NYT’s ‘Robot in the Newsroom’ sending readers to blogs, TeleRead included
When the New York Times Tech Section wrote up the guy behind the Google Phone, was anybody thinking of an e-book angle?
Thanks to a smart new wrinkle at the NYT, however, its readers now know of a TeleBlog post on that very topic. The ‘Robot in the Newsroom,” as an NYT editor calls the new service, will prowl the Web looking for items from both traditional publications and blogs to augment the Times’ coverage with outside perspectives for the Tech Section. Adding to the fun, the Times has rolled out a new incarnation of the Blogrunner news aggregator it bought a while back.
Roundup on the NYT’s new capability for roundups
Let me apply the Times’ own logic somewhat—actually good, old-fashioned blogging logic—and point you to a related Google news roundup and some commentary from TechCrunch.
In case you’re curious, we’re actually getting more referrals from the Times than from Techmeme, another favorite of ours, but it’s too early to see if there’s a pattern here. Whatever the reason, the Times put us at the top of the link list for the G Phone story.
David’s NYT wishlist: Full RSS feeds, .epub edition and book review links in mobile edition
Now if the Times will only pay attention to the cry in the blosophere for full-story RSS feeds—or maybe even do an open source .epub-based reader to treat us to encapsulated editions that can be read beyond WiFi range! The Times is hipper than ever these days to the possibilities of open source, so you never know about the future. While the Times Reader has its virtues, a next-gen .epub-based effort with reflowable text fit for PDAs and cellphones would definitely be the way to go. For those insistent on a printy look, as I’ll call it, the Times could keep the current Microsoft-based reader.
Still AWOL right now from the usual mobile editions of the Times and the Washington Post: Links to the book sections. But I’ve just made discovery—a Motorola-sponsored mobile edition of the Times does include the best-seller list from the Sunday book section. More to come? Please, Times; please, Post. Connect the dots. People read who see e-book ads via their cellphones and PDAs could download the books for immediate gratification. Not all cellphones will be up to the task. But a growing number will.
And meanwhile at the Post: It appears that the Post has dumped Technorati, at least for now, and replaced it with Sphere to help people find news and blog items related to stories.
Related: What Newspapers need to do about Open Social, from Steve Yelvington.
Technorati Tags: New York Times , NYT , Techmeme , TeleRead
November 4th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
>>>For those insistent on a printy look, as I’ll call it, the Times could keep the current Microsoft-based reader.
Printy?! A new Rothmanism.
Wouldn’t you want the NYT to also do a version you could plop into your Reader?
November 4th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Hey, Mike, I’m not sure if it’s an absolute original, but the Neologism Alert folks are welcome to do the usual Google drill. Hey, I hope people follow through and maybe even use it. Perhaps we can make the big time, OED, someday.
I’d love for the NY Times to be able to plopped into ANY kind of .epub reader. But it would also be great for the Times to do its own, too, and make it work well with books, magazines, you name it. That’s one of .epub’s big weaknesses right now—not enough clients, even though FBReader does the job well for .epub content from Feedbooks. I hope a full-strength reader with CSS capabilities will be on the way soon. Trying to recall if the OpenBerg browser plug-in recs CSS.
Thanks,
David
November 4th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
We’re working on RSS feeds right now at Feedbooks. epub support is almost ready but we’re working on a full cache system too (text cache done, image cache is next). If the NYT ever use full-content feeds, you’ll be able to read them in epub using Feedbooks.
Some people actually extract the content of these webpages to get full-content feeds instead of the usual partial feeds. Libprs500 does this and export it to LRF, but I don’t think that the extraction should be client-based. If a single person could turn those partial feeds into full-content feeds and repost them, it would enable anyone to read those feeds and transform them to whatever format suits them best. The BBC feeds are already available this way. These websites should provide full-content feeds with ads instead…