspaper, of course, but it remains to be seen if people are willing to pay $15 for a digital subscription.

Is $15 Too Much?

And as news hit this morning about the NYT paywall, many have balked at the $15 fee. Dave Winer wondered why there wasn't something more offered to online subscribers. "Wouldn't it have been wise to, at this juncture, offer something to sweeten the deal. Something truly exciting and new that you get when you pay the money. Something that makes your palms sweat and your heart beat faster?"

Currently, what's offered - other than online access, of course - is the promise of helping the newspaper survive. Indeed, in its announcement of the paywall this morning, The New York Times says that, "the fragile condition of the industry has left newspapers with few other choices." What choice will you make? Will you subscribe?

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb and The New York Times are syndication partners.

Another nice feature of the Reader application is the ability to 'browse' the paper by zooming out and seeing previews of the surrounding pages, which nicely recreates the feeling of browsing the 'real' paper.

Oddly, though, during our tests, the scroll wheel on our mouse didn't work in the application, and we had to resort to using the keyboard to flip pages.

For Free: Crossword, Front Page, Business, Magazine, and Most Emailed

If you don't subscribe to the Times or Times Reader, you can still access articles from the New York Times front page, the business section, and the most emailed articles from the Times. If you love the New York Times crossword puzzle, you will be happy to hear that an interactive version of the day's puzzle is also available for free.

For the Sunday Edition, content from the Magazine is available for free, though the Sunday Business section is hidden behind the paywall.

It is important to note that the Times already gives readers offline access to its content through its iPhone application, and a lot of the functionality of the Reader application is also duplicated in the Article Skimmer - though without offline access, of course.

The Times Reader excels in the presentation of the content, and while apps like this will surely not be enough to save the newspaper industry, we are glad to see that the Times continues to innovate and try new business models and ways to reach and retain readers.

Disclosure: The NYTimes is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb.

The number does not include print subscribers, who get access to unlimited articles on the website, or promotional launch offers, according to a tweet from Times' senior VP of corporate communications, Robert Christie. The article states, "For the first time, the Times Company provided information on how digital subscriptions were faring. The company said that since it started limiting the number of articles readers could read on NYTimes.com for free, it has signed up more than 100,000 subscribers. While it said the program was still too young to judge a success, 'early indicators are encouraging.'"

Media market watcher paidContent put the subscription number into context. The Times of London instituted a paywall last year and after eight months had 79,000 subscribers. But overall, it lost 90% of its online readership according to The Guardian. The Financial Times instituted a paywall in June, 2010 and has 224,000 paid digital subscribers.

So, for being a month in, 100,000 subscribers does not look that bad for The New York Times. Revenue on those subscribers could reach as high as $20 million, depending on the type of subscription an individual signed up for. Considering the newspaper spent between $25 million and $40 million (depending on who you believe) on creating the paywall, it looks like a decent return on investment in the early going.

"In mid-March, we introduced Times digital subscription packages in Canada and globally at the beginning of the second quarter, and we are pleased with the number of subscribers we have acquired to date, as initial volume has meaningfully exceeded our expectations," said said Janet L. Robinson, president and CEO, according to Yahoo Finance.

As paidContent points out, there are still a number of variables to consider when looking at the number of paid Times subscribers. What happens when the promotional period ends and rates go up? What about plans on different devices? There are a variety of plans users can subscribe to such as iPad-only or Web-only. We might not know the answers to those questions until later this year when we see more subscription numbers from the Times.

Disclaimer: ReadWriteWeb and The New York Times are syndication partners.

Users are assigned a "Times IQ," which is a numerical representation of how up-to-date they are on the current goings on in the world. Users of the Times app also get to compare their news knowledge with their friends and the rest of Facebook.

When Facebook released their platform earlier this year, the Washington Post was one of the first major print newspapers to jump on board with their wildly successful Political Compass application -- a 10 question quiz to determine your approximate political leanings. Even though the Compass is listed in the "Just for Fun" category, it has garnered close to 350,000 users.

Unfortunately for the Washington Post, their application doesn't do much to push users to the newspaper's web site. The New York Times has taken a different tactic, however, and done a lot to nudge users toward their content. First, of course, by creating an app that seeks user engagement on a daily basis. Unlike the Post application, which you use once then wear as a badge on your profile, the NYT app encourages users to interact with it every day as fresh news quizzes arrive. This should not only get users more involved with the New York Times brand, but also play to Facebook's new activity metrics and perhaps make the app more visible to Facebook at large.

Second, the application ties in current newspaper content very well. After taking the quiz, users are given links to corresponding stories in the Times, and also given an option to study for the next day's quiz by reading up on today's top 5 stories on the New York Times web site. Unlike the Post, the Times app is specifically aimed at turning Facebook users into NYT readers.

Whether it works will largely depend on Facebook's appetite for current events. Turning news into a friendly competition with your friends, and making it easily digestible (i.e., just 5 stories per day, with multiple choice answers) were both good choices, in my opinion. And anything that raises the level of consciousness about current events among the world's youth is a good thing.

An interesting Semantic Web experiment went live this week, called Longitude. As the name suggests, it presents a geographical interface for accessing content from The Times. It uses The Time's large store of metadata, along with Linked Open Data from the Web.

Additionally, some locations have one or two additional tabs: "Natives" and/or "Companies." Clicking on those tabs presents you with list of locally-born people and locally-headquartered organizations.

It's a relatively small project, but this type of functionality may become a part of your future news reading experience. For a national (indeed, international) publication like The Times, it's often interesting to see what stories local to you have been published. Also which local people and companies have been in the news recently.

It's encouraging to see Linked Data continuing its push into commercial areas like this.

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb is a syndication parter of the NYTimes.

The Times says the reason they ask for registration is to be "able to offer people around the world free-of-charge access to news, reviews and more." But is it really necessary? Can't they do all those things without annoying users? Do to they get anything out of it? I don't think so.

I think the New York Times registration system is hurting them for a handful of reasons:

• It's annoying. On more than one occasion I have simply left the Times site for Google News to find a different source for the news I was trying to access because I couldn't be bothered by a registration wall. The NYT nixed TimesSelect fees in the hopes of exposing those 787,000 subscribers to advertising -- how many more page views would they get if they pulled down the registration wall and fully freed their content?
• It doesn't get you anything extra. The only incentive to join is that you can read the article you were trying to read in the first place. Instead of a gaining access to a service, the Times makes it feel like you're being punished.
• Does anyone sign up with real info? Since there is no email verification, there is really no reason for most people to use real information when signing up for the New York Times web site. I would guess that much of the information they capture is fake and thus useless to them. The site is also the most popular on BugMeNot, indicating that there are a number of people fed up enough to only use false info.

So what does the Times get out of all of this? User info that might be helpful for marketing and ad sales if it wasn't polluted by bogus entries, a few sign ups to their email newsletters (which are opt-in and unchecked by default on the sign up form, so probably not that many), and a bunch of pissed off readers. Is it worth it?

To be fair, the New York Times isn't the only newspaper that locks content behind a stupid registration wall. The Washington Post, the LA Times, and other major papers have the same annoying habit. There is a simple way for the New York Times to tear down their registration wall and still capture user data and encourage users to sign up for their newsletters.

They can begin by removing registration requirements on all of their content and adding some reason for people to register. The most likely path is to take a page from other news sites and add social features like comments, article rating, and blogs. Not only would the Times only require registration from users who are interested in registering, but they would be capturing information about their most engaged users. The Washington Post is actually halfway there -- they already offer a lot of added utility to users who register, but unfortunately, they still require registration simply to view much of their content.