So the dang New York Times has introduced yet another interface to the  paper. This app is web based. I began messing with it yesterday. Some of it I like because it restores the ability to browse more than just headlines and one or two sentence synopses. But my bookmarking web site (diigo.com) doesn’t work with the interface. The interface also doesn’t allow highlighting or copying of text. There is a button at bottom of each article that says “email this article.” However it doesn’t respond when I click on it.

So if I want to bookmark a specific article, it seems the only way to do it is to open a different NYT interface (“Today’s Paper” or “Home Page”), find the article and bookmark it. This is cumbersome.

I have a history of trying to use the New York Times digitally before they were ready to adapt. They began their web presence with a completely free paper. At that time, I attempted to subscribe digitally and drop my home subscription. There was apparently no way to do this. I contacted the paper a few times, but whoever I spoke to was bewildered by my request. There was literally no way to do it.

Now the New York Times is basically set up for Apple users. This latest web app is obviously an attempt to widen their usefulness to all users. But like the New Yorker, these august providers of information and ideas limp when they try to take on the wild wild web. They attempt to trap it into their own old paradigms. How frustrating not to be able to copy a sentence or two from an online article or bookmark it as a URL. Good grief.

And I don’t think myself as that much of a techie, only someone who values what the web can connect me to and enlighten me about.

1. Remarks by the President on Economic Mobility | The White House

I find reading speeches so much more helpful than listening to them.  I applaud this speech by President Obama. It doesn’t dispel my skepticism about the prospects that the American government will start functioning, however.

2. Superpedestrian – The Copenhagen Wheel

 Tony Wesley put this link up on Facebook. It seems to be a bicycle that stores up energy as you use it and then uses it to power your bike when you need it to.

3. Aldi grocery store: best in America, related to Trader Joe’s.

Who knew?  Thanks to Emily Bastien for putting this link up on Facebook.

4.ThinkPenguin.com | Penguin Laptops, Desktops, and Accessories with Linux & GNU 

Cheap linux based laptops. Wow. Found this at a Holiday gift link for the conscientious put up by Sarah Jenkins. Thank you.

5. 100 Notable Books of 2013 – NYTimes.com

Bookmarked this a while back and haven’t a chance to go through it. I read through it every year.

6. Comcast CEO Thinks Its Customer Service Problem Is Mostly A Matter Of Scale | Techdirt

This article confirms a lot of the crap one thinks about cable companies. Eileen’s income drop due to retiring early next month will force us to alter how we use Comcast, dropping our cable and moving to web based TV and entertainment. We already access Netflix through our WII (thanks to Mark Jenkins who put up Netflix on it while he was visiting years ago).