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Google Fast Flip, a new service in testing for Google News.
(Credit: Google)
Google is testing a service that will let newshounds read Web pages of magazines and newspapers like they were flipping through an old-fashioned paper copy.
Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, plans to demonstrate Google Fast Flip later on Monday at TechCrunch50. It's a Google Labs project that expands the presence of publishers on Google News, organizing and displaying authorized screen grabs of news stories--not snippets--within the Google News site.
For example, readers will be able to scroll through a series of screen grabs bearing the publisher's logo that display stories on the weekend's NFL games or Kanye West's opinions on best female video of the year, also allowing them to browse by categories organized around Google News sections, the most popular stories, or news sources. They'll be able to read some of the story within a section of the Fast Flip site but will need to click through to the publisher's Web site in order to read the full story.
Fast Flip is being tested in partnership with 36 publishers, including The New York Times, Newsweek, and Salon.com, which will get a portion of the revenue from ads that Google plans to sell alongside Fast Flip pages.
Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations at the Times, called Fast Flip "a modest R&D project" designed as an experiment to gauge click-through rates and traffic, rather than any sort of money-making venture. He declined to comment on how much revenue Google would be sharing with the paper.
Google News, of course, has been a lightning rod for criticism from the struggling newspaper industry. Some publishers believe that Google News siphons their content and discourages readers from clicking through to the source of the story by including the headline and a snippet of the story. Others grouse about the way bloggers who are merely writing and commenting on a piece of original reporting can sometimes get more exposure on Google News than the author or publisher of the original story.
Readers will be able to see a portion of the article, but will have to click through for the whole thing. Publishers will get a cut of the revenue from ads sold on the right hand rail.
(Credit: Google)Fast Flip gives publishers more of what they want: a chance to share in the ad revenue generated by Google News combined with the spotlight and traffic that comes along with inclusion in Google News. Mayer hinted that something like this was coming in May, when she testified before Congress that "the structure of the Web has caused the atomic unit of consumption for news to migrate from the full newspaper to the individual article."
But Fast Flip requires publishers to showcase more of their content than a simple Google News listing requires, which could allow readers to completely skip clicking through after getting the gist of the story from the first few paragraphs. On the other hand, a more attractive presentation of the story could attract more clicks than a single headline might.
Since it's a partner-only service for the moment, criticism of Fast Flip will probably be muted. Nisenholtz acknowledged that the Times is trying lots of things these days to gauge what works in Web publishing. "We're in the business of learning around here in part, and we felt that this was an interesting test."
This isn't Google's only attempt to work with an industry that has been so critical of the company in the past. Google is also said to be testing a micropayments service for other publishers that don't want to embrace the free-content movement.
It appears some people haven't figured this out yet, but the Internet is a dollar store, the kind you see tucked into the corners of shopping malls about to be demolished. In dollar stores, everything is a buck. So why not buy it? It's just a buck!
The Internet is not a Tiffany, the kind of store you see in the best locations in shopping malls that have not yet become dated monstrosities about to be demolished. In a Tiffany store you pay too much for a hunk of metal because the brand name behind the metal adds cache to the product.
I'm writing this because today we hear from Bloomberg News that The New York Times is considering charging $5 a month for access to stories on its Web site. Is the fee reasonable? For the quality of the Times' writing and reporting, you bet it is.
But it's still too much, and it's bad business. The success of the iTunes store, and the iPhone app store, shows how easy it is to get people to pay a small amount for a downloadable product. It's a lesson worth learning. And with the cost of distributing each incremental copy of a digital good being close to zero, there is no reason at all to overcharge for products.
There are contrary views. One analysis shows that $0.99 iPhone apps are no more popular than more expensive apps. But especially for companies trying to convert customers who have to date paid nothing for the service (the New York Times content is free), the logic of charging as little as possible, as opposed to as much as possible, makes more sense.
The old joke's punch line, "Yeah, but we make it up in volume," is no laughing matter on the Net. This is a model that is known to work. You want your price point to be so low that people don't think about it. $5 a month is $60 a year, real money for most people. $1? Far fewer people experience the payment of a dollar as an actual transaction. People will pay trinket prices for online goods without thinking about it. And especially when you're selling content that you want as many people as possible to see, wouldn't you rather collect a little money from a lot of people, than a fair price from just a few?
