“We are using this as a way to give exisiting subscribers a widow into our journalism,” said Alexandra Hardiman, director of mobile products at NYTimes.com. The new web app was tested on iPad-owning Times employees, and development kicked off last spring.

The app introduces new features designed for the more social media-inclined reader. A “Trending” section shows the top 25 Times articles that are trending on Twitter within the previous hour and “Times Wire” shows a “continuous, reverse chronological feed of the latest articles, videos and slideshows published on NYTimes.com.”

For traditional readers who long to recreate the feel of paper and ink without smudging their hands, there is still a format with sections organized under print topic headings.

But perhaps the best feature for the newspaper is that the app is accessed and downloaded directly from Safari rather than through Apple Newsstand. This handily avoids giving Apple the 30 percent fee that they charge for native iPad apps.

Does this mean that the newspaper is trying to do away with the Apple newsstand entirely?

“We do very well on Newsstand,” notes Linda Zebian, a Corporate Communications Manager at the Times. “We have no plan to eradicate Newsstand.”

“We have a big investment in both camps,” Ms. Hardiman said.

Will the app be available for non-Apple tablets?

Although there is no plan right now, Ms. Zebian told us that at some point in the future it will be.

“We are not biased,” she said.

Here's CBS's description of the new 2.0 show:
DRAW SOMETHING is a dynamic, interactive game show where two teams consisting of one celebrity and one fan of the Draw Something app test their creativity and compete by drawing and guessing words to earn cash!

DRAW SOMETHING is being produced for CBS by Embassy Row, Ryan Seacrest Productions, and Sony Pictures Television.

The show is based on the most exciting and addictive mobile game ever created by Zynga and is sure to be a hit!

Woof, no mention that Zynga (the group behind Farmville) merely acquired Draw Something when it bought Omgpop? Or that since the buyout, Draw Something's fan base has dropped so significantly that analysts have called the deal a "dud"? Well, at least Ryan Seacrest is involved.

The homepage brings you to an application form, where you can upload a photo of yourself as well as your best smartphone rendition of Starry Night. The show also asks for your relationship status, leaving us to wonder if CBS also has a marketing tie-in with Grindr or How About We. Actually, that's a show we'd definitely watch. Well, if it was available on Hulu or something.

Huffington at the Time 100 Gala. (Image via Getty)

New Age/New Media guru Arianna Huffington's love of sleep is well documented. There's the "sleep your way to the top—literally" TED talk, the sleep challenge and the famous AOL nap rooms. That story that she hides her three BlackBerrys in the bathroom while she sleeps is inextricable from her personal mythology. 

Repeating it to WWD at the Time 100 Gala this week, she revealed that her PDA brood has grown since the New Yorker profile.

"When I sleep, I put all my devices in another room to charge," she said, "I have four BlackBerries, one iPhone, two iPads."

And it seems the increased connectivity demands a new mode of relaxation. She told WWD she's launching an app called "the GPS for the Soul."

"It’s a way for us to identify our stress levels and course-correct," she said. "You would download the app, you would tap on the stress sensor, and it would give you your heart rate, breath rate, blood pressure. And then you would program it with the things that help you de-stress.”

Like this 103-slide slideshow of the worst celebrity jeans of all time, for example.

What's at stake? According to the Herald, "vast amounts of private information traded through the app - in many cases naked photos." (Translation: your tastefully filtered and soft-focused genital self-portraits could be available via an easy Google Image Search any day now.)

Leveraging Grindr's links to other social networking sites the hacker found a way to log into Grindr or Blender as someone else and impersonate that user at will. And no one is safe:

The vulnerabilities are also present in Blendr, the straight version of the app, according to a security expert who said both apps had "no real security" and were "poorly designed". Fairfax Media is not aware that Blendr has been hacked but the potential was there, according to the security expert.

Grindr founder and CEO Joel Simkhai addressed the problem in a blog post:

Your security and the security of our platform is a core priority. Like other responsible companies, we don’t comment on specifics of security enhancements or allegations about network issues – that wouldn’t serve the security of our users, our networks, or web security in general. As a result of Grindr’s ongoing investigation, we took legal and technological actions to block a site that violated our terms of service. This site impacted a small number of primarily Australian Grindr users and it remains shut down.

We continuously make improvements to our platform to increase security across our networks. We are releasing a mandatory update to our apps over the next few days to enhance security. When the update is available, users will be notified via in-app messaging, on Twitter and on this blog post. Our users can be assured that Grindr does not retain chat history, credit card information, or addresses – and no such information was ever compromised.

That no chats, street addresses or financial info was compromised may be a relief, but for many users of either app the idea that you could actually be flirting with a trolling hacker who looks like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons is probably bad enough.

