Underpinning our digital growth strategy is our Research & Development Group, the first in our industry. The R&D; Group helps us anticipate consumer preferences and devise ways of satisfying them; the group assists in product development across the Company. In January 2006, Michael Zimbalist joined the Times Company as vice president, research & development operations, and has led the development of the R&D; team. He clarifies and sets the Group's vision to build a vibrant, long-term innovation capability for the Company.

R&D; is Organized into Three Overlapping Groups:

• Core R&D; monitors the changes in enabling technologies and consumer behavior in order to envision and prototype new products and services;
• Emerging Platforms Group operationalizes select prototypes and enables the Company’s business units to rapidly enter onto new platforms including video and mobile; operates the Company's mobile messaging platform; Emerging Platforms Group is now also working extensively within the “cloud” to assess its operational capabilities at scale;
• Audience development and analytics operates the Company's multivariate page testing platform for all units; performs custom analyses of audience segments to enable better targeting, and text mining for business intelligence across the units. Using analytical tools, the group has tested different presentations of our content and page layout, which have enabled us to further deepen engagement with our readers and optimize both display and pay-per-click advertising placements.

R&D; is structured to ensure that its forward-looking efforts have maximum practical impact on all of our businesses, helping to accelerate our transformation to a metrics-driven, multiplatform media company committed to a process of test, measure and learn. Since R&D; operates as a shared service across all our Web sites and is closely aligned with our operating units, applications such as our mobile products can be rapidly deployed at all of our Web sites.

In addition, R&D; is placing increasing emphasis on advertising innovation and the changing needs of markets as many of our top clients transform their models to focus on digital.

Current Areas of Investigation

• Smart Content: Unbundled content elements that have rich metadata about themselves, such as author, media type, geolocation, etc.
• Cloud computing: Processing and storage that occurs in a shared and networked computing environment, such as Amazon EC2 and S3.
• Device independent computing: Media that is dynamically reformatted to provide optimal viewing experiences on multiple platforms and devices.
• Smart objects: Everyday objects with embedded microprocessors that know what they are, where they are located, who is using them and how they are being used. Smart objects have the ability to send and receive data over the network.
• Alternative interfaces: Interaction models that move beyond the computer-mouse-keyboard paradigm. Examples include gestural interfaces, multi-touch interfaces, voice recognition, mobile bar codes and presence detection (ambient interaction).
• Location-based media: Content that is dynamically customized according to the user's location.
• Advertising innovation: Investigation of digital advertising approaches that go beyond the current banner and display ad models to take full advantage of the new media and business landscape.

2008 Applications

• Google Earth News Layer
• Print to mobile
• Calorie Count Mobile
• Mobile BlackBerry, iPhone and Slide Shows
• Newsbooks
• ShifD
• Boston Spider and SEO Toolkit
• New York Times "River"
• TimesPeople (collaboration with NYTimes.com)
• Advertising with NYTimes Facebook Quiz
• Electronic Readers

News About R&D;

R&D; Leaders in the News
Looking To Its Future, NYTCO Sees A Tech Services Company; Patents Pending
Michael Rogers: 'Technology Is Now an Important Part of Media'
'Futurist in residence' a sign of the NY Times

Google Earth
Google Earth Adds New York Times Layer
Google Earth Does a Yahoo! 3D News Globe With New York Times
NYT: The Grey Lady partners Google Earth for geotagged news

ShifD
New York Times Launching Its Mobile-To-PC Content Sharing Service
New York Times gets edgy — no, really
ShifD Launches in Beta. Move Notes, Places, and Links From the Web to Your Phone
New York Times Launches ShifD, a New Mobile/Web/Air App
N.Y. Times Unveils Mobile-To-PC App