Facebook announced Tuesday that it has followed MySpace's lead and will ban Project Playlist from its service. According to the company, it has removed the Project Playlist app from Facebook and all embedded playlists have been removed from user profiles. Facebook said in a statement that it hopes Project Playlist can come to an amicable agreement with the labels so users can get back to using the app.
The New York Times announced Wednesday that it witnessed its online ad revenues drop for the first time in the site's history. According to the company, its online ad revenue slumped by 3.8 percent in November and total revenue from all its continuing advertising operations dropped by 20.9 percent.
Friendfinder Networks, a company that offers adult-oriented sites, is filing for an initial public offering with the SEC. According to documents released by the federal regulatory body, Friendfinder Networks wants to use the IPO to raise $460 million from the sale of the shares to pay off its enormous debt.
The New York Times' new reader uses AIR capabilities to flow text and show video.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)Correction, 11:25 a.m. PST: This story misspelled the last name of The New York Times vice president of research and development. He is Michael Zimbalist.
SAN FRANCISCO--During the keynote speech of the Adobe Max conference, New York Times Vice President of R&D Michael Zimbalist demonstrated a new news reader app from the company. Based on AIR 1.5, which is being released Monday, the news reader was shown displaying International Herald Tribune content, but it's pretty clear that the company will release a reader for The New York Times as well. Zimbalist said the the IHT reader will come out "this fall," but a NYT spokesperson later said it will arrive in the first half of 2009.
There is already a desktop reader for the Times, of course, but it's a fairly heavy app. The new AIR version will take advantage of some of the new features built in to the new AIR runtime, including a fast text-rendering engine that re-flows text as you resize the screen.
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch shows the New York Times app on the Linux-based Aigo handheld.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)The new app also uses the video capabilities of Flash 10, which Air 1.5 uses. The demo showed videos in ads, but it could also be used for editorial content.
Of course, there's also a nice crossword app built into it. It's not social, though. Maybe the next version?
After Zimbalist left the stage, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch demonstrated the app running on a "MID"-size Linux computer, the Aigo. Adobe's AIR 1.5 is being released for Linux and will have the same video and text-rendering capabilities of the Windows and OS X versions.
The New York Times announced that it has launched a movie reviews API that will make it easier for visitors to access the publication's library of 22,000 movie reviews dating back to 1924.
Realizing that it's sitting on a vast library of movie reviews and its current RSS feed only displays the latest 65 articles, the Times decided that it needed to give its readers access to its entire library of reviews to complement its current offering and make it easier for visitors to find all the film information they're looking for.
So far, the Times claims that the API will make the full text of the movie reviews available, ordered by DVD release date, along with extras like biographical information for the three top critics. Each film will be indexed by "title, reviewer's name, director's name, names of the top five actors, and plot keywords."
As much content as the API currently provides, the Times did say that it isn't able to give users direct access to trailers and video clips yet. It hopes to add that feature to the API sometime in the future.
In order to use the Movie Reviews API, users need to sign up for an API key. Usage is currently limited to 5,000 requests per day.
NYTimes.com said Friday it has launched a new platform that will bring more video to more sections of the site.
The videos will be presented in HD and made available to the home page, articles, blogs, and the site's video library in an effort to make video a central part of The New York Times Co.'s overarching strategy.
"Demand for high-quality video is on the rise across the Web from both our users and our advertisers," Nicholas Ascheim, vice president of product management at NYTimes.com, said in a statement. "To meet this need, we have upgraded our technology, increased our production values, and given video even more prominence across the site."
NYTimes.com's new video platform, which runs Brightcove 3, will display videos in 16x9 widescreen format and boast an individual playback page for each video to make it easier for visitors to find the videos they are looking for. More importantly, each video will now feature share tools, which will allow viewers to share the videos on sites like Digg, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
NYTimes.com already produces about 100 videos per month from well-known journalists like David Pogue. But with the announcement of its new platform, it looks like video will become an integral part of its strategy going forward as more original videos are produced each month.
The TimesPeople toolbar shows the latest activity in your social circle.
(Credit: NYTimes.com)The New York Times has started rolling out TimesPeople, a sharing-and-recommending tool that the publication first announced earlier this year. It's essentially an extension of the free user accounts that are already required to read the Times' Web site: You can now build up a friends list, recommend stories to people you know, and see what they've been recommending or commenting on.
