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News International has a proud tradition of supporting ground-breaking journalism with cutting-edge technology.

The prototypes below are recent experiments that have come out of the the News International R&D lab. We're sharing them on the web to demonstrate the kind of things we're working on and to gather feedback.

Please remember that everything you'll find here is a demo, not a product, so be gentle! And if you see something you like, or have any questions, please drop us a line at labs@newsint.co.uk.

  • Internet of Things Assistant

    April 2012

    The IoT Assistant turns your Internet of Things Printer into a handy assistant, printing your schedule, emails and more.

    Another open-source project from News International.

  • Shaed

    March 2012

    Shaed is a super-useful proxy server for routing API calls to disparate back-end services.

    It's the latest open-source project from News International. Based on node.js, Padrino and Heroku.

  • Philosophy in Briefs

    March 2012

    A little bit of fun based on the Page 3 "News In Briefs".

  • Face recognition demo

    March 2012

    We've used the Face.com API to index all the content from The Times and The Sun.

    Use this handy search tool to find stories that contain images of grumpy men or young people wearing glasses!

  • Instawall

    March 2012

    The Instawall displays a beautiful, continuously-updating wall of Instagram photographs.

  • The Times Crossword BETA

    February 2012

    Ever wanted to start The Times Crossword on one device and complete it later on another?

    This BETA app lets you do that using Mozilla Persona. Create a free account to enable continuous gameplay across your tablet and PC.

  • The Sun Superboard

    January 2012

    Everyone loves a good dashboard, part II.

    The famed Times Superboard was so popular that similar boards were rolled out on the Sun editorial floors, showing a variety of print and digital "glanceable" statistics.

  • Sun TV Listings

    July 2011

    Interactive TV guide showing what's hot tonight, including a "don't make me think" 5 hour view plan. Additional functionality: sign in with your Miso account to favourite shows and see recommendations from other Sun readers.

  • Journopoll

    September 2011

    Ranking journalists by their Twitter accounts. Combines data from Twitter and PeerIndex to give an overall view of a Twitter account and how it is being utilised.

  • Times Archive Scrapbook

    October 2011

    This is a BETA feature for the Times Archive, letting you save snippets of the Times Archive to a sidebar widget for easy sorting and retrieval.

  • The Times Superboard

    June 2011

    Everybody loves a good dashboard.

    These statistics are up on big screens in the Times newsroom to help journalists and editors see what's going on right now on the website.

  • Times Archive Wordles

    June 2011

    The Times archive is an amazing repository of content going back over two hundred years.

    This widget creates a slideshow of wordles for a keyword over the decades, showing how the word has changed meaning.

  • Wall of News

    May 2011

    The "Wall of News" is an experiment in immersive navigation.

    Control the position and angle of the wall using your mouse and keyboard. Try gliding along the wall to find an interesting story or video.

  • Recipe Search

    April 2011

    Parametric search across the huge database of recipes that have featured in the Times.

Public code repositories from the Technology team at NI

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What's all this, then?

The R&D lab is an innovation hub that encourages and enables News International staff to shape the news of tomorrow. The lab is a physical space with an electronics workbench, hot-desking areas and a relaxed "Livingroom of the Future" for demonstrating prototypes on a big screen.

The lab is open to all staff to tinker and play and many of the gadgets that come out of are worth sharing. Some of the demos in the showcase will make it into final products, and others are simply experiments in next-generation technologies and user interfaces that we think are interesting. We hope you do too!

Get up to anything else?

The News International Arduino Society meets up every Tuesday in the lab to noodle around with Arduino kits and built interesting circuits. Here's some of the things we've been up to recently:

Love it! How do I contact you?

If you've seen anything you like, or if you'd like to join us, then please drop us an email on labs@newsint.co.uk. Alternatively, follow our Arduino on Twitter :)