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 site's welcome post says beta620 "will also be a place where Times developers interact with readers to discuss projects, and incorporate community suggestions into their work." This audience-friendly approach is a stark reversal from the company's past approach to web innovation.

Moreover, beta620's transparent format is markedly different from the Web experiments at competing news organizations. Boston.com's Beta Boston section offers packaged Web apps for testing and simple feedback, but there's no opportunity for suggestion or discussion. The Washington Post's WaPoLabs site is totally closed, not even hinting at its current projects unless they've been released to the public, like the Trove news aggregation service.

The Times has recognized the importance of open data for several years now, and the launch of their API in 2008 was an important step for the struggling news industry, which must now rely on the rest of the Web to make the most of its wealth of data. The Times has put considerable effort into properly categorizing its content for the open Web, and now it has begun to open its software development to the public, too. Some Web citizens have even taken to redesigning NY Times Web products without being asked.

As of now, only NYT developers can display projects on beta620, but the site has set the tone for a public forum on the future of the Times' technology, so that could certainly change.

The beta620 site was originally planned for July or August of last year, but other important Web efforts, such as the much-debated paywall, took precedence.

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb is a syndication parter of the NYTimes.

"We're asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a simple form to describe the nature of the e-mail, and provide a name and e-mail address so we'll know who should get the credit. Join us here on Friday afternoon and into the weekend to participate."

The release, which begins at 9:00 a.m. Alaska time (one hour earlier than Pacific Time) tomorrow, will consist of "e-mails Ms. Palin sent as governor, mostly using private accounts" and "are to be released in response to public records requests first made in 2008," according to the Times. The release is only being made in hard copy, which will fill "six standard paper boxes, a total of about 250 pounds at a printing cost of $725 per set."

Palin is currently on a bus trip across the country which reads as a thinly-disguised public relations event and temperature-taking for a possible run at the presidency. Even if she decides against running, her influence with the right-wing Tea Party movement makes her newsworthy. So what she my have thought and how she may have acted while in office as Alaska's governor will be of interest to many.

Other news organizations are also preparing processes to leverage the participation of their audience, including MSNBC, Mother Jones and ProPublica, who are working with Crivella West to create a publicly searchable database.

Palin photo by asecondhandconjecture

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.

At the end of March, The New York Times finally activated the paywall that it had announced a year earlier. The publication took a "porous" approach to charging users, letting readers access up to 20 articles a month for free and allowing for links from social networks like Facebook or Twitter to pass through without counting. Still, onlookers have wondered what the effect of the wall would be on the site.

According to Web traffic measurement firm Hitwise, the numbers are in and traffic has certainly dipped in the nearly two weeks since the wall was put in place.

While pageviews are defined as any time that page is loaded, even if multiple times by the same person, visits are broken into "sessions", so if the same person visited the site once in the morning and then once later that day, it would count as two visits. Browsing a number of pages in a short period of time, however, would equal one visit but multiple pageviews.

So what were the results? According to Hitwise, the site has seen "a decrease in the overall visits between 5% and 15%" and "a decline in total page views which ranged between 11% and 30%."

Hitwise notes the general decline in visits, speculating that the reason for the increase on Saturday, April 9, was "likely due to visitors seeking news around the potential government shutdown and ongoing budget discussions."

Similarly, pageviews decreased by anywhere from 11% to 30%. Surely, none of this is as bad as the now-fabled implementation of a paywall by the Newsday, however, which resulted in just 35 subscriptions in the three months after it was put in place.

Hitwise also points out that networks like Facebook and Twitter could be used as a clever way to workaround the paywall, but that "to date there has not been a significant difference in the share of upstream traffic from both search and social networks to NYTimes.com before and after the launch of the paywall."

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb is a syndication partner of the New York Times Technology section.

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.

The network's content includes news, entertainment, business, and health channels, as well as local neighborhood information. Content providers for the network include Bookish Reading Club, Foursquare, GOOD, LinkedIn, New Word City, and The Weather Channel. And you'll be able to get access to special content from The New York Times, iTunes, and WSJ.com, the latter of which normally sits behind a paywall.

