Newsdesigner.com | All the News That Fits on Your Handheld Digital Device*

All the News That Fits on Your Handheld Digital Device*

5:10 PM, April 28, 2006

Bill Gates and New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. showed off new software for reading newspapers digitally at the ASNE meeting in Seattle on Friday.

Tom Bodkin, assistant managing editor and design director at the New York Times (above), showed off a prototype, demonstrating how it reflows type and images to fit whatever screen they're on - whether a portable device or a desktop. The stories were in newspaper-like columns, on some pages with interactive ads in the corner of the screen.

"It melds the high impact of print with the interactivity of the Web," Bodkin said.

Oh, it'll run on Windows Vista, so look for it around the end of the decade, about three years after Apple rolls one out.

*Update: Here's the NYTCo. press release. It says Times Reader should be available for download in "coming months." October 2009 is a "coming month," right?

*Update2: Jeff Jarvis is unimpressed:

Why not design the next frontier for the sharing of news that takes advantage of all the new opportunities technology permits — linking, conversation, multimedia, search, selectivity, depth, currency? Oh, yeah, it was already invented. It’s the web. The only reasons to do this are to feed editorial ego, to think you’re maintaining editorial control, to try to dupe advertisers into thinking this the same as putting an ad in print, and to grasp desperately onto a past that is disappearing.

Update3: More brickbats from Scott Karp, Jemima Kiss, Dan Gillmor and Peter Merholz, who says:

... [T]he design director comments "You can page through the entire paper in a natural and intuitive way." Which is essentially his way of saying, "I, the designer, can control your experience with our content." The readers will fight such attempts at control. They want to read news their way.

"Natural and intuitive" is also code for, "how we did it in the prior technological stage," and if such thinking were valid, you'd be steering your car with reins, and your cell phone wouldn't have storage for phone numbers, because it's more "natural and intuitive" to punch in the number from memory. Hell, your cell phone would probably have a rotary dial.

What Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Gates don't seem to understand, or, at least, are not acknowledging, is that it's not about "newspapers" on the Internet. It's about news. They're stuck in this mindset that readers want to casually flip through an entire newspaper. In a world mediated by Google and the blogosphere, that is becoming less and less the point.

On the other side, commenter "Kevin" at BuzzMachine, who seems to have knowledge of the product says:

The whole point of this reader and this application is not to look back -but forward. The application is about all harnessing all of the benefits of the Web today (URL deployment, connectivity, interactivity, dynamic content, etc) while taking content presentation and readability to the next level (sophisticated layouts, pagination, readable column, hyphenation, clear type, optimal paragraph, rich annotations, embedded fonts, etc etc). And, in one implementation, the reader can be installed on the system to provide offline capability. The content isn't static - just smarter about caching. When connected, new content flows in.

This is good for readers, publishers and advertisers. Readers get a great reading experience with rich content, mobile and offline. Publishers can actually bring their design expertise to the Web medium and, unlike the fixed document displays of today (think Zinio or PDF), this new reader will adapt to whatever display it's running on. Advertisers get much richer and better integrated ad placement opportunties (the sophisticated layout makes this possible).

Wait for the beta and judge for yourselves.

Comments

Heads up: After you hit "post" things may be slow and you may get an error. Most likely, your comment did post. Apologies. I'm looking for a fix.

I read the press release on the Times website and it will be available to the public in a few weeks as a beta release and will be fully realeased in September of this year.

Microsoft is also working on a service pack that will let you run the application on your Mac. So no need to be bitter.

Posted by: Jeff Simmons at April 29, 2006 9:39 AM

I'd rather they combine this with eInk if they're going to do it. No need for competing technologies.

Posted by: Ernie Smith at April 29, 2006 11:00 AM

@Ernie: I dunno. Let the competition flow, I say. Why lock into a standard so early? Remember, Beta was first!

@Jeff: Is joke!