[smh.com.au]

(Photo: pcmag.com)

Fox News was the first broadcasting network to rollout the breaking news ticker on 9/11, so it’s not exactly surprising that News Corporation is ahead of the game again. Following The Wall Street Journal’s launch of WSJ Social on Sept. 20, more news organizations will unveil similar ‘Facebook editions’ at the annual F8 developer conference.

These branded news apps will resemble WSJ Social, allowing readers to consume content within the Facebook environment. Facebook invited several news outlets to produce pilot versions, including The Daily, CNN, theWashington Post and the Huffington Post, according to Forbes.

Though we can't say for sure why Facebook encouraged news organizations to develop applications, it’s probably because they don’t want people to click on a link and leave Facebook. We’re guessing users can expect the news apps to have ads in addition to those on the right-hand side of the site.

It also includes original text and audio from marquis New Yorker names like Alex Ross, Susan Orlean, Roz Chast, Peter Schjeldahl, Paul Goldberger, Calvin Trillin  and Patricia Marx. The announcement suggests the New Yorker has found a way to offer a digital point of entry to the magazine without diluting the brand or sacrificing their subscription revenue.

It is exclusively sponsored by Mastercard, which presumably you can also use to pay for many of the GOATs. The app is a landmark development, some say.

In fact, words can't describe the achievement quite like the app trailer The New Yorker has produced. Watch, and you'll see scenes of New York culture--the lights on Broadway, a bustling restaurant, a sun-drenched museum hall-accompanied by piano chords. With the title card "NOW ON YOUR MOBILE PHONE," the electric guitar comes in, for a crescendo and climax which we can only imagine approximates what it felt like to hear Chuck Berry perform live.

In spite of the New Yorker's robust listings section, we never really associated it with New York service content, or even New York the city, really. It always seemed like a national publication and a Chesnutt Hill-Brookline-Winnetka fetish. But even if it isn't useful for every New Yorker reader, it's free and its icon on one's iPhone will serve the same function as unread issues fanned out on one's coffee table--instant sophistication!

Graphic designer and Upper West Side bartender Bari Simon created the app. From the What's on Tap? home page:

We are the extended neighbors knocking on the door with our pitchers and empty glasses. The passion and ingenuity of today's "craft brew masters" cannot be duplicated by a machine.

The Observer has never heard such a knock at the door, but we nonetheless welcome the digital equivalent.

A 2.0 version of the app will boast improved location service, automated beer alerts and a beer crawl customization tool, among other things. (via DNAinfo)

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

Fortunately for all who seek to locate the most abundant form of person on the planet, a tech startup has developed a smartphone application called Wheretheladies.at. This program combs Foursquare checkins for women, and then displays a compass that steers lady-hunters to nearby locations with a high recent XX chromosome count. This is good, because as equally well established as the global paucity of ladies is their receptiveness to being treated as one homogeneous unit distinguished by genetics.

The application is now available at Apple's App store, although it only covers San Francisco, presumably because the women of that city are even more elusive than the worldwide population. 

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

"How would you contact the ones you love if the cell/internet networks went down? How would you get the news out to the greater worldwide community if there were things you were seeing that the world needed to see?"

Pettis has put out a call asking people to submit ideas for survival apps that would be useful in the event of a true internet Appocolypse. 

"I want an app that creates a localized IRC channel that anyone within wifi range can join. The idea here is that wifi can't be jammed locally, so it would be nice to set up a localized network to chat with your neighbors without leaving the house," writes Pettis. 

Holler at us with some suggestions in the comments. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

This morning the Wall Street Journal highlighted Google's efforts to build a digital newstand which would carry high end magazine apps on the slew of Android powered tablets premiering in 2011. 

There has been much talk about the failure of magazines to utilize the new form and capture the imagination of users. But the real problem has been the pay structure. Apple and magazine publishers have been feuding over subscriptions, meaning most magazines were sold individually, often for the same price as a newstand copy. 

Is anyone really surprised that folks didn't pay five times the subscription price per issue to access content they can pretty much get for free on the web? That business model was broken from the start. 

This is Google's market to steal. According to the story in the WSJ, Google is considering taking a much smaller cut of revenues than the 30 percent Apple currently does. They also plan to make it simple for magazine publishers to offer subscriptions for tablets that mirror their print offerings and to share more data about users. 

Apple still dominates the tablet market, but as Android powered smartphone have shown, that can change very quickly. Perhaps that's why Apple, according to the WSJ, is thinking about sweeting the deal it currently has with high end magazine publishers like Hearst and Conde Nast. 

bpopper at observer dot com - @benpopper