IHT.com has developed a version of the site for iPhone users. The version is ‘iPhone optimised’ rather than being an iPhone app – e.g. an application built exclusively for the iPhone – co-creator Michael Cosentino is keen to point out in a blog post.
Last week the New York Times announced plans to develop an application for the Apple device.
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:
The shock of the new:
The US celebrity tabloid ‘news’ TV show and website TMZ has started using mobile phone technology to live stream video of celebrity goings-on.
And it’s all a great success Alan Citron, general manager of TMZ tells Beet TV.
And the real crowd pullers?
A courthouse appearance by Hulk Hogan’s son and a two hour stream of a car park where Britany was expected to arrive.
‘Hypnotic effect’ of the car park kept viewers interested says Citron.
Glam – this celeb business.
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.
The launch of the world’s first ‘newspaper’ telephone by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) was part of a plan to establish it as a recognised platform for news, DN’s head of mobile told an industry forum today.
DN launched the phone in partnership with Nokia and Nordic mobile service provider Telnor in December to give users instant access to the paper’s online content, Johan Brandt told the digital media roundtable at the World Newspaper Congress.
“We did this because we had three challenges [with mobile]. We had to get people to realise we had a pretty good mobile site. Many people just didn’t know that they could find news from the mobile internet, not enough people were aware of it as a channel,” he said.
“Secondly, one of the big barriers was that it’s difficult to browse the internet with a mobile, there are too many clicks… and third was ‘what does it cost to serve?’. Mobile providers charge users by megabyte. But what is a megabyte? Is it an article or a mobile TV episode. People don’t know what it’s going to cost them.”
In order to promote the newspaper portal, he added, it was important that the phone allowed users to assess DN’s mobile service in a single click and surf those web pages without incurring charges for downloading data.
The service, he added, is now attracting 50,000 unique users per month – up more than 40 per cent from last year – but there remained significant factors hampering the development of the mobile phone as an established platform to deliver news and on which newspapers can make significant revenue.
He identified a lack of standardised technology and measurement across the mobile market as the primary drawback to significant growth.
“There are no standards on the mobile market, it’s unnecessarily difficult and hard for the developers to create model services. I want to see growth from the walled garden model to a more open environment,” he said.
“Secondly, there is a lack of standards when it comes to advertising and measurement. There are different ad formats for different mobile sites. The market is fragmented and this makes advertisers frustrated and it also dwarves the mobile market’s potential in the short term.
“As a result of this there is a lack of strategic integration of marketing across mobile and other platforms for advertisers.
“There are too many pricing models for our advertisers to learn and in Sweden there are no valid or integrated tools for measurement, there are just no standards.”
In addition to this, he said, it was difficult for consumers to establish the cost of accessing data on phones and that it could prove to be a deterrent to use.
“In Sweden there are several hundred mobile phone subscriptions, with different prices for surfing. How can the user really know which subscription to get and what it costs to surf when it’s paid for by megabyte?
“I think there should be flat fees for time spent, that would make cost more predictable [for users].”
The Indian Premier League has signed a deal to stream live coverage of cricket matches on the internet and mobile devices.
The deal, which is reported to be worth £25 million over 10 years, will cover India, Pakistan and the Middle East and will be a subscription based service.
Crowd-sourced news site NowPublic has teamed up with mobile and social media firm ShoZu to set up a new way for users to contribute.
Images and photos can now be sent to NowPublic from mobile devices through the ShoZu application, according to a press release. The app is freely downloadable and already features on certain Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson handsets.
The application can also be used to upload images, videos and text to a range of social media sites, including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, with the option to publish to multiple websites at once.
The Nashua Telegraph is experimenting with live video from mobile phones on its website using streaming service Qik.
The Telegraph is using the tool to stream footage from N95 handsets to provide behind-the-scenes coverage of its online food show, The Doorbell Gourmet.
Qik’s popularity with publishers seems to be growing – last month the Sacramento Bee used the service to create a broadcast channel for reporters to cover protests over the Olympic torch relay.
Here’s Journalism.co.uk’s interview with Qik founder Bhaskar Roy.
UPDATE – The Telegraph has posted its first ever breaking news coverage using Qik.
Live footage of a police evacuating residents was captured using mobiles and streamed to the site using the service.
The Associated Press wants to grab itself a prime piece of technological real estate, it announced last week that it wants an AP button on the iPhone start-up page for quick access to news.
“There was a button for stocks, there was a button for weather, but there was no button for news,” says Jeffrey Litvack, director of global product development with the AP.
According to Forbes, the AP wants to be the organisation to run any ‘news’ button.
The AP launched its Mobile News Network last week.
Litvack says it can distribute stories from AP reporters and over 100 papers in a single service. He’s hoping its perfect for the iPhone and that Apple is listening.
Hello magazine is introducing two new mobile services to deliver celebrity news.
Subscribers to MMS alerts will receive daily updates from Monday to Friday of the latest news from the website including an image, while SMS subscribers will be sent the latest headline.
“A launch of a mobile service has been long overdue, and I feel that it will be an important addition to our digital canon. A natural extension of a web presence is a mobile offering,” said Verity J. Smart, editor of the magazine, in a press release.
Users will be charged £1 for MMS messages and 25p for SMS, though monthly bills for each service will not exceed £23 and £10 respectively.
To sign up for the service users should text HELLO1 to 62233 for MMS alerts and HELLO2 to 62233 for SMS, or visit the mobile registration page of the site.