Dec 1, 2006 - The New York Times today the release of Times Reader, available in a free beta on NYTimes.com. Times Reader is a downloadable application that enhances the onscreen reading experience of The New York Times for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista users. It offers consumers access to The Times electronically, online or offline from a desktop, laptop, tablet PC or ultra-mobile computing device. Times Reader lets users retrieve the latest news and photos, through a synching process that lasts approximately one minute. Times Reader combines the interactivity and immediacy of the Web with the portability of a newspaper through Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft's advanced display technology in Windows Vista. The text in Times Reader is displayed in a format to fit the size and layout of any computer screen and enables readers to customize the display according to personal preferences, such as font size and content relevance. “The New York Times is the only newspaper to offer advertisers and readers this capability,” said Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager, NYTimes.com. “Times Reader is an opportunity for our readers to experience the paper in a new way and provides advertisers greater visibility for their ads through this unique platform.” While providing the look and feel of the newspaper, Times Reader allows mobile users, such as business travelers or commuters, to synchronize their laptops, tablet PC’s or ultra-mobile computing devices before getting on an airplane or a train and have available the latest New York Times content to read when it is most convenient. Times Reader features include: * News in Pictures: Allows consumers to navigate the day’s news through photography. * “Topic Explorer”: Built into the search feature, the topic explorer allows readers to see the relationships between the topics covered in The Times. * Tools: In addition to saving and printing articles, readers can also highlight and annotate passages within the text of articles. * “What’s Read”: At a glance, readers can check to see how much of the paper they’ve read and easily navigate to the pieces they have missed. Times Reader beta for Windows XP requires Microsoft's .Net Framework 3.0, recently released as a final build. Advertiser Advantages For advertisers, the application provides another creative platform to reach readers. Advertisements can be as small as a button or expand into multi-columns. In the beta version of Times Reader, only one advertisement appears on each page, giving significant visibility to that ad space. Future iterations of Times Reader may accommodate more advertisements on a single page. Furthermore, once downloaded, the content on the users’ PC allows readers to click through advertisements to a designated landing page from that advertiser, even when not connected to the Web. AT&T, Columbia University School of Continuing Education and Tourneau are the advertisers participating in the launch of this innovative product. Anyone who is currently running Windows XP and is a registered user of NYTimes.com can participate in the Times Reader beta by signing up on: www.nytimes.com/timesreader. Times Reader is free during the beta period. It will officially launch in 2007.