Posted by: Mark at April 29, 2006 11:36 AM

I was at the luncheon where this was presented. It's nice but ... it's really nothing more than an improved browser targeted at newspaper readers who are uncomfortable with the web. And at newspaper publishers who don't get the multimedia quality of the web. Nothing makes them feel better than saying "it will look and read like the print product." Never mind that young readers don't care or need it to look "just like a newspaper."

Jeff Jarvis is right: We already have this. It's called the web.

What I'd like to see is something that lets you customize your news, drawing from many sources, including print, podcasts, video, blogs, whatever. THAT would be a cool product.

This new software does have some good points, including slightly better legibility on screen (and you can use any font, not just web safe fonts). And Vista's new search capability integrates with the Times Reader.

I wonder how Apple will counter this ... and how much better their product will be.

Posted by: Prospero at April 29, 2006 6:59 PM

It is interesting that the guy they had showing it off is from the print side and not NYT Digital.

Posted by: Mark at April 29, 2006 7:07 PM

Interesting but still vaporware.
Have you heard about Press Disaplys 'SMART NEWSPAPER?'

A technology they have that makes an interactive digital edition from your existing PDFS. And it has many other advantages and, of course, is available today.

In KL the news came that The Scotsman is the first to go with it. They were also showing it quielty (a.k.a. BETA) in Chicago at INMA in early April. Very exciting - can instantly translate your text into 12 languages, create podcasts on the fly - serve to mobile and best of all - publishers can get 'eyetrack' style reports of every day's paper that shows what viewers read and how long they spent with each item.

The fact that reader/viewer feedback reports can be instant, non-disruptive and generated at no cost make many current types of data gathering, focus grouping and generic 'trac' results much less specific. That you can watch and learn how your customers use your newspaper YOUR newspaper is dynamite stuff.

Go to pressdisplay.com and check it out. I have been showing screengrabs of this stuff to editors and publishers and they are very keen on it.

Posted by: Robb Montgomery at April 30, 2006 3:16 AM

I don't know. I think this thing called the internets might catch on.
Do I really need to shell out $1,000 or whatever for a portable tablet?

Maybe we should try making the paper product more desirable. But that's just me.

Posted by: Rich at April 30, 2006 10:03 PM

I can't Wait for the 62" HD plasma versions to come out!

Posted by: Stuart at May 1, 2006 7:13 AM

I was wrong. I love it. I'm a jerk.

Posted by: Jeff Jartvis at May 1, 2006 8:48 AM

The future of newspaper belongs to some kind of device of this kind there's no doubt about it.
Apple has been working on its own tablet for quite a long time so once this concept starts walking on its own, I would think nobody will have to suffer the latest incarnation of Windows, even if it's a cheap copy of OSX like Vista.

Posted by: Alberto Cuadra at May 1, 2006 9:53 AM

Some guidelines:

If you're gonna impersonate someone (like Jeff Jarvis) in order to cast aspersions on them:

a) Spell their name right

b) Don't post from a New York Times IP address.

c) If you can't manage a or b, at least be funny.

Or better yet, have the stones to step up and sign your own name.

Posted by: Mark at May 1, 2006 11:26 AM

I believe that newspapers have been under-utilizing their websites since they came along. I'm going to reserve judgement on this product. I really believe that the future of newspapers is in print/digital partnerships and that newspapers could do far more to lure online readers to their print product and vice versa.

The worry about this product is that it will allow publishers to apply stale thinking to their digital products.

Posted by: Andrew Schneider at May 4, 2006 9:39 AM

Most of the talk about this product has been about the technology, and rightfully so, but the first thing that strikes me--and I must profess some ignorance of its practical application--is its size. I live in the city, I carry a messenger bag, I ride the subway, and to me, it's just one more large "thing" to carry around in my already too heavy bag. To me, that's a quality that may doom it.

Posted by: Stuart at May 4, 2006 10:36 AM

Hello! I am good boy bingo

Posted by: lsef at May 18, 2006 10:59 PM