newyorktimes
Latest
The New York Times VR app launches with portraits of refugee children
At a time when virtual reality is changing the way we experience entertainment, it was only a matter of time before news outlets turned to immersive storytelling. The New York Times was one of the first major news outlets to announce its VR efforts last month. Today they launched the NYT VR app with three poignant portraits -- a 9-year-old Sudanese boy, a 12-year-old Syrian girl and an 11-year-old boy from eastern Ukraine -- to highlight the plight of 30 million children who have been displaced by war. The Times is making a Google Cardboard kit available to its domestic subscribers along with their Sunday editions on November 8, but the stories can also be viewed without a headset on both iPhone and Android devices.
Netflix will produce original Bollywood and anime programs
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced the service will offer more original content in 2016, including Bollywood and anime programming. During his talk with New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook conference, he said that the company is always looking at new ways to introduce unique shows that other streaming services don't have. Next year Netflix is looking to spend around $5 billion on content alone and since it launched in Japan on September 2, there's never been a better time to broaden the scope of programming with an international focus. What type of Bollywood or anime programs will Netflix release? Hastings didn't mention specifically, only noting that it has taken risks before and they've paid off (like Narcos, for example). Get ready for longer bouts of aimless scrolling on nights you're feeling indecisive.
NY Times launches VR app with Google Cardboard giveaway
The New York Times is launching a VR app, and will give a million plus subscribers a Google Cardboard VR viewer to use it. It'll also debut a VR film for the app called The Displaced, which details the struggles of three children caught in the global refugee crisis. Executive Editor Dean Baquet said the NYT "created the first critical, serious piece of journalism using virtual reality, to shed light on one of the most dire humanitarian crises of our lifetime." The film is best viewed on Cardboard, but will also be available on YouTube and smartphones via a 2D version of the app.
New York Times offers newsstand customers 'Digital Day Passes'
The New York Times is launching a new "digital day pass" program today to help convince folks that still buy the paper at newsstands to instead get their news from its website. The day pass will grant access to the publication's website and apps for the day to anyone that buys a physical paper. Each paper will include a keyword that the customer will text to the number provided and receive a link that activates their digital access. Of course, if the customer doesn't yet have a NYTimes.com account, they'll need to create one. The day's access will be revoked at midnight every night.
The NSA can keep spying on phone call metadata through November
The National Security Agency can keep on keeping on with the bulk collection of phone call metadata for a bit longer, sadly. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia killed an injunction that would've ended the previously-ruled-unconstitutional homegrown spying, according to The New York Times. The law won't fully end until November 29th, when the so-called transition period for the agency to swap over to a new style of data collection is over. The latest method? Telcos will hang onto the data and the government snoops will need court orders if they want to get their hands on it. We still have a ways to go before PRISM's effects are fully overturned, it'd seem.[Image credit: Shutterstock]
Facebook 'Instant Articles' plug in content from NYT and Buzzfeed
Facebook wants to do for news content what it's done with native video, and the first bit of self-hosted editorial content ("Instant Articles") could go live tomorrow. It's starting with The New York Times and will include Buzzfeed, NBC News and National Geographic if unnamed sources speaking to New York Magazine are to be believed. Apparently NYT's business side is why a deal that surfaced in late March is only coming to fruition now, with CEO Mark Thompson's push for "the most favorable" terms causing delays.
Facebook wants to save you a click by hosting other sites' content
As if Facebook couldn't get any bigger, it's looking like The Social Network wants to start natively hosting content from news organizations. As The New York Times' sources tell it, Zuckerberg and Co. have been in talks with at least six media companies about publishing their content directly on the site -- no link-clicking required. The initial round of publications apparently includes The New York Times, Buzzfeed, National Geographic and our sister publication The Huffington Post. The reason? Websites take too long to load, and Facebook says that on mobile, the average eight-second page-load is too much. Of course, the outfit has a vested interest in mobile, hence it stepping in.
