The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • A7

Monday, September 12, 2011 The Boston Globe The Region A7 New site a peek into Globe's technological evolution is displayed on a large desktop monitor or on a smartphone. Responsive Web design also enables other powerful features. For instance, if a device has a touchscreen, BostonGlobe.com lets the reader scroll through photographs with the swipe of a finger. On devices without touch-screens, a standard mouse can be messaging service. Such displays could someday appear in restaurants or airport lounges, serving up Globe headlines along with advertisements.

Nothing has been ruled out when it comes to considering new ways to bring news and information to people. For instance, in the living room simulation, the digital team will test Microsoft's popular Kinect motion-control technology. They will use hand gestures to control a large video display of the Globe website, flipping the pages from 10 feet away. Will people want to read the news this way? Moriarty said he plans to find out. Meanwhile, the first start-up company is moving into the new incubation area at the Globe.

Think Forward Productions, from Dorchester, produces videos for musicians and local businesses. "You bring external ideas, people, creativity into the building," Moriarty said. "They get access to us. We get access to them." And that could mean better access to journalism's most precious resource: paying customers. By Hiawatha Bray GLOBE STAFF Today's BostonGlobe.com debut is part of a technological transformation underway at The Boston Globe's headquarters on Morrissey Boulevard.

The same team that built the paid-subscription website is busy researching other novel ways to present and deliver stories, pictures, and video. And soon, it will tap into the expertise of some of the region's top tech developers for even more cutting-edge ideas. To further its digital efforts, the Globe is offering free space to start-up companies that have no direct connection to journalism. They will be based in a development area featuring a living room, coffee bar, and work stations. In return, the Globe hopes the outside entrepreneurs will come up with new ways to help it better serve readers.

Keeping up with rapidly evolving technology is crucial to the Globe's continued success, publisher Christopher M. Mayer said. "We do need to look ahead at the way people are not only consuming but are likely to consume news and information," Mayer said. The tech initiative is centered in a part of the building previously occupied by the Globe's classified advertising department. Classified ads once generated a significant portion of revenue at most newspapers, but as more readers turned to online services such as eBay and Craigslist, print classifieds declined sharply and the once-humming department grew quieter.

Now the space is coming alive again, with whiteboards, stacks of 40-inch video monitors, and a host of laptops, smartphones, and tablet computers. The people using the equipment are mostly of a generation raised on pixels rather than ink. They are veterans of Microsoft the Cambridge video game maker Harmonix Music Systems, and the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others. "The goal of our digital efforts is to make The Boston Globe as relevant in the 21st century as it has been for the last 140 years," said Jeff Moriarty, the Globe's vice president of digital products. Moriarty came from The New York Times the Globe's owner, to oversee the development of BostonGlobe.com.

He did not have to be coaxed into leaving New York. "To build a digital newspaper from scratch in 2011? Couldn't resist," said Moriarty, who has worked on websites such as andAbout.com. Building BostonGlobe.com meant thinking about how to publish for people who often do not use traditional desktop computers. Globe developers knew that readers will be just as likely to view the site on smartphones, tablet computers, and even televisions. That meant figuring out formats to fit a host of gadgets varying in screen size, computing power, and storage capacity.

Many companies have addressed the format issue by building different versions of a site one for desktop computers, another for mobile users. Or they build customized software apps for different mobile devices. BostonGlobe.com developers, with help from the Boston Web design company Filament Group, have adopted a different approach, called "responsive Web design." It is a way of building sites that vary their appearance and features depending on the device used to access them, so the same page, with no alterations, looks just right whether it BostonGlobe.com marks the first attempt to use responsive Web design on a large scale. "Everyone's waiting to see what does," he said. Weyenberg believes the new design will stumble over some of the advanced graphical features common to newspapers.