If it sounds like a lot of content, well, it is. And it demonstrates that Starbucks' decision to offer free WiFi for its customers this summer wasn't simply about getting customers to stick around the cafes just long enough for the barista to make your Americano. As the company announcement today reads: "Whether customers have a few minutes or an hour, the Starbucks Digital Network offering is designed with snackable content in mind, so it's easy to explore the six channels and discover the most relevant news and information."

Coffee (Plus WiFi) and the Next Age of Enlightenment?

As someone who travels a lot, I require a couple of things: power, Internet, and coffee. And having faced the cold-hard stares of many a barista when I pull out my notebook to work, I appreciate the fact that Starbucks welcomes me there. I'm not sure I'm the target customer for the Career Coach or Runners World content (there's a tech blogger joke in there somewhere), but the ability to check in via Foursquare when I log into the portal is perfect.

Historians have long seen coffeehouses as playing a major role in the development of the Enlightenment - apparently, when Europeans made the switch from ale to coffee, their ability to generate Big Ideas improved. I'm not sure what role future historians will say that Starbucks' coffee plus free WiFi played on the development of big ideas. But as that's where many folks find ourselves working, you never know.

In this post we'll look at how some of the leading newspapers are using iPad, what the user experience is like, and what could be improved still. We'll specifically look at WSJ, NYT and Newsy.

The default front page of the WSJ app immediately shows that the WSJ has thought a little outside the box in making its iPad edition different from the print and website editions. It offers up two versions of the paper: a daily one and a "Now" one. The "Now" version is updated with breaking news coverage throughout the day. It also features "top article picks from Journal editors." Users are invited to choose one or the other as their default version when they open the app. Both versions offer a mix of content from the print and online versions of WSJ.

As well as two versions of the paper, the WSJ iPad app has three useful sections: My Watchlist, Saved Articles and Saved Sections (the latter is only available to subscribers). It should be noted that the WSJ iPad app offers only limited content and features to free users. Subscribers get the full experience for $3.99 per week. A good portion of the content of the iPad app isn't available to non-paying users.

From a user experience perspective, the WSJ iPad app is very slick. The now familiar 'swipe' and 'pinch' iPad functions are deployed smartly and the only new thing users need to learn is that pinching returns them to the section homepage.

The New York Times

In contrast to the WSJ and many other newspapers with iPad apps, the New York Times offers only a limited amount of content in its iPad app. Called NYT Editor's Choice, the app features "a selection of latest news, opinion and features" from the venerable paper.

The NYT app has been heavily criticized for its lack of content. Gizmodo argues that the NYT's deal with the Amazon Kindle could be a big factor behind that decision. Politics aside, what is the user experience like?

The app is divided into sections: 6 content ones (News, Business, Technology, Opinion, Arts, Features) and one for video content. The first thing that struck me about the app is its relatively small default font. There is an option to select a larger font, but - like some of the Zinio magazine apps I profiled yesterday - one can't magnify the content. The content also has few images. Navigating the app is via the same swiping motion in WSJ, but it felt clunkier.

The video section was good, but (you guessed it) there wasn't a lot of content.

Overall, the NYT iPad app is rather disappointing from a content perspective - and just average from a user interaction point of view.

Newsy

The fact that both WSJ and NYT offer only limited free content on iPad surely leaves room for other companies to innovate. And that's exactly what video news service Newsy has done. It was probably the first iPad app that I used regularly, when I bought the device.

Newsy creates short video summaries of daily news. They're presented by people who wouldn't look out of place on the E Channel. Each clip runs from 2-5 minutes and is comprised of commentary based on TV news networks, news web sites and (refreshingly) blogs. They're concise summaries of the news of the day, taken from sources across the Web and other media.

I often watch Newsy on my iPad during my lunchtime - it sure beats watching midday TV! Here's an example clip, about the iPad's WiFi problems back in April:

iPad Newspapers Lite on Innovation Currently

There's no shortage of newspapers that offer iPad applications, many of them with much more free content than WSJ and NYT. However the sector is ripe for innovation, which is what apps like Newsy and Flipboard are doing.

Over time, newspapers will add more interactive features - video, infographics, slideshows. Much of the type of content that the Wired iPad app is experimenting with.