In other words, it's a social news feed for Times readers. You can also sync it up with your Facebook account to push your feed--stories you've commented on or recommended--to your profile on the social network.
We first reported on the debut of TimesPeople in June, when it was still being tested as a Firefox plugin. Now it's been fully worked into the NYTimes.com site with no download required.
Last month, we reported that The New York Times would be expanding its online-media reach with TimesPeople, a sharing and bookmarking feature on the site.
But that's not all for the Gray Lady's digital makeover, Silicon Alley Insider reported Wednesday. Also on the way is a set of application program interfaces (APIs) to get Times data to third-party sites, a custom widget generator that bloggers can use to embed news on their sites, and an expansion of TimesPeople so that it's on the Web site rather than in the form of a Firefox plug-in.
A look at the NYT's forthcoming widget generator.
(Credit: Silicon Alley Insider)There's also reportedly more in store for Blogrunner, a Techmeme-like start-up that the Times acquired and has worked into its technology coverage to pull in headlines from around the Web. And the Times will be developing iPhone applications for the new app store that Apple will be unveiling with the new iPhone 3G.
What wasn't revealed was a timeline, for the most part. So these remain projects in the works, and we'll likely see gradual beta launches before they're readily available.
software engineers for a video in collaboration with Beet.tv.
Note: The spelling of Derek Gottfrid has been corrected.
(Credit: Beet.tv)
The New York Times has added a new feature to its Web site that takes a few cues from Facebook and Digg: TimesPeople, now in beta.
TimesPeople users can build up friends lists and can see a "news feed" of which stories their friends are recommending, sharing, and commenting on. Times online readers have been able to comment on stories, as well as rate reviewed restaurants and movies, for some time now, but recommending is new.
The TimesPeople drop-down menu, with a news feed and people search.
(Credit: NYTimes.com)TimesPeople is currently available only as a Firefox browser plug-in, but software engineers told CNET News.com that it would eventually be more widely available and without a download required. New features will be added too, but don't expect the venerable newspaper to try to compete with Mark Zuckerberg: Engineers stressed that the Times will always be an information source, not a social network. That's why the TimesPeople application is extremely light and minimal--profiles are limited to locations and user icons, and content from the social feature is limited to a "news feed" page and a drop-down menu. However, at some point, a "Most Recommended" tab may join the popular "Most E-mailed" story list that the Times' site displays.
The TimesPeople iPhone interface.
(Credit: NYTimes.com)Outside NYTimes.com, you can subscribe to a feed of an individual's activity using RSS, or browse your friends' updates with a specialized iPhone interface; TimesPeople members can also push their updates to their Facebook profiles by syncing the two. And if you'd rather just be an observer, you can subscribe to friends' updates on NYTimes.com while leaving your own feed updates turned off.
Many print publications have been working on social-news projects, primarily by partnering with existing sites like Digg. Conde Nast's Wired Digital went ahead and acquired Reddit. Critics might say that by building a social-news technology in-house, the Times is hurting itself by not tapping into the user base of an existing site.
But here's the catch: while NYTimes.com content is free, it requires a log-in to read more than a story or two at a time. The Times, consequently, has millions of user accounts already on file.
This story was researched and reported in collaboration with Andy Plesser of Beet.tv, who produced the video.
The New York Times is bringing its e-reader desktop application to the Mac this month. The newspaper publisher unveiled its latest efforts last night, with a slew of screenshots. The Times' First Look post notes that the application will be running on Microsoft's Silverlight technology, enabling rich-media effects and rendering. Users will be able to read, browse, and search the entire publication while offline.
The big difference between the PC application and the Mac version will be the ability to view pages in three different sizes, all of which have been crunched on the company's servers instead of on people's machines. Mac users will also be able to do a text search with an index of the last seven days' worth of news, while PC users are currently limited to just one day's worth.
PC users will still have the leg up on Mac users for a few features, including Pictures of the Day, which Rob Larson, vice president of digital production for the Times' Web site, says has been quite popular on the PC side.
The company will be offering the new Reader to Mac users free of charge over the "beta" test period. After that, it will assume a similar role to the PC version, which gives access only to people who are current physical subscribers, or who have subscribed to the paper's digital editions. The software is expected to ship in the next two weeks.
Mac users will soon be able to enjoy reading The New York Times while offline with the company's upcoming Reader product.
(Credit: The New York Times)
