Interesting stuff. I didn't know NYT was trying out all that stuff.
Thanks Robert!
ps. I thought they called the NYT the "gray lady", not the "old lady" (?)
SearchEngines
· 1 year ago
Instead of PDFs - why cant they make it HTML
PDFs take too long to load and the text quality is blurry....
Does anyone really like PDFs - they are a pain in the ass
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
SearchEngines: because PDFs let you do features than HTML doesn't let you do. HTML can't render the pages as they originally were.
Ben: thanks for fact checking that. Yeah, you were right. I don't know why I was thinking old instead of gray. My mind is going...
Steve
· 1 year ago
Any pictures of Jayson Blair along that wall of fame?
The New York Times? Really?. What's next? A trip to Florida to visit the National Inquirer?
Jahangir
· 1 year ago
Scoble, do you have any technical details on how they used the Amazon services for their Time Machine?? Or is that "closed" source ?
raincoaster
· 1 year ago
I'm skeptical of their intent to implement this stuff. After all, aren't their blogs both UNPAID (to the writers) and WP.com technology rather than proprietary?
Dario Salvelli
· 1 year ago
Time Machine is a great (free?) feature but is in private beta? There is any link?
Crider
· 1 year ago
Love to see a mainstream media org making these kinds of moves.
Christopher Coulter
· 1 year ago
Translation: Blah blah blah, I am so cool, I got an insider look at an famous dead tree paper, mind you, I don't actually read newspapers, everything is ONLINE, I mean, RSS, Blogs, Twitter, like, who has time for newspapers? But well, they are doing COOL stuff, I got to see it all, you didn't, you aren't that important, you know. But thank your lucky stars that I am here to bring it all to you. Blah blah blah. God loves me more, but I give back to the little people, check out all this advertorial self-serving stuff, from my shaky out-of-focus cell cam. I almost got a journalism degree, you know. And the NYT geeks blog and pay attention to me, they get it. I mean, what's the point of a universe without me at the center? Blah blah blah.
See, our dead-tree Gray Lady can still show her stuff, eh?! I read that leftwing blog at nytimes.com every night for free at 12:01 am when it refreshes, it has great stuff these days, including the podcasts and blogs.
And the very BEST thing about it is that you can now write in the comments and nearly instantly publish if you are registered, instead of writing a 250-word Letter to the Editor and waiting for days for them to get back to you if they will use it. They actually still have the Letters page though and it is still important. Even though you can see the Times online, I still buy it some days just because it's nice to hold something flexible besides a mouse in your hand or lie on the couch with.
Every time I go by or into that Times building, I wonder if they are actually done building it -- it seems unfinished and weird. The old building was more classic and had all kinds of old architectural features. I remember back in the 1970s, you could still hear the typewriter carriage bells dinging and cries of "copy". Then it got very, very silent later in the late 90s with rows of computer terminals. There were some columnists that still wrote out stories in long- hand on yellow legal pads and called them in over the phone in the 2000s.
Benny
· 1 year ago
I would definitely recommend reading the blog they have. They just published a post going into a bit of detail (maybe not enough for me :) about how they created the data for the Times Machine. Very cool use of Amazon EC2 and Hadoop etc.
Brian
· 1 year ago
I'm confused. I thought you were one of the crowd that was convinced newspapers are dead? Why spend the time at the NYT, then? Just for the name dropping aspect.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Brian: did you watch the videos? Did you see a newspaper being done anywhere? I didn't. Everything was on screen, on top of Google Maps, etc.
Newspapers are dead. The New York Times isn't a newspaper anymore in my mind.
Oh, you should have seen their video studio.
Kyle
· 1 year ago
A group of us met with some BD people from The New York Times back in February 2005 for a Kellogg School of Management Media Trek. NYT didn't understand the changes taking place around them then and it seems they're just beginning to turn the boat around (maybe). Not saying this will allow them to survive long term (80% of their revenue today is print so they have capital) but they need to start seeing this at a higher 40K level.......just because they use some of the latest Web tools doesn't keep them ahead of the new media curve. I'm a Northwestern Medill/marketing grad so I'm not looking at this with a $$ mindset rather something that allows them to capture an audience emotionally. What you do with Qik and what fastcompany.tv is doing would bring them to that place a lot faster. Everybody wants to be part of New York, no matter where you live. NYT just doesn't get that aspect with some of what they're doing. (if this makes sense)
I will watch the times site, and see how thry do with this
John
· 1 year ago
@Jahangir , some details of how the EC2 implementation was done were posted last November in open.nytimes.com. Very open about it.
