The New York Times gets local with its Bay Area blog
The New York Times unveiled the online side of its local news initiative today with a new blog called The Bay Area.
The Times actually began its Bay Area-aimed publishing effort last Friday, with extra pages in the print edition highlighting local news. If you’re like me, however, you don’t get much news from print papers anymore, so the blog (which is supposed to “complement,” not replicate, the print edition) is our first real peek at… Continue Reading
Michael Arrington’s plan to save The New York Times: The best writers should quit
It seems like everyone has a plan to save The New York Times, but TechCrunch founder and editor Michael Arrington proposed something a little different today: The best writers should just quit and start their own blog.
“If the top 50 journalists out of The New York Times walked out the door, raised $100 million from a hedge fund and started a site, it would be profitable.” Arrington said, speaking at the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford.
The… Continue Reading
Roundup: Venture capital’s alleged irrelevance, Zillow’s continued success, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Study says venture capitalists less relevant for web startups — Santa Clara University Prof. Robert Hendershott has concluded that lower startup costs mean many entrepreneurs should go it alone, rather than raise funding from VCs.
Why isn’t Zillow dead? – Webware’s Rafe Needleman says he thought the real estate startup was in trouble, but an interview with chief executive Rich Barton convinced him otherwise.
Google Product Search for Android adds barcode scanning — Now users can… Continue Reading
The new Kindle’s big innovation: A higher price
As expected, Amazon announced a new version of its Kindle eBook reader today, with a larger screen for reading newspapers and textbooks. It’s also not surprising that the larger device carries a bigger price tag, but that didn’t stop my eyes from widening a bit when I saw the Kindle DX will cost $489.
That’s right, the new Kindle will cost almost $500. That’s about $200 more than an Xbox 360 with a hard drive. Granted,… Continue Reading
New York Times’ new API frees congressional data
I’ve been quite impressed by The New York Times‘ efforts to expose its data for use in outside web applications. And despite The Gray Lady’s apparently dire financial troubles, it continues to release new application programming interfaces, or APIs. The most recent addition is the Congress API, which allows developers to access data about which congresspeople represent which districts, and how they voted on specific issues.
It sounds like there’s no new data here — it’s… Continue Reading
Roundup: AT&T cutting 12,000 jobs, record spending on Cyber Monday and more
AT&T cutting 12,000 jobs – That’s about four percent of the company’s workforce; it plans to pay about $600 million in severance over the next year.
Yahoo’s Search Assist gets image previews — The feature, which allows you to see the results for a suggested search before you actually click, is now available on the search results page and will be added to Yahoo.com eventually.
“Cyber Monday” e-commerce spending jumps 15 percent — With its heavy online discounts, the… Continue Reading
Print sees rebirth (for a day): Obama boosts newspaper sales
Wow, can President-Elect Barack Obama save the struggling newspaper industry, too?
Okay, probably not, but it looks like Obama’s election has caused a surge in newspaper sales, at least in liberal metropolises areas like New York and San Francisco. The New York Times, for example, tells AllThingsDigital’s Peter Kafka that it’s rushing 50,000 more copies of today’s edition to press — and The Times (which syndicates VentureBeat articles on its website) already increased today’s print run… Continue Reading
New York Times sets campaign finance data free
The New York Times continues to redefine the role of a big newspaper with today’s release of its first application programming interface (API). Using the Campaign Finance API, developers will be able to incorporate data about who donated to which presidential candidate — the same data used to build The Times’ campaign finance map (pictured below)– into their own applications. Coming up next will be an API to access The Times’ movie reviews.
Releasing APIs is yet… Continue Reading
Roundup: Amazon Web services go down, MySpace to join OpenID and more
Here’s the latest action:
Amazon Web services go down over the weekend — The problems crippled messaging service Twitter and many other sites.
MySpace to join OpenID? — TechCrunch’s sources say the social networking site will join the OpenID initiative, which allows one login to work across multiple sites, later this week. If so, it would be the second-largest OpenID implementation ever, second only to Yahoo.
The New York Times and LinkedIn forge a content partnership — Users of the business-oriented… Continue Reading
Roundup: Broadcom backdating, games at work, and more
Former Broadcom executive Henry Samueli to plead guilty in backdating case — The Broadcom flameout saga continues, with former chief technology officer Samueli admitting that he previously lied to SEC investigators about whether or not he had illegally back-dated stock options. Among Broadcom’s two founding Henrys, Samueli was the good cop. That’s why it was surprising that Samueli pleaded guilty to avoid jail time. But the other Henry, former CEO Henry Nicholas, is up for a… Continue Reading