Newspapers could also do a lot with personalization on the iPad. Every newspaper reader (obviously I'm referring to older generations - joke!) has their favorite sections. But more than that, newspapers should offer in-depth news coverage on topics of interest to individual readers. It could even be esoteric content that doesn't often make the print edition due to space restrictions. The iPad is a Web-connected device after all, so it could theoretically pull down any content from a newspaper's archives - in the case of WSJ and NYT, those companies have decades of content that could potentially be accessed by iPad users. Imagine reading a news story about the BP oil spill, and wondering what other oil spills there have been through history - why not scroll through the WSJ or NYT archives on that topic within your iPad.

Let us know in the comments what your favorite iPad newspaper apps are. Also, what features would you like to see in these apps?

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb is syndicated by NYT, although not on the iPad. Image credits: ReneS.; stevegarfield

The Audit Bureau of Circulations announced major changes to the way it counts digital readership today that will likely affect media that still rely on print very favorably. The new rules will allow newspapers to count a single subscriber multiple times if he or she pays or registers to access content via a print subscription, website, mobile reader or e-reader edition, among other changes to the way digital access is counted.

Circulation was historically measured as the number of print subscriptions plus newsstand sales of newspapers, magazines and other publications, and was the basis for pricing ad space and attracting advertisers. However, this definition of circulation got murky as the Internet drew more readers away from dead-tree editions, making it harder for publishers to explain the size of their readership to advertisers.

The ABC, an organization that verifies circulation numbers of publications on behalf of advertisers, made the changes based on recommendations from a task force made up of its members and representatives from the Newspaper Association of America in order to "study the evolution of newspapers and the rapidly growing channels available to advertisers," who still pay much more for print ads even as more readers demonstrate a preference for digital formats.

Starting in October, publishers can claim another "paid subscription" for every reader who accesses content online at least once every six months, as long as the subscriber has to register to see the content or pays at least 5% of his or her print subscription cost in order to access the digital version. In October 2011, readers must access digital content once per quarter to count as a paid subscription, and in October 2012, readers must access digital content once a week in order to be counted.

The rapidly-scaling standard suggests newspapers are playing catch-up to monetize an audience that started migrating to the Web a long time ago. The Internet makes it possible to know more about your readers than ever before - how many you have, what they look at, and who they are - but the old circulation auditing system seems to be struggling to adapt to the needs of advertisers and media in a digital world.

Image courtesy ShironekoEuro

ReadWriteWeb is a syndication partner of The New York Times.

"Once the pay model is implemented next year, the majority of our readers will be unaffected when using the site and will continue to have the same experience they have always had," said Green. "The pay model will be designed so readers that are referred from third party sites such as blogs will be able to access that content without hitting their limit, enabling NYTimes.com to continue being a part of the open web."

Green later commented on Kafka's post, adding that while third-party referrals will count towards a reader's daily limit, it will not prevent them from viewing the content. So if a user reaches the limit via thrid-party links and then trys to browse articles on the Times' homepage, the paywall will then be triggered. Users will still be able to access articles via third-party sites and services at all times, so is the Times' paywall paper thin?

This seems like a pretty significant loophole that would make it fairly simple to get around the paywall once it goes up. If I want to read a specific story on the Times' homepage after I've hit my limit, I can simply search for that story on Google or Twitter search and get around the wall via an outside link from another site.

The Times seems to be focused on monetizing the users that browse their webpage for content on a frequent basis, rather than those that arrive from other sites. So while the key to the front door only works a few times each day, the windows on the side of the house are wide open.

What is also unclear is how the New York Times' paywall algorithms will determine which sites and links will apply to this exemption. As it stands now, it would seem that all sites and all links will not affect a user's daily limit, but whether this applies to search engines or news aggregators is unknown. We have reached out to the Times for comment on this question and will update this post if and when a reply is received.

Disclosure: The New York Times is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb.

Photo by Flickr user Joe Shlabotnik.

With information-taming technologies like search engines already at a reader's fingertips, there is debatable value in the Doc Viewer's ability to annotate a story with "raw" information. However, the fact that the Doc Viewer's code is due to be released on an open-source basis introduces an additional value to it. It is not just the back-end that a media source, of whatever size, will have access to, but the whole megillah.