UK spies collected journalists' email as part of a test
Want to know why many people don't like it when governments call for an end to encrypted communication? Here's why. A new round of Edward Snowden leaks at The Guardian has revealed that the intelligence agents at Britain's GCHQ collected email from major news outlets (including the BBC, Le Monde, the New York Times and the Washington Post) in 2008 while testing a system that stripped out data irrelevant to searches. While it's not clear that the agency singled out the press during the test, there's no indication that it got rid of the messages, either.
Promo gives you subscriptions to five big productivity services for $60
Like the idea of using cloud-based services to keep your life organized, but don't relish the idea of paying a huge amount just to use the paid versions of those services? That won't be a problem for about... oh, the next month or so. Evernote, LastPass, the New York Times, Pocket and Wunderlist have teamed up to launch the Productivity Pack, a promotional bundle that gives you subscriptions to all of their premium offerings for $60 if you sign up before February 13th -- not bad when you'd normally pay $185. The NYT subscription only gives you eight weeks of unfettered reading, but you'll have a year's worth of advanced note-taking, password storage, downloadable web articles and task management. The price will go up once it's time to renew, of course, but it might be worth the investment simply to see what's worth keeping.
The New York Times wants you to help identify old newspaper ads
Unless you're clipping coupons, advertisements are the last thing you look for when you pick up the newspaper. They're also the part of the New York Times archives that the newspaper wants you to look at the most, but not just for the sake of revenue. Madison, a new project from the New York Times' research and development lab seeks to document the paper's long history of advertising by crowdsourcing its advertisement identification project. That is, asking the public to view archives of old papers and sort out if a specific section of a paper is an ad, who it is advertising for, and to help transcribe the text.
Hacker-turned-FBI informant may have orchestrated foreign cyberattacks
The hacker subplot in House of Cards' second season might have felt out of place, but from the sounds of a recent New York Times report, Frank Underwood's methods for putting captured hackers to work might not be too far-fetched. After being busted by the FBI, top LulzSec hacker Sabu may have conscripted at least one former accomplice to carry out a string of cyber-attacks against foreign banks and government websites, according to interviews and documents obtained by the Times. Sabu's seemingly indirect involvement suggests that he may have acted as a federal informant, helping to exploit the likes of the Heartbleed security flaw for state-sponsored cyber-terrorism. For the full report, be sure to head over to the source link. [Image credit: Idhren/Flickr]
The New York Times releases NYTNow, a curated news app for iPhone
Today marks the launch of NYTNow, an app with Flipboard-like features aimed at a mobile audience. The app is free, but only only allows viewing of 10 stories a month. To get more, you need to add a US$8.00 a month subscription that is available as an in-app purchase. Content is expected to come from the Times and other partners. with human editors deciding what news is included. The company believes editors can do a better job of delivering the news than computer-based algorithms, although the popularity of Flipboard seems to contradict that supposition. A spokesperson for the company says NYTNow is a "new subscription plan created for an audience seeking more content than is currently available for free but at a lower price than the full news report." The app also features two daily briefings summarizing the news of the day. NYTNow is iPhone-only, because the Times says most of its mobile customers are on iPhones. I think it has missed an opportunity by not having an iPad app, but perhaps one will become available down the road. I sampled the app this morning, and it is nicely laid out with a good mix of news. There are both videos and graphics to accompany the stories. The videos started playing quickly and were of good quality. The New York Times already offers a free iOS app with access to the New York Times website and an in-app subscription for iPhone digital content at $14.99, so the product offerings seem a bit confusing. The more expensive app has everything from the Times, and NYTNow is more limited in what's available on it. NYTNow will also have ads, which may not sit well with people paying for the content. If anyone can make a go of paid news apps, it's likely the New York Times. It has excellent coverage and columnists. On the other hand, there are so many good and personalized free news apps that I'm not sure if people will flock to NYTNow. I'm pretty hooked on Zite and Flipboard, which have recently joined forces. NYTNow requires iOS 7. As mentioned, the app is not universal, but that may change.
