NY Times TimesOpen Recap: TimesNewswire API Coming Next Week

Today was the first TimesOpen day at the NY Times headquarters in NYC. I was able to attend the morning sessions and I'd like to share my notes and a couple of photos. I think the event was very professionally run and the room was completely packed. It's interesting that they didn't hold the event in what appears to be a beautiful theatre next door to the HQ building. Check out my notes and slides from the Tim O'Reilly keynote as well.

In the audience were people from Google, Yahoo and a good number of other large tech companies. I also saw a variety of bloggers in the crowd but it seemed like there were more large companies than say indie developers in attendance.

The big news coming out of the morning sessions was that there is a new API launching next week called TimesNewswire. This will give developers access to live headlines. Attendee Kellan called this new api a New York Times firehose and noted, "NewsWire API is the paper's stream of consciousness."

President and Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson welcomed everyone to the event and she said that everyone in attendance is part of the past history of the paper but a very important part of the future of the Times.

The concept of the day was to bring technology and the future of the newspaper together.

The other executive who spoke noted that they have an intense desire to make sure the content is personalized going forward.

They gave me a black t-shirt (size L) with the TimesOpen logo on it. If you would like the t-shirt, just leave a comment and I will pick one comment at random.