This latest viewer by the New York Times is the latest iteration of a two year development process. The viewer allows reporters to augment stories by including evidentiary documentation and providing context to news stories. The viewer keys documents to words or phrases in the source story, allowing viewers to pursue the process to the depth they prefer. These "annotations" are similar to an old-fashioned "hot link" but with a new-fangled dynamic delivery.

Future versions will open up the annotation process to readers, instead of just the writers and editors. Additional features may include an embeddable version for blogs, a search-friendly version without JavaScript, variable image file type control and the ability to create custom annotation shapes. The open-source software behind Version 2.0 will be released "in the very, very near future," according to the newspaper, and will be available on the Times' Github page.

The key criticism to this undertaking, of course, is: so what?

BayNewswer quoted Aron Pilhofer, the paper's editor for interactive newsroom technologies, as "recognizing that news organizations are slowly but gradually becoming more and more like technology companies." They are, that is, more likely to triumph if they leverage a wider distribution of invested community members.

Alan McLean, interface engineer at the Times, says his focus is on the Doc Viewer as a reporting tool.

"Fundamentally what we are trying to do here is get as many tools in the belts of reporters as we can to assist them in telling stories online," he told RWW. "Seeing it as a publishing platform is somewhat limited. It really depends on the kind of content that is being published."

However, Chris Heisel, in a post on an earlier version of this viewer, said, "In a world where I can easily find more infor­ma­tion than I can ever pos­si­bly use does the public really need more access to raw infor­ma­tion."

We read news in a politically and socially polarized environment. The most common charge against the NY Times - this most mainstream of MSM - is bias, that there is nothing more than a writer's unexamined feelings or political secret sauce to support the angle of a given story. With foundational documents appended to the story itself, the reasonableness of the reporter's approach should prove easier to determine.

But that is posited on the not-altogether-likely notion that reason and reality will overpower the desire to froth.

The New York Times is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb.

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.

In a move that would bring the publication parallel to the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, the New York Times seems to have settled on a system that would allow online readers to sample a certain amount of content before being prompted to subscribe. This decision would be a landmark in the ongoing cultural debate on whether online content should be free or not and could represent another fundamental shift in how users expect to access and consume news, depending on which news organizations follow suit.

This news also comes in the wake of a stern statement from media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who recently took umbrage at and announced his intentions to block search engines' indexing news media content. In November of last year, Murdoch said that News Corp sites will begin charging users for access to content around June 2010, at which time content will be de-indexed from all search engines.

According to sources at the paper, the decision to make New York Times content available on a paid basis could be made within days, announced with in weeks, and executed in a few months.

As the American economy slowly emerges from the depths of a crippling recession - and as old-school news organizations begin to cope realistically with the demands of modern media - one can't fault the Times for taking such a step. The world-class coverage it provides and the journalists and photographers it employs certainly can't be sustained on advertising revenues alone, especially as print circulation (with higher ad rates) decreases and more readers turn to online versions (which much lower ad rates).

What do you think - Will the Times truly begin charging online readers for access to content? And if so, will more print/online hybrid publications follow suit? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

To read more ReadWriteWeb coverage of newspapers' struggle in the 21st century, check out our Newspapers and Journalism archive.

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb is a syndication partner of the New York Times.

Interesting, But Intentionally Limited

Sadly, though, the tool is also still somewhat limited. It doesn't for example, support Boolean operators (AND, OR, etc.) in queries. Adding additional search terms simply restricts searches to articles where both terms appear. There is no option to turn this around and make the query an 'or' search. All of this wouldn't be a problem if the app allowed users to then combine different feeds, but this isn't an option - though you could obviously use Yahoo Pipes or a similar product to combine these feeds yourself.

According to the Times, these limitations are intentional and meant to "keep the application simple and approachable."

If you are only interested in receiving updates about a very limited set of topics, then setting up a tab in Netvibes or iGoogle for a number of custom feeds is definitely an interesting proposition. On the other hand, you could also get similar and more customizable alerts from a wider range of publications through Google Alerts (though Google won't help you to find appropriate keywords) or a real-time service like Lazyfeed.

The NYTimes is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb.