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.

Says Microsoft Associate General Counsel Tim Cranton in a recent blog post, "Although we don't yet know the names of the specific individuals behind these acts, we are filing these cases to help uncover the people responsible and prevent them from continuing their exploits."Those involved in the current lawsuit include Soft Solutions, Direct Ad, qiweoqw, ITmeter INC, and ote2008.

In addition to this current civil suit, Microsoft is actively pursuing actions against a number of instant messaging spammers and bot-powered click frauders. It will be interesting to see if the public education campaigns for web security can keep up with the influx of ad delivered trojan horse viruses. The public is directed to the Microsoft Online Safety page for more information.

Photo Credit: Dirk Heuer

Data Store Uses Google Docs

The Data Store and its accompanying blog are more directly aimed at consumers. The Data Store houses a collection of all of the statistics that the newspaper has published. Unlike the New York Times, however, the Guardian does not yet provide an equivalent to the Data Visualization Lab. Interestingly, the Guardian chose Google Docs as its repository for this data. Here, for example, is the Guardian's spreadsheet with the U.S. public debt since 2001.

Future of the Newspaper?

We have already seen a number of very interesting uses of the NYT APIs, and we will surely see a lot of interesting and useful applications that will now make use of the Guardian's data. What is more interesting, however, is that some newspaper are clearly beginning to understand where the future of their business lies (the Guardian now also exposes full-text RSS for all of its sections).  If anything, this feels like a far smarter way to go than the MediaNews Group's misguided attempt to put proprietary printers into readers' living rooms.

Why not just use the RSS feed? According to the NYT, the API is better:

"Better than RSS, the Times Newswire API offers chronologically ordered cross-site results, including rich metadata. The response data fields include headlines, summaries, URLs, sections and subsections, bylines, date fields (created, updated, published), indexing terms, media and more. In the words of NYT developer Michael Donohoe, this truly is 'One Feed to Rule Them All.'"

Think about that for a second: every article the NYT publishes, instantaneously. And every one of those articles is coupled with structured data that makes it easy to mix and match with other data sources. That's pretty forward thinking for a publication that, not so long ago, was still blocking access to their content on the Web. And that's why we find this so compelling.

The potential opportunities for applying this information are mindboggling. It will be interesting to see how it's employed by the development community - and what the NYT has up its API sleeve next.

So how was the event received? In our estimation, it seems like another positive step forward for the NYT.

"The message is clear," wrote Times Open attendee Taylor Barstow. "The New York Times is, suddenly, a platform company."

He also offers:

"The New York Times recognizes the need for a news platform, and wants to fill that void. Their developers understand that Web 2.0 is about openness, and are committed to opening up The Times data to outsiders (whether or not the suits--and they do wear ridiculously nice suits--agree remains to be seen). They want to create a community of hackers around their APIs, and invite community feedback to drive future innovation. The Times executives should be supremely grateful for having employees with such vision at their organization."

Attendee Daniel Tunkelang sees promise in the Times Open strategy but still questions how far the NYT is willing to go:

"But there's a big catch: the New York Times is paranoid of diluting its brand equity by mixing up user contributions with their carefully vetted writing. As a result, all comments are moderated, and their aggregation of blogs linking to articles is a limited, proprietary system (Blogrunner). The New York Times wants to have its cake and eat it - all the benefits from users' active engagement without the costs of diluting their brand.

"I think their APIs make this possible, at least in theory."

But the big news coming out of the gathering - according to Allen Stern of CenterNetworks - is the release of a new API called TimesNewswire, which will "give developers access to live headlines. Attendee Kellan called this new API a New York Times firehose and noted, 'NewsWire API is the paper's stream of consciousness.'"

We definitely appreciate the direction that the NYT is taking. They seem genuinely dedicated to embracing openness and have created some momentum in that regard. We're especially looking forward to getting a chance to review the new API - which sounds like it may increase that momentum exponentially.

So where does the NYT get the motivation for all of this openness? For more on the thinking behind Times Open, watch the Yahoo Developer Network's interview with NYT's Derek Gottfrid, Senior Software Architect - the man behind the Times Open gathering. He offers some additional insight into the theory behind Times Open and hints at some of the development in the future - like how NYT will continue to leverage Hadoop.

Originally announced in May of last year, The NYTimes API selection continues to grow. The TimesPeople API joins other available APIs including Article Search, Best Sellers, Campaign Finance, Community, Congress, and Movie Reviews.

So What Does This Mean?

For The New York Times, this release marks a continued commitment to opening up data resources to the social Web, allowing developers to leverage NYTimes.com data to enhance their existing offerings - or to serve as the foundation for entirely new offerings.

Granted this news may not seem like much, especially to members of a community who see applications launching every day with open APIs. But for the traditionally sheltered and closed mainstream media, allowing readers access to full-text RSS feeds and publicly available user data tends to be a big deal.

Even if you're not excited about the traditional media becoming more open, it's still worth mentioning - if only for the fact that an entity like the NYT continuing to move in this direction lends additional credence to the vision for an open and social Web, as a whole.

