Practicalmadness

CNET News.com reports that The New York Times has decided to begin charging for an improved version of its Times News Tracker service.

News Tracker lets you create search robots which automatically e-mail you whenever news stories appear about a specified topic. The free version that had been available until this morning offered up to three alerts at once. The new pay version allows up to ten alerts, as well as an extended 90 days of access to stories linked from your news alerts. (Most NY Times stories are freely accessible for only seven days after publication.)

Also, the Times' breaking news alerts are now available only to News Tracker subscribers, although as far as I can tell the daily headlines e-mail list, as well as the weekly Circuits and Movie Update newsletters, are still open to the public at no charge.

The New York Times News Tracker is available now for the low, low price of $19.95 / year. But it comes with a free Frogurt.*

(* Denotes lies.)