You know those 25,000 apps that are now available for Windows Phone 7? It looks like you can count an official New York Times  among them. While there were already a handful of unofficial apps which allowed you to read the latest stories from the Gray Lady, this is the first time the newspaper has offered its own app for the platform.

Top news stories will be available for free, just as they are in the iOS and Android apps. You’ll have to sign up for a subscription to access all the sections including blogs, videos, and slide shows.

Users can share stories through Facebook, Twitter, and email, and the app allows you to download articles for offline reading.

The official NY Times app is available as a free download from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

via WP Central

News.me is an iPad app that shows you the stories you’re most likely to find interesting based on the people you follow on Twitter. There’s nothing particularly unusual there, since social news apps are a dime a dozen. But News.me has a few things that really set it apart.

First, in addition to seeing the top stories shared by people you follow on Twitter, you can click on a thumbnail icon for any of the people you follow — and then see articles shared by the people they follow. In other words, if you have a favorite blogger, journalist, comedian, or just a really smart friend, News.me will give you a news feed based on the people they find interesting, giving you a chance to see a tiny section of the world the way that person does without first signing up to follow all the Twitter users they follow.

Second, News.me is a partnership between The New York Times and bit.ly, and the companies have reached licensing agreements with well over 600 publishers allowing News.me to display full-length, ad-free articles.

Third, because of that licensing agreement, News.me isn’t free to use. You’ll have to pay 99 cents per week for a subscription, or $34.99 per year if you want a 30 percent discount.

The concept is interesting and the app certainly provides an attractive way to view the news. But I have to wonder whether people are willing to pay for this type of news curation service.

News.me is available for download starting today from the App Store.

The New York Times launched a new version of its iPhone app last week, in advance of the launch of a new paywall which would only allow readers to view 20 articles per month for free on the web, or the the Top News sections for free on a mobile device. I kind of wondered what would happen if you didn’t upgrade to the new app, so when the newspaper company pushed out an updated version of its Android app this weekend I decided not to update.

Now that the paywall is in full effect, I fired up the mobile app and got a warning saying that an upgrade is required. There’s a friendly “Remind Me Later” button, so I tapped that to see if I could keep reading anyway. The answer is yes… if I’m cool with reading yesterday’s news. The old version of the app simply won’t grab any new articles from NYTimes.com. The ads at the bottom of the screen are also going crazy, refreshing about 2-3 times per second.

So the long and short of it is that while there are a number of ways to avoid paying to read The New York Times, using an outdated version of the company’s mobile app is not one of them.

Oh, and it should go without saying, but if you want to support the newspaper, you might actually want to think about paying for a digital or print subscription. Good news doesn’t come cheap. If, on the other hand, you’re not a fan of the way the company is going about its new subscription plans, then there are plenty of other news sources on the web. But subscription-based news apps may be an important part of the future of journalism.

Update: While the older Android app has stopped working, it looks like users with the older iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad app can continue to download and read the latest news stories… for now.

Just a few days before the New York Times paywall is set to take effect, the newspaper company has pushed out an updated version of its iPhone app.  I doubt failing to update the app will allow you to keep reading for free, but I guess we’ll find out on Monday. Top stories will be free to read with or without a subscription either way.

NYTimes 3.0 does have a few new features that certainly make the app worth checking out. The app now supports push notifications to give you breaking news alerts even when the NYTimes app isn’t running. There’s also a new favorites section where you can save articles for later viewing.

The company has also added new photo and video sections where you can find multimedia content from the New York Times. You’ll also find some photo slideshows and videos embedded in articles throughout the app.

There’s more content available in the mobile app, including blogs. The app also includes a new status bar which lets you know when it’s downloading content.

NYTimes 3.0 for iPhone is available as a free download from the App Store.

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The New York Times is starting to roll out digital subscription plans in Canada this week, with US and international subscriptions set to take effect on march 28th. Readers will be able to view the paper’s home page for free, and read up to 20 articles per month at no cost. You’ll also be able to access the “Top News” section of the company’s mobile apps for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS for free. For anything else, you’ll need to pay up.

Here’s the breakdown:

• If you want full access to the web site and smartphone apps, you’ll need to pay $15 every four weeks.
• For full access to the web site and the tablet app for the iPad you’ll need to find $20 in the couch cushions.
• Full access to the tablet and smartphone apps plus the web site will run you $35 every four weeks.