Hopefully, more dead-tree publications will follow the Gray Lady's lead. If they do, we're all sure to win as creative developers find ways to mash data from disparate sources. (It doesn't take a huge intuitive leap to imagine the type of filtering availed by combining data from social bookmarking, social networks, and news APIs.)

This access to real data from real users is sure to give us a better understanding of what news is truly important - and what stories deserve placement on the front pages of the future.

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

LinkedIn users are now being shown personalized news targeting their industry verticals on the Business and Technology sections of NYTimes.com and will then be prompted to share those stories will professional associates.

A number of other social networks and bookmarking services have "share this story" links on NYT stories, but it's unclear how much traction those links alone are getting. Last month we wrote about one of those services, social news site Mixx, that's still seeing fewer than 1 million unique visitors per month despite "share this on Mixx" buttons on a long list of the biggest news sites in the world, including NYTimes.com.

How much more compelling is this partnership? We think it's a lot more compelling; check out the screenshots below and imagine the feedback loop this could create between the NYT and LinkedIn. LinkedIn has 25 million registered users and the NYT sees 17 million + unique visitors per month, but the partnership will need none the less to introduce more people to LinkedIn in order to really be a home run. See this NYT page for an "introduction to LinkedIn." That's pretty classy, though it's unclear yet when that link will be displayed and when it won't.

We'll see how the recommendation process works; we hope it doesn't rely exclusively only on explicitly shared links, but we'll see. This certainly gets the mental juices flowing about any number of other integration and recommendation possibilities.

One question we have is about money changing hands. There has been extensive discussion around the web of late about LinkedIn using partnerships as a revenue source and it wouldn't surprise us if the NYT is paying for this integration. LinkedIn may not be a huge social network, but its user demographics are some of the most financially desirable in the world.

We expect to see more partnerships like this emerge, perhaps from a chastised Facebook attempting to relaunch its Beacon program in a more acceptable fashion.

The New York Times application's (iTunes link) most prominent feature is that it allows for off-line reading, which makes it especially useful for those who use an iPod touch and want to read the Times during their commute. At the same time, though, the offline capability also severely slows down the experience, as the app tries to download a large package of stories every time it updates. The thumbnail photos that accompany most stories typically take even longer to appear. In many ways, this approach is reminiscent of what the New York Times does with its Times Reader desktop application.

Once updated, the interface is very straightforward. The bookmarks at the bottom of the app let you chose between "Latest News", "Business News", "Opinion", "Photos", and "More." A major flaw here is that these bookmarks can not be rearranged. If you want to read the Technology section, you first have to click on "More" and then "Technology." Making the app a little bit more configurable would also go a long way in making it more usable. Correction: You can actually move icons around pretty easily if you head for the second page and look for the 'edit' button at the top of the page.

One really nice feature of the app is its search function. Just enter any keyword and it will look through the local database of stories and return the results within seconds. However, this search is limited to the local cache and it does not search the Times' online archive.

One annoying feature, though, is the advertising that is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Between the bookmark bar, the advertising, and the navigation bar, a good third of the screen is dedicated to something else but the actual content.

Associated Press: Mobile News

The AP Mobile News application (iTunes link) looks a lot like the NYTimes app [UPDATE: AP emailed us to say that "the Mobile News Network Web application launched in May 5 BEFORE the New York Times application was released (July 10)"]. Mobile News, too, stores a local cache of stories on the iPhone, but doesn't suffer from the same kind of slowdowns. It also has a very fast search engine, but unlike the Times, it doesn't put it on the screen at all times. Instead, it is hidden away on the second page.

Unlike the Times, Mobile News does give you the chance to customize the bookmark bar at the bottom of the page, which immediately makes it a lot more user-friendly. The AP, for now, is also not running any ads on its service.

The AP application has a number of other features the Times app does not, which include the ability to send an SMS or email message with a link to the story, as well as the ability to save it for later reference. Users can also take and send pictures from breaking news events they witness directly to the AP.

Bloomberg

While the AP and New York Times obviously try to cover a very wide range of topics, the Bloomberg application (iTunes link) is, as the name suggests, completely focused on financial news. Indeed, regular news only takes up a small part of the application.

The Bloomberg app is the only one of the three apps tested here that does not download a local cache of its stories. It is also completely focused on text and does not feature any photos - which, given its focus on business news, is probably not a very big deal.

Besides the news part, though, the areas where the app really shines is in the displaying the latest ups and downs of stocks and indexes worldwide, with the ability to drill down to charts and stories related to any given company. It is also the only of these news apps that makes use of the iPhone's accelerometer. When you look at the details for any given stock, rotating the screen brings up an enlarged graph of the stock's past performance.

Verdict

In terms of design, the Bloomberg application makes the best use of the iPhone's capabilities and it would be nice if the other apps copied some of these ideas for their more general news applications. Between Mobile News and the New York Times, the main difference really is the content. While the New York Times app is pretty slow, it does work very well once it is up and running. It has to be said, though, that using the New York Times' mobile website is probably a better choice for those who have good connectivity. It loads up faster and the advertising mostly stays out of your way.

