guardian - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/guardian en Copyright 2009 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:52:27 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.23-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Newspaper as a Platform: Guardian Launches API guardian_open_platoform_logo_mar09.pngThe Guardian just launched a new API which will allow third-party developers to access and reuse the Guardian's content database in their own applications. The new API is part of the Guardian's new Open Platform, which, as of today, consists of the API and a Data Store, but the Guardian also announced that it plans to offer more services in the near future. The Data Store is a collection of high quality data sets which are curated by the Guardian and hosted on Google Docs.

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]]> This move by the Guardian comes just about a month after the New York Times opened up its Article Search API, which also gives developers access to a complete set of the paper's content (Disclosure: RWW is a syndication partner of the NYT). The New York Times, however, provides access to a more varied set of data and includes specialized APIs for accessing its movie reviews, breaking news, or information about the U.S. Congress. Other news organizations like the BBC or NPR also offer similar APIs.

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.

]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/newspaper_as_a_platform_guardian_announces_apis.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/newspaper_as_a_platform_guardian_announces_apis.php News Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:21:02 -0800 Frederic Lardinois The Guardian Gives Readers the Whole Story via RSS GuardianFor many of us, our RSS reader - regardless of the particular flavor you prefer - serves as the hub of our daily information consumption, providing a steady stream of news on what's happening in the world.

But when it comes to newspaper feeds, that ease of reading "everything in one place" has often been plagued by a great deal of clicking, given that traditional publications have opted to remand their posts to partial summaries rather than full-text. Now, The Guardian takes a step to change that by offering full-text through their RSS feed.

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]]> At first blush, it appears to be a simple and straightforward change - but in actuality, it's quite noteworthy. In fact, the Google Reader team is reporting that The Guardian's decision to move to full feeds makes it the "first major newspaper in the world" to offer its RSS content as full-text.

According to ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick "The UK Guardian is the best example of a newspaper that understands the opportunities in becoming a broker of machine-readable data, instead of just human readable content." With this move, however, they show that they still clearly understand the human element, as well. Truly, they're taking the lead as a publication that offers the best of both worlds.

For The Guardian, this marks another progressive step forward in demonstrating how traditional media publications embrace the world of online media. But it's not the last. With the influence of the recently acquired paidContent team and continued vision of employees like Matt McAllister - formerly of Yahoo! - we're looking forward to The Guardian's continued thought leadership in this regard.

]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_guardian_full_text_rss.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_guardian_full_text_rss.php RSS & Feed Management Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:17:16 -0800 Rick Turoczy