The New York Times Company is considering the launch of a brand new online news reader that would let people experience the consumption of NYTimes.com content in an entirely new and fairly innovative way. The publisher has reached out to members of its Insight Lab to get some rudimentary feedback on the new reader prototype and to help settle the naming issue.
Insight Labs members can test out the new prototype on a live website, which means you can, too. All you need to do is head over to this web page and you’ll be able to play around with the ‘newview’ as well.
One of the names the NYT is considering for the new online reader is Article Skimmer, which is the same name that was given to a prototype product the publisher threw out there some time ago. But the new reader linked above boasts more features than the Article Skimmer that’s currently featured on First Look, which is basically a showcase for new NYTimes.com features and services.
This could be a sign that the company considers graduating the Article Skimmer experiment to a full-fledged mass product and giving it a new name for the occasion. Some other names it is suggesting in the survey: Grid View, Times View, Easy View, Broadsheet and Easy Reader.
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Here’s how the NYT describes the new reader prototype:
NYTimes.com is launching a new online feature that offers the experience of reading a newspaper spread out on a table, allowing readers to more easily browse through headlines and discover stories deep within a section. Each section of the Web site is organized in an easy-to-read grid displaying the headlines and short summaries of each story. Full articles are one click away and keyboard short cuts provide easy navigation from section to section. Readers can select from among eight different skins to display content in the way that best meets their interests and needs.
Some of the themes (or skins) are fascinating. One called ‘Flows’ displays headlines, a short summary and the author of the article in a single, continuous stream of text, while another (’Blackout’) reminds me a lot of the TweetDeck design (see screenshot on top).
Evidently, there’s some place reserved for advertising units inside news content.
The keyboard shortcuts – which are mostly meant for navigation – are fairly useful, although not all of them worked flawlessly in my limited testing in both Firefox and Chrome. What’s more interesting is the fact that you can customize the content in your reader much more easily than on the regular NYtimes.com website, giving you the opportunity to filter what you see based on section, blogs, and topic. Surprisingly, there’s no option to display only articles from a specific writer.
Your thoughts on the new reader prototype?
I like this!
If there’s one newspaper that can survive the New Media onslaught, it has to be NYT
It looks good, it looks like the NYT is really looking for a new solid business model for the future
Can anyone else get this to work just now? I’m trying to access it on a couple of machines in both IE and Firefox and I’m just stuck on a nice little Loading animation. Been waiting about 5 mins.
Anyone else? Maybe it’s a geo thing (I’m in the UK)?
They might need some programming help. Firefox 3 says
Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Access to restricted URI denied" code: "1012" nsresult: "0x805303f4 (NS_ERROR_DOM_BAD_URI)" location: "http://174.129.6.230/js/app/articleSkimmer/jquery.js Line: 3395"]
Maybe some server admin help, too. I’m occasionally seeing directory listings in IE7, so poor little Apache is failing to see/use index.php at times. Slashdotted by TC?
Why dont they just make this their web app?
Broadsheet is a good name for this. Looks very promising.
Not sure how NEW this is, I’ve been using the article skimmer for about nine ten months now, works great and fast – but yes, no download options like the true READER product.
I’m sorry to have to do this, but it’s PEEK, not PEAK.
Damn. Thanks.
I’m assuming once in production this would have to be a paid app since no room for ads
The “shell” is slick! Although, I don’t like that the story is just the NYT website.
The link you’ve provided is taking folks to an index page that Schematic obviously created for The NYT. Other than that, I luv, luv, luv what they’re doing at with the lab. Been using the skimmer for quite a while and dig it.
It’s very clunky. The Flex based version was way better. They should have stuck with that one.
This is a big move in the wrong direction. I already have a newsreader (and by the way, the RSS feeds from NYT are not very good). I use RSS to check on 30-40 publications daily (the number chnages as I add/drop items to the list). I don’t need/want to have to use a separate application for every news site I visit.
My advice to NYT (and everyone else) – make sure your RSS feeds are up to snuff.
P.S.
TechCrunch newsfeeds are pretty good.
Hasn’t this been available in the protoype section for well over a year now? Are they just making this more public now or is this truly a new product?
Something tells me this is the new interface to NYTimes.com for Apple’s Tablet…
I’d have to agree with you here on the conceptual direction… Absolutely.
I think i will like this!! I really think they should start charging people. After getting blocked out by WSJ i went and bought a subscription (and i dont regret it one bit). If a company thinks what they make or provide is of some value they should charge for it.
Umm. Is it just me or does this look like good way to deliver content on a device like a tablet?
Good move. Eager to see it roll out.
I agree that a good newsreader (and good feeds) is definitely the way to go. What works well for me now is a non-ad reader and links opened in my ad-stripping browser.
I like this prototype, though, but would like it a lot less with advertising. I think it a smart alternative to the module aesthetic embraced by some sites (NPR and BBC). Classy!