Ben Wu

It’s now out of private beta and anyone can access it at http://my.nytimes.com. All you need is a free New York Times account.

I was fortunate enough to take part in building My Times - a widget based personalization home page from New York Times. After months of hard work, It is now in beta. See some screen shots below.

My Times Main Page

Most Popular on My Times

37signals’ excellent book on web-based application development, Getting Real, is now free to read online.

I have always wanted to be able to read news on my Treo 650. But almost all carriers charge an excessive monthly fee for their unlimited data plan, not to mention the slowness of accessing the Internet through the mobile phone network.

Nowadays I also mostly get my news updates by reading blogs. I use Google Reader to aggregate all my readings in a central place. It is browser based and has a nice AJAX interface so you can pretty much use it on any computer.

So wouldn’t it be nice to have a similar tool on your phone that retrieves all the blog updates for you, displays them in an easy-to-read format, and wont enrich your phone company?

I Googled and came across QuickNews. It does just that. It’s got a very user-friendly interface. And it can either use the phone’s Internet connection or HotSync to retrieve new blog entries. After trying it out for a couple of days, I am totally hooked. I used to buy a copy of New York Post to read on the train to/from work. I am just glad I don’t have to spend another dime on it from now on.