Brian
· 1 year ago
Scoble said: "Brian: did you watch the videos?"
To be honest, no I didn't. I frankly find them unwatchable based on your interviewing style. Nevertheless, I do find it ironic you pimping the NYT given your position on "old media".
Phar
· 1 year ago
Instead of PDFs - why cant they make it HTML PDFs take too long to load and the text quality is blurry…. Does anyone really like PDFs - they are a pain in the ass
Jason Preston
· 1 year ago
The word newspaper is fast becoming an anachronism. What makes me sad is how few papers are really embracing the future of news, which I think means that all papers need to start doing two things immediately:
1. Create a good digital equivalent to "Subscription" in the online space, because loyal subscribers are FAR more valuable than the random Googler.
2. Make your content easily and readily available in any format you possibly can. Be on the Kindle. Be on Google Earth. Be on the blackberry. Be in special reader format on PCs and Macs and Tablets.
I see the NYT consistently trying to do these things when most companies are not, and that is why they are sitting on top of the world in online news.
Bruno Mitchell
· 1 year ago
Great, more ways for the NY Times to get out their disgustingly biased editorial point of view.
REBECA REYES
· 1 year ago
Can you tell me how can I schedule a visit to the NYT facilities? We are planning a visit with students of communication. We live in Mexico. I also accept suggests. Regards!!
york computer repair in pa
· 1 year ago
The pdf option is okayh, it just takes forever for adobe to load. I know it has more features but it's a pain to wait each time. The prototype newstand looks pretty cool!
portal development
· 3 months ago
I wish I had such a tool which could print out custom versions of newspapers. I am tired of keeping that huge sack in my garage. I hate to carry those huge folded papers daily to my office, being a journalist. Seems you had a great tour with all those innovative information you have come to know.
portal development
· 3 months ago
I wish I had such a tool which could print out custom versions of newspapers. I am tired of keeping that huge sack in my garage. I hate to carry those huge folded papers daily to my office, being a journalist. Seems you had a great tour with all those innovative information you have come to know.
Leeds Computer Repair
· 2 months ago
why cant they make it pdf instead of html? keep us informed
All Comments
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/nq/2008/nq0805...
:-)
Thanks Robert!
ps. I thought they called the NYT the "gray lady", not the "old lady" (?)
PDFs take too long to load and the text quality is blurry....
Does anyone really like PDFs - they are a pain in the ass
Ben: thanks for fact checking that. Yeah, you were right. I don't know why I was thinking old instead of gray. My mind is going...
The New York Times? Really?. What's next? A trip to Florida to visit the National Inquirer?
And the very BEST thing about it is that you can now write in the comments and nearly instantly publish if you are registered, instead of writing a 250-word Letter to the Editor and waiting for days for them to get back to you if they will use it. They actually still have the Letters page though and it is still important. Even though you can see the Times online, I still buy it some days just because it's nice to hold something flexible besides a mouse in your hand or lie on the couch with.
Every time I go by or into that Times building, I wonder if they are actually done building it -- it seems unfinished and weird. The old building was more classic and had all kinds of old architectural features. I remember back in the 1970s, you could still hear the typewriter carriage bells dinging and cries of "copy". Then it got very, very silent later in the late 90s with rows of computer terminals. There were some columnists that still wrote out stories in long- hand on yellow legal pads and called them in over the phone in the 2000s.
Newspapers are dead. The New York Times isn't a newspaper anymore in my mind.
Oh, you should have seen their video studio.
To be honest, no I didn't. I frankly find them unwatchable based on your interviewing style. Nevertheless, I do find it ironic you pimping the NYT given your position on "old media".
PDFs take too long to load and the text quality is blurry….
Does anyone really like PDFs - they are a pain in the ass
1. Create a good digital equivalent to "Subscription" in the online space, because loyal subscribers are FAR more valuable than the random Googler.
2. Make your content easily and readily available in any format you possibly can. Be on the Kindle. Be on Google Earth. Be on the blackberry. Be in special reader format on PCs and Macs and Tablets.
I see the NYT consistently trying to do these things when most companies are not, and that is why they are sitting on top of the world in online news.
Regards!!