Through the Windows Presentation Foundation technology found in the forthcoming Vista operating system, Microsoft’s “Times Reader” will improve the newspaper’s online readability across multiple platforms.
In the coming months, Microsoft will make the Times Reader available for download. Bill Gates unveiled the utility at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention.
Gates addressed attendees at the convention in his “Innovating Through the Digital Decade” speech. He touched on industry megatrends, emerging markets, and the digital lifestyle. Gates also noted that the US now ranks 14th in the world in terms of broadband adoption; that’s below Japan, which just moved ahead of the US.
He discussed Microsoft’s “pipeline of solutions,” and made special note of Office 2007. Gates mentioned the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) here, and why it will be important:
“The presentation foundation there is much richer in recognition of the fact that you want to spend lots of time reading information off the screen, you want to have it be as well adapted as it’s been in the print environment. And that’s not been possible, whether it’s the browser, special code that people have done, the screen always looks a lot different.”
The Times Reader will demonstrate how Microsoft plans to overcome that problem. Later, Gates summoned New York Times chairman Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr to discuss the Times Reader with the audience. Sulzberger acknowledged the importance of being where their readers are today:
We must follow our readers where they want to be. All of us know that our readership has grown dramatically over the last few years; we can’t yet monetize it the way we would like. But as journalists what we want are people to read and read us and read our journalism; we think that’s critical to democracy among other small things.
When demonstrated, the Times Reader reformats the content automatically to fit any size screen. Assistant managing editor and design director of The New York Times, Tom Bodkin, said “It will reflow the type and it will resize the images and ads as necessary.”
Through a demonstration, Bodkin showed how the ad changed shape as the screen size available to the Times Reader changed. “It melds the high impact of print with the interactivity of the Web,” Bodkin said.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