Existing newspaper subscribers will be able to continue accessing all of the digital content for no additional charge. That includes customers who sign up for weekday only, or Weekender Friday-Sunday only service. Because the New York Times is currently offering a 50% discount for up to 12 weeks on some print subscriptions, I can actually sign up for the weekday print edition and digital editions for $3.70 per week, compared with $3.75 per week for the web and smartphone plan. But after a few months that price would double.

The company will offer some sort of “introductory” pricing on March 28th.

News media companies have had a difficult time charging for online content in the past, with only a few big names such as the Wall Street Journal managing to convince a large enough number of customers to subscribe to make any real money. But the New York Times might have the kind of loyal audience and name recognition in the US to pull it off — and the fact that casual, occasional readers can still view some articles for free may help. It also means that unlike the Journal, the Times isn’t completely closing its content off behind a walled garden, making it difficult for blogs and other sites to link to.

The New York Times certainly isn’t the only company looking to make money off its web site and mobile apps. In fact, several newspapers and magazines have launched recently that are exclusively available on the iPad. But even though the Times plans to charge more money than Project Magazine or The Daily, I suspect the paper has a better chance of attracting readers than either of those publications.

The New York Times has scapped its “Editors’ Choice” iPad app with a new app that offers all the content currently available at the New York Times web site. It’s available as a free download and the content is free… for now.

Eventually the paper plans to charge users a fee to read the web site starting in 2011… sort of. You’ll be able to read a limited number of articles per month for free, but heavy readers will find that after they view a certain number of articles they’ll have to pay a subscription fee to keep reading.

Once that paywall kicks in, paidContent reports that iPad users will also have to pay for full access to the paper.

It’s worth noting that much of the content available for free today on the New York Times web site is currently available for free from the company’s iPhone and iPad apps. There’s a good chance you’ll have to pay a subscription fee for full access to content using those apps as well.

The New York Times has released an official news app for Google Android. At first glance, the app looks like a clone of the newspaper’s iPhone app. Both allow you to sort news by category (World, US, Politics, N, Travel, Magazine, Latest, and so on). And both apps are much faster and easier to navigate on a mobile device than the New York Times web site.

But the Android app has a few features that set it apart from the iPhone version. The first is a “Latest Videos” section, which lets you see the latest videos from the New York Times web site and read a brief description. If you tap on a video, it will open up in the Android media player. The iPhone app doesn’t have a video section. Interestingly though, the iPhone app has a Popular section, which is missing from the Android version.

Scan to download

The New York Times App for Android also makes use of Google’s navigation scheme for Android. For instance, I find it much easier to hit the back button to return to the previous menu in the Android version of the app than to use the button at the top of each page in the iPhone version. On the down side, if you tap the back button one too many times, you might find yourself back at the Android home screen.

For some strange reason, the developers also decided to use a drop-down menu as part of the navigation. Hanging out in the “Latest News” section, and want to check the obituaries? Grab the top of the window and pull down to get a list of all available sections. The confusing thing is the top of the window looks a lot like the Android notification bar… and it’s awfully close to it.

I’ve already found myself accidentally opening the Android notification menu when I meant to pull down the category list in the New York Times app. This UI element also takes up more space than it really needs to — especially since you can bring up the same list by hitting the Menu button on an Android phone and selecting “Sections.” That said, the app is without a doubt the best way to access New York Times content on an Android device.

The New York Times app for Android is available as a free, ad-supported download for Android 2.0 and up. It’s available from the Android Market, or you can scan the barcode to the right to get started.

via Android Community

The New York Times offers an excellent free news app for the iPhone that makes it easy to catch up on the latest news from the paper without trying to navigate the NYTimes.com web site in a mobile browser. So far there’s no equivalent app for Google Android, but it looks like one should be available soon.

The New York Times has created a FAQ for a NYTimes Android app. It says the app should work with Android 1.6 and newer and that it should be available as a free download from the Android Market or by visiting nytimes.com/androidapp. Unfortunately, neither of those things is true… yet.

Google Operating System reports that there was briefly a video of the NYTimes app running on the Google Nexus One on Google’s YouTube channel for the phone, but that video appears to have been removed.

All in all, I would have been surprised if the New York Times wasn’t working on an Android version of its app for reading the latest stories and watching the latest videos from the Times web site. But it’s nice to know that we’re close enough to an actual product launch that a FAQ has been created and a promo video has been shot.