New York Times for your mobile phone

Robert,

I posted a comment on Dave’s site regarding this, but check out http://www.xfruits.com/. It looks like they provide a similar service…and for ANY RSS feed. I’ve only been a consumer of the service so far…I’m not sure if, as a member, you can add multiple RSS->Mobile web sites, but it looks really great on my Smartphone 2125.

jw

John, it’s a different kind of reader, it shows you the new stuff first. Check it out…

http://nytimesriver.com/

Hope you like it!

I’ve been doing this for years. Hit mikekrisher.com with a Pocket PC, Smartphone, or Symbian device and you get a specially designed version of a news portal for that device that pulls in many popular RSS feeds. The list of feeds needs updated and I am working on a Blackberry version.

I also made one of these where you can easily read any site’s content:

http://hellyeahbitch.com/mobile

You can show HTML or not and you can get rid of the basic style I put on the page as well. I made it after Scoble’s last complaint that I shared and I’ve been in love with easily reading blogs on my Smart Phone.

I am curious to know if anyone would be interested to create/personalize their own mobilesite if there is such a service available.

Features such as RSS,Text,Image,Pagelink etc. will be avail.

Hey Mr. Scobleizer,

There’s one thing about this that interests me. I’ve read this post and the one from a couple of days ago about TechCrunch (http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/18/thank-you-dave-winer-now-i-can-read-techcrunch-on-my-cell-phone/)

Mike Krisher up a bit further mentioned he’s been doing his own portal for a while too.

And these sites have their own RSS feeds.

So it makes me wonder how this is different from the guy aggregating and copying your blog at crazyfactor.com (http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/annoying-spammer/)

“Someone is copying my blog at crazyfactor.com. That’s annoying enough.” No offense whatsoever to you or to Dave, but this seems to be exactly the same sort of situation – you guys are copying content away from creators, and in the case of Techcrunch it looks like you’re taking away from their Ad revenue doing so, as they post full content to their RSS, whereas the NY Times at least only posts headlines.

I know this might be slightly different, in that at least there is no pingbacks… but it seems that the same “annoying” behaviour is at work here.

Only this time you’re happier because it helps you to read the site, and isn’t stealing from you.

Or is my take on this wrong?

Andrew: well, let’s compare http://scobleizer.scripting.com/ to what crazyfactor.com is doing.

Crazy Factor is putting ads on my content, for one.
Scripting adds some utility to my content, for two.
Scripting doesn’t try to put a different name on my content (It’s Scobleizer, NOT “Crazy Factor.”)

So, I see these as different things.

That is true however:

Scripting is removing the ads that Techcrunch would have on it’s website (okay, probably not a huge issue because it does offer an RSS feed, but still…)

Crazyfactor might have some utility for the way he does it as it aggregates a few different sources together for him.

Scripting does alter the name slightly as people pay attention to the second part of the domain name. If I wasn’t familiar with the sites I might confuse them with part of “Scripting’s” family of sites. Again I might be a bit picky there.

I’m not trying to provide any validity to what “Crazy Factor” does, I’ve had my little blog aggregated into another one and thought it was a bit annoying, I’ve had a post that gets me a few hits copied over to a geocities page.

All I am saying is that maybe there isn’t that much difference in what is going on here.

At the least Dave could make the title of the sites a link back to the original page and a disclaimer that the content is not his and belongs to the site, etc.

I mean, isn’t that fair?

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Dave to receive cease and desist letters from the Times and the BBC.

Scott: I asked Dave about this and he said he worked with the New York Times’ publisher and others. But I am wondering too since this deprives them of advertising revenue.

“When I was in the hospital room with Maryam’s mom I could just go to the New York Times and it came down fast and in a readable form.”

Weren’t you… you know… visiting someone in the hospital? Doesn’t that make it a little… disrespectful or something?

Further evidence: when Dave Winer quotes you as a reference for a point he’s trying to make, no matter what point, it’s a clear sign that you’re being an asshole.

Shii: dude, you ever visit someone in a hospital room? It’s obvious you haven’t. When you are asked to leave the room so they can be attended to, do you just sit there twiddling your thumbs? I don’t. I catch up on my news.

If your habits have you harvest stuff first for offline reading later, you might find FreeNews your cup of tea. It’s a mobile aggregator that I’ve used for more than a year. It works better than I expected.

http://podcasting.ie/podcast/freenews/

I have heard that herald tribune is also doing that. I love the way technolgy is maiking waves, i have came to know a good website http://www.zyb.com for securely storing the conatcts on web server.