Personalized News Timelines

Michael Zimbalist is the vice president of research & development operations at The New York Times Company. With the help of his colleague from the Times' Research and Development Lab, Alexis Lloyd, Michael Zimbalist discusses and explores the ways in which the iconic newspaper has attempted to take itself into the digital age.

For the first half of the talk, Michael Zimbalist discusses memory-based news and the need to move from a publishing paradigm to a communication paradigm, a rebalancing act that the rest of the news media is trying to adapt to as well in the age of the Internet. Since the news is a deconstructed flow of data, Michael Zimbalist explains his view of news as memories, which usually extends further than the data reported because we associate our feelings with news from the past.

Following Michael Zimbalist, Alexis Lloyd takes the stage to preview a captivating iPad application the Times is currently developing. The app takes personal information such as year and location of birth and where one grew up and uses it to create a personalized news timeline of major news events that have occurred throughout your lifetime. The app will be able to go into reading mode, which allows one to read short summaries of the events and links to full articles by the New York Times on the events.