NYT Now curated news app coming to iPhone April 2nd for $8 per month
At a cocktail-fueled meet and greet at SXSW, we met with New York Times editors Jill Abramson and Clifford Levy to discuss the news organization's 2014 lineup of services, including a new enterprise dubbed NYT Now. Created as an iPhone (and iPod touch)-only application, NYT Now is the company's latest subscription-based product. On the surface, it appears to be simply a "lite" version of the paper's daily content, but The Times is reassigning nearly a dozen editors to Now full time to curate internal content as well as articles from third-party news orgs, such as Engadget. Now is not without its challenges, though. Full access will run you $8 per month, which, while a far cry from the $45 you'll fork over for a full digital subscription with Times Premier, is still a significant amount. You'll be able to download the app on April 2nd, with free access to headlines, summaries and 10 articles each month. The $8 fee (billed every four weeks) will enable full access to any article that appears in the NYT Now app.
New York Times' Today's Paper web app brings print-like design, offline reading to browsers
Today marks the death of the New York Times' "experimental" HTML5 app designed for the iPad. But, from its ashes comes Today's Paper, another touch-friendly app built on the latest web technologies. Like the print edition of the broadsheet, Today's Paper is delivered (electronically) on a regular daily schedule. What's more, its structured similarly to tree-pulp version, for those that are a little uncomfortable with the heavily segmented apps and digital offerings. Since it's web-based, users will get the same experience on both the desktop and on tablets. Though, interaction on the mobile front it geared more towards swiping and gestures than clicking and scrolling. All of the sections of the paper are faithfully recreated in the browser, and the last seven days worth of Times dispatches can be downloaded for offline reading. Obviously, you'll still have to remember to download them before you walk away from your WiFi. Oh, and you'll also need to be a paying subscriber -- either digital or home delivery are acceptable. If you fit (and pay) the bill, you can access the Today's Paper web app at app.nytimes.com/todayspaper.
NYT: NSA monitors, graphs some US Citizens' social activity with collected metadata
Just how does the NSA piece together all that metadata it collects? Thanks to "newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials," The New York Times today shed light on how the agency plots out the social activity and connections of those it's spying on. Up until 2010, the NSA only traced and analyzed the metadata of emails and phone calls from foreigners, so anything from US citizens in the chains created stopgaps. Snowden-provided documents note the policy shifted later in that year to allow for the inclusion of Americans' metadata in such analysis. An NSA representative explained to the NYT that, "all data queries must include a foreign intelligence justification, period." During "large-scale graph analysis," collected metadata is cross-referenced with commercial, public and "enrichment data" (some examples included GPS locations, social media accounts and banking info) to create a contact chain tied to any foreigner under review and scope out its activity. The highlighted ingestion tool in this instance goes by the name Mainway. The NYT article also highlights a secret report, dubbed "Better Person Centric Analysis," which details how data is sorted into 164 searchable "relationship types" and 94 "entity types" (email and IP addresses, along with phone numbers). Other documents highlight that during 2011 the NSA took in over 700 million phone records daily on its own, along with an "unnamed American service provider" that began funneling in an additional 1.1 billion cellphone records that August. In addition to that, Snowden's leak of the NSA's classified 2013 budget cites it as hoping to capture "20 billion 'record events' daily" that would be available for review by the agency's analysts in an hour's time. As you might expect, the number of US citizens that've had their info bunched up into all of this currently remains a secret -- national security, of course. Extended details are available at the source links.
Chinese state media squashes claims of less restricted internet in Shanghai zone (updated)
A few days ago, the South China Morning Post claimed that blocks put on websites like Twitter, Facebook and The New York Times were to be lifted in Shanghai's new free-trade zone. And the justification made sense, too: relax restrictions to make visitors happy, and potentially cash in on accelerated foreign investment as a result. Plausible, sure, but according to state-run news outlet the People's Daily, completely untrue. As it turns out, the Chinese powers that be allegedly have no intention of allowing web traffic in the free-trade zone to circumvent the Great Firewall, which means visiting Twitter addicts will still have to turn to Weibo for their social network / microblogging fix. [Image credit: Wikimedia Commons] Update: People.com.cn (not the People's Daily, as reported earlier) has since pulled its post. There's no explanation as to why.