The API itself should be done by the time summer arrives in the US, with more significant chunks available to the public within 6 months.

The New York Times has taken a lead in bringing newspapers into the digital landscape over the past year. In 2006, the company launched its specialized RSS reader built on the Microsoft WPF platform, but it was this past fall that things really started to heat up on the digital side of the Times.

The paper put out a Facebook application, which has been a modest success with about 1,500 daily active users. They followed that in October with the controversial decision to put reader comments on the main page of the paper's web site.

In November, the Times took Techmeme full on by launching its own news aggregator powered by the Blogrunner technology it had acquired. Blogrunner "is our answer to Techmeme, integrated with our main site. It is technology we've built ourselves, based on Blogrunner, a company we bought last year," NYT Tech Editor Saul Hansell told us at the time.

Then in January, the company made an investment in Wordpress, the popular blogging engine that powers their own blogs.

Conclusion

An API is a logical next step for newspapers. It will give developers access to their vast amounts of well-researched data, and allows the paper's brand to be spread easily across the web. More access to Times content and the ability to mash it up in new and interesting ways can only be a win for both readers and the paper.

"The web of the near-term future isn't about pages any more," wrote Marshall Kirkpatrick in his massive post on APIs in March. "It's about data, flying around, hopefully under the control of users, and offering a world of possibilities that few of us could have imagined just a few years ago."

The New York Times seems to understand that. Says Aron Pilhofer, the paper's interactive news editor, the goal of an API is to "make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data."

The Atlantic follows other old guard US media properties that have recently set their online content free.

In September, the New York Times removed the pay wall on the majority of its archives, as well as its TimesSelect service, which included non-news content like editorials by Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd. By removing pay walls, magazines and newspaper create more pages on which to sell advertising, and can theoretically increase traffic and improve search rankings (due to the influx of new content that can then be returned in search results). When the Times stopped charging, some bloggers estimated that it would see an uptick in pageviews by as much as 14%.

In Novemember, Rupert Murdoch followed suit and announced that the Wall Street Journal would stop charging for content. The Journal operates one of the most successful online subscription news sites, with subscribers bringing in $50 million per year in revenue, but Murdoch is hoping that by dropping the pay requirements on its content, the site's traffic will balloon and allow the paper to recoup the lost subscription revenue via advertising. Not having a pay wall would allow the paper to reach readers "in every corner of the earth," said Murdoch in November.

The Atlantic has long operated a successful web operation, including some of the most cited political blogs on the web. In fact, three of the magazine's blogs currently appear in the Memeorandum top 20 -- the only mainstream media source to accomplish that feat. Removing the magazine's online pay wall should help to cement its web site as a leader in its market.

Update: Looks like we spoke too soon. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland today, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said that the Wall Street Journal would not be going free online after all. "We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of the Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering" for subscribers, Mr. Murdoch said according to the WSJ. "The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive."

Automattic CEO Toni Schneider, who recently won the Crunchie award for best start-up CEO, said in a blog post that the funding will help Automattic attain two goals. "One was to put enough money in the bank to have financial security for years to come," he wrote. "Another was to invest more aggressively into our 'other' products and services (other than WordPress) like Akismet, Gravatar, and bbPress."

But as we said, the most intriguing part of the news is the strategic investment by the New York Times Co. Like many large news organizations, the Times Co. utilizes Wordpress to power its blogs. As we noted, earlier this week the newspaper ran two stories that were approbative toward tools like blogs that are traditionally used by citizen journalists. Meanwhile, the paper's blogs are very successful -- their technology blog, "Bits," currently sits at #17 on the Techmeme Leaderboard (the paper is #3 -- any many of the stories attributed to the flagship are by Bits authors), while their political blog, "The Caucus," is #15 on Memeorandum (the paper is #1).

With the paper receiving so much web attention from blogging, it probably can't hurt to get cozy with the provider of their blog platform. According to Schneider, the paper has the dual goals of "[expanding] their existing WordPress blogging infrastructure and to create new ways of connecting WordPress bloggers with the New York Times and its readers."

The latter bit makes me wonder if the Times is planning to allow readers to set up blogs on the paper's web site -- similar to how The Huffington Post or DailyKos work. Or it could mean that the paper will be looking at ways to syndicate content from outside bloggers who are using the Wordpress platform -- similar to the way Reuters and USA Today syndicate bloggers via BlogBurst.

Either way, it sounds like the fruits of this investment may lead to an opportunity for broader syndication for long tail bloggers. Whatever the NYT has in mind for its Wordpress tie-up, it is certainly an interesting direction for one of America's oldest and most respected daily newspapers, and a further affirmation of blogging's use in legitimate journalism.

Update: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that True Ventures led the round. However, Polaris Ventures provided $20 million of the $29.5 million raised in this funding round.

Though the videos are not up at the Times yet, some of the clips are up at Blip.tv in unedited form (one is embedded below).

This is not the first time that the New York Times has turned to amateur video content to flesh out its online offerings. Since October, the newspaper has run clips from political video debate blog Bloggingheads.tv.