RSS has finally caught on to the point where even my non-geek friends have downloaded readers and subscribed to a few feeds. The thing is, you can't really hand out RSS feeds at a rally, post them on a bulletin board, or leave them on a table where someone will pick them up and read them. That's why it's nice that fivefilters.org has provided a free way to turn your favorite feeds into printable PDF newspapers.

I'm as anti-paper as the next guy - heck, I haven't owned a printer in years - but I know my mom's not going to read my blog if I don't hand it to her in paper form. I could do all the formatting myself, but Five Filters takes care of it automatically. The only major limitation is that it can only draw from one feed URL per PDF, but you can work around that by combining feeds using Yahoo! Pipes or a similar tool. It would be nice to pick and choose individual items from a feed reader to go into each newspaper, but this tool gets the basic job done, and the price is certainly right.

At a time when a lot of newspapers are shutting down or finding themselves forced to come up with a smarter online strategy, the New York Times is evolving its web content with improvements like the Article Skimmer and an Article Search API. The API can be used to build interesting applications on top of the Times' huge database of articles and information. Taylor Barstow's NYT Explorer is one early example of an app built on Article Search.

When you search for a topic on NYT Explorer, it quickly delivers a list of the relevant articles, sorted by date. For example, a search for software turned up about 40,000 results. That's a lot of articles, but not to worry: NYT Explorer's sidebar has a bunch of quick ways to refine your results and get what you want. You can check a person, a specific column in the paper, a subject, or a location to narrow your results down. All of these categories are sorted by the number of times each item appears in your results. It's an efficient, unfussy way to browse through a mountain of news.

Although I don't read Japanese, I know how to use Google Translator well enough to tell you about this awesome photo effect at Wanokoto Labs. There are plenty of tutorials out there about how to create an "old photo" effect in Photoshop, but this site does it for you in one step.

The effect basically seems to desaturate the image, add some grain, and smudge it up. This results in something like an old newspaper photo. In case you have trouble with the Japanese -- and you probably won't, the layout is pretty intuitive -- the upload feature is the blue tab on the left, and the URL feature is on the right. To activate, click the button below the address of your photo.

UPDATE: Hey, look at that. Once again, the readers are way sharper than I am. There's an English button in the corner. I'm not sure how I missed that, but thanks to John and Chris for pointing it out.

Once upon a time a group of Belgian newspaper publishers decided that they didn't like how Google was indexing their news stories and publishing headlines and short snippets on Google News and Google.be. While many newspaper publishers realized that Google was actually directing traffic to their web sites, Copiepresse, the organization representing the group of Belgian publishers took Google to court and demanded the search engine remove those newspapers from its index.

Google lost the court case and complied. But apparently not receiving search engine traffic isn't good enough for the newspaper publishers. No, they want cash. Up to €49 million or $77 million in cash, to be specific.

Now, in theory, we get it. Google was posting information online without first getting permission from the publishers. We'd argue that this was probably fair use since Google was only posting snippets including headlines and a few sentences. But the courts ruled otherwise, so whatever. The thing is, search engines are a huge driver of traffic. Asking the world's largest search engine to remove your pages is like asking to lose readers and advertising revenue. Even if the courts determine that Google does owe the newspaper publishers fines for infringing on their copyrights a few years ago, those newspapers are losing money today by keeping themselves out of Google's search index. And over time, that's could cost the companies a lot more than $77 million.

[via Techdirt]

Twitter may have started off as a micro-blogging tool that asked users "what are you doing" right now? But the service has grown into a complex communications platform. Some people use Twitter to keep in touch with a few friends, while others use it take part in wider discussions taking place throughout the blogosphere. Still others use it as a sort of micro-broadcast medium, sending out updates, but rarely responding to messages posted by others. One thing is clear though: People post a lot of links to interesting articles on Twitter.

