This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here.

One of the major new features promised when the Times announced an exciting new redesign of its website at the start of April was the MyTimes personalized homepages — enriched with the expertise of real, live Timespeople. