NYT Explorer shows off New York Times Article Search API
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.
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.













Comments
5
Subscribe to commentskingkool68Feb 23rd 2009 9:29PM
Uh, the NYT Explorer link doesn't work? It goes to an API Developer page. Is that right?
Jay HathawayFeb 23rd 2009 9:31PM
Oops, my bad. Fixed now. And here's the link in case: http://nytexplorer.com/
minibarFeb 23rd 2009 9:31PM
bad link. click on the article image.
venisFeb 24th 2009 2:34AM
for more details
Ernest PerezFeb 24th 2009 2:41AM
I think that development of super-fast access to text data & information is the most important IT development of the last 15 years. E.g, the Web search engines. No doubt that this kind of Web power has changed society and changed our individual lives. Not just airline reservations & eBay, but the knowledge-enhancing power of search engines, email, shared mailing lists, group forums, and especially easy access to the vast amount of data out there on the Net.
.
You editorial comment: "At a time when a lot of newspapers are shutting down or finding themselves forced to come up with a smarter online strategy...." I heartily agree, but think we need a bit more than simply quick searching and retrieval.
The newer Web information service that absolutely blew me away the first time I saw it, is iResearch-Reporter.com (iRR). It's a a free Web service which I consider to be the first definitive text-mining application "For The Rest of Us."
iRR front-ends searches to a targeted no-cost search engines or information services on the Web. It transparently executes your search; actually analyzes the most relevant document results, and finally delivers an organized and summarized distillation of the significant information content. Really!
These developers use linguistic analysis to identify and cluster the obvious threads of high-information-content in the retrieved set of documents. So what you get is readable summarized content, not just hit list links to thousands of documents that may be of interest to you.
I think of iRR "as if you were able to borrow the full set of organized class and reading notes for Chemistry 210 (or Anthropology 387, etc.) from your buddy who got an A+ in the course last semester." (Oh yeah, just in time to study for your final.)
I recommend everyone take a look at it and give it a try. There's also a powerful demonstration of the same software available at NewsFeedResearcher.com . This service delivers instant background research for every news story on today's current Google News feed. You'll appreciate the information-transfer power, when you see how fast you can absorb in-depth information about any current news item. Talk about cheat-sheets!