TweetWire attempts to take some of the most interesting links and organize them in a newspaper style web page. Tweets are broken up into a handful of categories, including elections, technology, sports, and celebrities. And the links are collected using a combination of the Twitter search engine TweetScan and the Yahoo! Pipes RSS remixing utility.

The results are... mixed. On the one hand, we love the idea of finding some of the best links from Twitter laid out on a simple web page. This way you don't have to sift through page after page of messages from your contacts to find out what people are talking about. But TweetWire isn't going to replace your daily newspaper anytime soon. On the one hand, all the links were at least interesting enough for someone to post them online. On the other hand, a lot of the day's top stories might never make it to TweetWire simply because nobody bothered to tweet about them.

If you're only interested in tech news, you might want to check out TwitLinks, which compiles tweets from a handful of influential technology bloggers.

[via Killer Startups]

The New York Times has launched a nifty browser for reading old newspapers. Like really old. The company has scanned copies of every issue from 1851 through the end of 1922 and put the results online as a series of PDF files. That means you can read stories about the Civil War, World War I, and the sinking of the titanic just as they originally appeared a hundred years ago. Except, you know, on a computer screen and not newsprint.

Boing Boing reports there's also a publicly available API, which means you can create your own browser or other application that will pull together old newspaper issues.

The New York Times has launched a redesigned technology news page. The old school paper has partnered with some new school content partners, adding stories from third party sources like IDG and PaidContent. But probably the most interesting feature is that little column we highlighted in red. It's called "Technology Headlines From Around the Web," and it's being labeled a Techmeme killer. (Remember when people used to talk about Technorati killers? Ahh, those were the days).

That new columns is powered by BlogRunner, a news aggregator that the Times snatched up last year. The service does a pretty decent job of figuring out what stories people are talking about, posting those headlines and a list of blogs and websites linking to those stories. The New York Times/BlogRunner are hardly the only game in town when it comes to news/blog aggregation.

But here's why the paper might have a leg up on Technorati, Techmeme, or any other site that starts with the word "tech." A huge number of people already read the New York Times every day. You can't really say the same about Techmeme. It's a great place to find interesting stories, but as far as we can tell, it's primary audience is bloggers looking for good story ideas.

On the other hand, if you take a look at the screenshot above, you'll see that there's at least one major difference between the stories you find using BlogRunner and Techmeme. BlogRunner includes news from a lot of professional news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Time Magazine. In fact, there seem to be more old media types getting links than new media websites and blogs.

[via TechCrunch]

Thought about getting into Google's Print Ad program? They have just made it easier to design effective advertisements through a new piece of software.

Google's new piece of ad software will help Google Print Ad advertisers design their own ads for display in newspapers. The process is pretty straightforward, but you must win the ad auction to begin. Advertisers start out by choosing a newspaper from participating publications, then bid on the space. From there, if the publisher approves, you can start on the design process. Images can be uploaded in any one of six sizes, from 1 col. x 1 in. to 2 col. x 7 in specially built for newspapers. Advertisers then enter the ad text and contact details into pre-designed templates. Then Google's tool will get to work automatically generating a few designs to choose from.

The big question is, will the ad design recommendations that Google spits out be effective enough? We have to assume Google has put some thought and industry insight into the most effective designs for print before releasing the tool. However, we will have to wait for some stats to be sure.

Check out some sample Google Print Ads developed with the application.

[via informationweek]

As of midnight tonight the New York Times pay to view Select Service is no longer. The Times began the subscription service exactly 2-years ago and charged users $49.95 a year or $7.95 a month for the ability to access specific content online. Overall they managed to get 227,000 paid subscribers which made for a profit of close to $10 million a year.

In their announcement the Times said more users were now coming to the site via search engines and links on other sites than they were at the service's launch. These users couldn't get to the content (since they were not subscribers) but were unlikely to pay for it just to check out one piece on content. By allowing everyone access, the New York Times stands to dramatically increase their page views and make more money in advertising revenue than they were off of subscription fees. For those subscribers who have already shelled out some cash for Time Select the NYT is planning to reimburse them on a prorated basis.

