About a year ago, we launched the Times Article Search API and the TimesTags API, two systems that allow developers to search our extensive collection of articles and to identify the canonical terms we use to describe them. Together, these APIs provide developers with the means to accurately find articles that are relevant to nearly any subject.
But there’s a problem with these (and most) APIs: they’re inherently narrow in their reach. The methods for using them are indecipherable for the average (non-developer) Times reader, and the data returned are formatted in a way that’s specific to each API, limiting their use across the Web. Enter the solution: custom RSS feeds.
Our new custom RSS tool is intended for all Times readers — not just developers. It provides a simple way to query the Times Article Search API and a standard way to consume the results.
Custom Times Feeds
You’ll find the tool at http://prototype.nytimes.com/customFeeds/. To use it, simply start typing something into the text field at the top. As you type, the application will try to match your words to our normalized list of terms. You can then either add one or more of the normalized terms to your feed (which will result in more targeted results) or add your original search phrase. (To add a term, click the arrow next to it to move it to the list of Your Feed’s Terms. To remove a term from your list, click the X next to it.)
Alternatively, you can paste the URL of an NYTimes.com article into the field at the top. You’ll then see a list of the terms our indexers used to describe that article, so that you can create a feed of similar articles.
Once you add a term to your feed, you’ll see a preview of the results, along with a message indicating the feed’s “strength.” The feed strength is determined by the number of articles published about your topic(s) within the past 30 days. Adding too many topics — or unrelated topics — can make a feed too specific; these “weaker” feeds produce fewer results.
Feed strength
You can continue to add terms and refine your feed until you’re happy with it. At that point, it’s simply a matter of naming the RSS feed and subscribing to it with your favorite reader. (If you don’t have a favorite RSS reader, you might try Google Reader, My Yahoo, Netvibes or My AOL.)
The options for creating a feed are intentionally limited — there’s no way to create a feed for one term OR another, for instance, only combinations of terms — in order to keep the application simple and approachable. Despite these functional limitations, however, the custom RSS tool excels at two very important tasks: following all of the news on NYTimes.com that’s relevant to a given topic, and following a particular news story as it develops over time. And it allows you to do these things in a familiar way — with RSS feeds.
The tool also incorporates the TimesTags API, which draws its power from a practice that is very rare nowadays: human meta-tagging. All New York Times articles are assigned keywords by real, live people, rather than by computers and search algorithms. And that means all the articles included in a custom feed are truly relevant to the topic specified. The TimesTags API also helps you follow a particular news story, because our producers and other information specialists apply consistent tags to all articles related to a given story.
We hope the custom RSS tool will demonstrate just how useful Times APIs can be — but more than that, we hope it provides a simple, customizable and familiar way to get news and information about almost anything you can think of. Take some time to play with the tool and create a few feeds. We think you’ll be pleased with the results.