Sure enough, Globe developers found online crossword puzzles to be problematic the standard grid design will not fit well on a smartphone and they are experimenting with different approaches to build crosswords for any device. A beta version of the crossword using the programming language HTML 5 resizes to your screen and is believed to be one of the first of its kind. Still, a demonstration of the prototype on various devices including an iPhone, tablet computer, BlackBerry, Android phone, and e-book reader proved the software's versatility. No two of the displays look alike, but all are easy to read and share a sleek, uncluttered look. Moriarty said he and his team have lots more work to do as they test new online strategies in the media lab.

Screens at the coffee bar will stream news from Globe reporters via the popular Twitter 'You pick up any device and it just TODD PARKER On the site's design used. Also, if the device has onboard memory, the site will display an option to save a copy of a story so it can be read offline. "All the technology just kind of falls away," said Todd Parker, Filament Group partner. "The important thing is, you pick up any device no matter what shape, size, or capability and it just works." Aaron Weyenberg, an independent developer whose clients include sports site ESPN and the TED academic video service, said only subscription. That price is less than the paper's seven-day home delivery cost of $12.25 a week for subscribers within the Boston region, but more than Sunday-only home delivery of $3.50 a week.

Q. If I subscribe to the paper, must I pay for BostonGIobe.com? A. No, all home-delivery customers, including Sunday-only get free access. Q. How do I see the site? A.

Go to BostonGlobe.com and enter a temporary username, e-mail address, and password for free access during September. Later this month, newspaper subscribers, registered users of asked questions as Globe's new website is launched Frequently Q. When is BostonGlobe.com launching, and what is it? A. BostonGlobe.com, a new subscription-only website put together by the staff of The Boston Globe, is live today. To read all of the stories that appear in the newspaper, you must now go to BostonGlobe.com.

The site will also feature breaking news updates, exclusive videos and photo galleries, and other content produced by Globe journalists. The site is designed to combine the sensation of reading the daily print newspaper with vivid multimedia features and easy online navigation. As part of an effort to create the most comfortable reading environment, users will not encounter online pop Q. If I link to a BostonGlobe.com story on Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail, can others see the full story? What about if I come across a BostonGlobe.com story when I search on Google or Bing? A. BostonGlobe.com allows people who click through on links via search engines, social media, and e-mail to view, without charge, the full text of a story.

Access is limited to that one story. Q. What's the cost? A. The site will be free for the rest of September because of a promotion by residential real estate company Coldwell Banker. After that, BostonGlobe.com costs $3.99 a week for a digital- up, pop-under, or page takeover ads, although there will be limited advertising on the site.

Q. WhataboutBoston.com? A. Boston.com will remain free. It will continue to offer full daily sports coverage, breaking news updates, online features, and lifestyle information, as well as five stories selected from each day's print edition. Boston.com will also include summaries and headlines of stories on BostonGlobe.com, but you must be a subscriber to read those stories in full.

Boston.com is also in the process of adding two dozen new blogs, primarily related to business, consumers, and nightlife. Hiawatha Bray can be reached at brayglobe. com. not available in Internet Explorer 7 or 8. If you are browsing headlines on an iPhone and want to save a story to read later, touch the headline with two fingers to reveal the "My Saved" buttons.

If you are reading the story on your iPhone and want to save it, hit the save button at the top of the story with one finger. Offline features of "My Saved" are available by bookmarking the "My Saved" section and visiting through this bookmark to refresh your stories just before you go offline. Q. What if I have questions? A. You can call 617-929-2233.

Online chat help is also available on the site, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. A.DE LTA Boston.com, and readers who signed up for the free trial of BostonGlobe.com will receive instructions for subscribing to the website. Q. Do I need to do anything to take advantage of BostonGlobe-xomfeatures? A.

Though the site functions on almost all devices with a browser, its advanced features work best on the most recent version of browsers and those that support programming language HTML5, such as the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari. Certain features such as the "My Saved" function, which allows you to save a copy of a story for offline reading, are A11 iiiiiance for TOURISM.