Countdown to What?: NYT Mobile?

It was with high hopes that I dialed up http://mobile.nytimes.com, as the announcement of its launch came over the web. First blush: wonderful for what's not there. No more section headings, footers, headers, slowly unfolding code masquerading as news. It loads fast and de-clutters the mobile offering.

Second blush: Couldn't there be more there there ?

What we get is the top news of the day, four or five or ten stories, oddly numbered. Numbered?

As a veteran features editor, I like numbering -- 10 Top Things to Do This Weekend, 10 Ways the Internet Can Save the News Industry. I like Keith Olbermann's Countdown (right) , which in its nerve and ferocity has been a special must-watch lately. But numberings, those countdowns, imply some kind of qualitative and quantitative judgment. What the Times' web editors are doing is simply giving us the news of the moment. No numbers, please.

Please get rid of the numbers, and give us more choices. We use the Times for all kinds of things. Instead of giving us after-thought newspaper section nav at the bottom of the scroll, think about how we users may use the Times' whole range of coverage.

It's September: give us easy access to the best Mets, Yankees and baseball coverage. It was the 9/11 anniversary, with all kinds of special features and columns -- nowhere to be noted on the first screen, or the nav. Theater and dining and art -- all reasons people living in the city, and those visiting it, use the Times. Of course, there are many other editorial opportunities to call out, and perhaps to do it by time of the day. I first opened it up Friday evening, and it was the news, just the news, which hadn't changed much all day. Day-parting. Life-parting. Please part the tired news waters.

At least, CNN and MSNBC give us some better top nav choices, either by dropdown or links, some greater sense -- though not great given the postage stamp real estate conundrum -- that they know what readers come to their mobile sites for. Then, there's the Handmark Express product, underdeveloped and largely populated with AP content, but sporting a quick, easy-to-use interface that gets you to the stuff you want fairly directly.

Then, of course, there's commerce. The product needs to engage the ticketing options, classified options, sales options that readers want -- and which will feed the Times' staff, newly depleted by a buyout earlier this year.

In its announcement, the Times said it would adding movietimes, stock quotes and more to the site.  The more, the better, and the sooner, the better. With the marketing pushes of the Blackberry Pearl, the multiplying flavors of Treos, the launch of the new Nokia Blackberry-like device selling for under $200, smartphones are becoming mainstream. And many Americans are starting to figure out what "data" means on those semi-smart handsets they've bought over the last year or so. It's a huge market, and another that newspaper companies have been slow to move on.

So, kudos to the Times for getting rid of the clutter; now please help lead the way with bringing the joys of mobile data to the market.