NYTimes innovation plans: Widgets, iPhone, APIs

Silicon Valley Insider talked to Marc Frons, chief technology officer of NYTimes digital, about the projects he’s working on and the development that they’ll be rolling out in the near future. Here’s a brief overview:

Things we have already covered:

• Those APIs: the plan is to eventually let developers outside of the Times play with its content and create new sites or services.
• Times People: expect more development so it’s not just a browser plug-in.

The shock of the new:

• Widgets: Customisable box of Times stories, video, slideshows and the rest on your blog or social network page? Yes please.
• Aggregation: It bought Blogrunner an eternity ago and uses it now just to pull content from partner sites into NYTimes – think PaidContent, CNET stuff on the Tech pages. But ‘bigger plans’ are afoot – Frons won’t say more though.
• Apps: Yes, NYTimes.com is working on apps for Apple’s forthcoming iPhone store.

NYTimes.com: NYTimes and IHT consider web merger

The New York Times and International Herald Tribune are discussing a merger of their websites to expand their international audience.

Plans include a co-branded international site for the publications.

WAN 2008: Microsoft’s e-reader technology open to all publishers

Microsoft has opened up the technology behind the New York Times’ e-reader to all publishers.

The Times Reader format, which creates a digitised version of the paper browsable on or offline, is now freely available to publishers.

The system has already been implemented by some publishers, Michael Cooper, director of advanced reading technologies at Microsoft, told delegates at the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

“What took Microsoft and the New York Times 18 months to develop has been adopted by other publishers in less than six weeks,” he said.

The technology, Cooper said, will allow publishers to deliver content to a range of devices in one go.

The growth of the mobile internet will not eliminate the need for the e-reader technology, he added, because of the format and offline accessibility to news it offers.

However, the next stage of the technology will be to develop it for use on mobile phones.