What do you think about the Times decision to drop their subscriber service? Could this be the beginning of the end for subscriber based web content?

[via TechCrunch]

Over the last few decades, traditional print media like newspapers and magazines have witnessed a decline in circulation numbers. That is, fewer people have been reading printed publications, instead opting for other news delivery options like radio, cable stations and the web. There are many theories as to why this is the case. Some people say slanted, politically-lopsided news coverage is turning off readers. This could be part of it.

But the real issue behind print circulation shrinkage lies with the news consumer. The way people prefer to consume information has changed drastically, so much that, at least in the States, newspaper publishers have actually seen 15-year shift in the age demographic patronizing their product. Why?

There are two harbingers of doom that newspapers are only now waking up to. The first is hyperlocalism: the idea that news reporters and editors can best serve their community by reporting what happens within their community. A community doesn't have to be geographically defined either: news consumers are grouped by geography, sure, but also by common interests, say sports, or even a single sports team. Some independent blogs that cover local high school football are doing better in terms of reach than the printed weekly's box score page.

Perhaps this is why web sites that cover things in a hyper-local way are building viable, profitable businesses. Perhaps this is also why traditional news shops, which publish a lot of national, "generic-interest" material (ie. recycled Associated Press stories) are struggling to find subscribers.

Even Download Squad operates in a hyperlocal manner. We have a community to serve that shares a common interest in nifty technology solutions, mostly software of course, and wants to keep abreast of the latest in this very well-defined space. Sister site Engadget operates in the same vain. The result of this hyperlocalism? A thriving, viable publishing business that serves its community. This is truly a concept where the purpose (serving a local community) and the means to achieve that purpose (serving a local community) are actually the same!

Looking for an easy way to publish a newspaper, webzine or company newsletter online, take a look at PublicSquare.

PublicSquare is an easy online solution that takes the hassles out of coding and setting up complex publishing solutions. The system has the ability to create such online solutions as webzines, community newspapers, communities, trade magazines, school papers and company magazines with an easy to use toolset.

There are no installs required to get things up and running. Simply sign up and start rocking. No need to ever upgrade, add patches or worry about anything, PublicSquare takes care of all the geek stuff while you get your publishing on.

PublicSquare is free to use, and there are a few different options for upgrades, including a pro and plus account that allows you to have your own domain and more online storage space. For a few samples of what PublicSquare can do check out Boxes and Arrows and Found Read.

Google has made it in the online advertising market, so what about offline? Google has tested the waters with newspaper ads and magazine ads, and now they are ready to go full force by allowing bidding on over 50 major newspaper spots across the US. Google Print Ads is scheduled to officially launch this week, allowing advertisers to place bids in the newspapers. The lists of the newspapers that have teamed up with Google Print Ads include the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune. Bids for this iteration of the project will begin this week and run through January 2007. The big news, however, is that Google does not expect to make a profit? They why are they entering this arena? It's all about testing new revenue streams, and advertising ideas.

If you've been feeling like you really should check out "this RSS thing", but haven't had the time or inclination to do so, maybe SimplyHeadlines will be the thing that turns you around. SimplyHeadlines sends you a once-a-day newspaper with headlines from the sources you want to read, taking their RSS feeds and building a very convincing newspaper document from them.

SimplyHeadlines also has a second mode, which is useful for mobile readers like Blackberries - this is a text-only version with no formatting at all.

Like most RSS services, they offer a few selected default feeds, or you can enter any RSS feed you like. For beginner RSS users, this could be a very useful service. For people with more than a hundred feeds to follow, not so much.

Here's a fun little web widget: With the Newspaper Snippet Generator you can make quasi-realistic-looking newspaper clippings. You just enter a the name of your fictitious newspaper, a date, a funny headline, and some article text, and it will generate a matching newspaper image. Of limited utility, sure, but moderately entertaining.