China said to be unblocking sites like Facebook, Twitter and the NYT, but only in a small part of Shanghai
Given how large a mobile market China has become, and its role in gadget manufacturing globally, we sometimes forget the government of this increasingly tech-aware country still dictates what corners of the web its peoples can see. Today, the South China Morning Post reports the state has decided to unblock several foreign internet sites "considered politically sensitive," but only in the free-trade zone of Shanghai's Pudong New Area. According to "government sources," the move to open access to sites including Facebook, Twitter (both of which were cut off in 2009) and The New York Times (blocked last year) is so visitors can "live and work happily in the free-trade zone." The greater goal is to make the area more attractive to foreign companies, beyond the favorable regulatory and tax environment, of course. Furthermore, the Chinese are allegedly beckoning overseas firms to come in and "provide internet services" for the new, 30 square kilometer zone. The Great Firewall may remain firmly up for the rest of the country and its billion-odd population, but one step at a time and all that. [Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
UCSF study shows gaming makes you cognitively younger (video)
A slew of negatives plague video games -- Peter Pan Syndrome, hyper-violence, camping -- but their youthfulness could do just what Nintendo's Brain Age promised: improve elderly brain function. Over four years, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco had a group play a custom game (video of it in action is after the break) that tasks players to drive and identify road signs that appear while ignoring certain others, according to the New York Times. It's not quite Grand Theft Auto, but it proved how hard successfully multitasking becomes with age. However, after training with the game, the 60 to 80 year old test subjects stomped those a fraction of their age who had no prior exposure to it. What's more, this experience produced brain functionality benefits outside of the game. This isn't a fluke, either. For proof, the scientists used electroencephalography to monitor the older subjects and found that while playing, the theta wave activity -- associated with attention -- in their prefrontal cortexes looked like that of younger adults. These findings may help scientists understand what areas of the brain "could and should" be manipulated to improve cognitive functions like memory. The study appears in today's edition of Nature and backs up similar research from May that also used a concentration-heavy game, and reported like results. Now if you'll pardon us, we have to show our parents that all those hours of our childhood weren't wasted.
DNS hack takes The New York Times offline (update: Twitter images were affected too)
For the second time this month, The New York Times has gone offline. This time around, the Syrian Electronic Army is likely to blame, with a Domain Name System (DNS) hack crippling the news org's online operation. The NYT's web servers are still online, however, so the publication has begun tweeting out direct IP links to recent articles. Meanwhile, Twitter itself may be vulnerable. Hackers have managed to modify some of the registration data, including the contact email address, suggesting an attack on the social site may be imminent. Update: According to a tweet from the paper's official account, it's temporarily publishing updates at news.nytco.com. Update 2: Twitter has confirmed the twimg.com domain used for images and photos was among those affected. According to the post, the original domain record has been restored and no user information was affected.
With its website offline, The New York Times begins posting articles on Facebook
The news cycle doesn't stop for unscheduled downtime. With its website inaccessible due to "an internal issue," The New York Times began posting content to Facebook today, beginning with an article on Egypt. "Egypt Declares State of Emergency as Scores Are Killed in Crackdown" is perhaps the first NYT article to debut in full on a social media site before popping up on any of the news org's own online properties. The news giant is directing its nine million Twitter followers to Facebook for the afternoon's top stories, which now also include "Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Sentenced to 2.5 Years" and "Hopes of Arab Spring Dashed by Region's Turmoil." For "All the News That's Fit to Print," head over to Facebook. Update: As of 2PM, it appears that the Times is back online, though the most recent site update was nearly three hours before, at 11:07AM ET.
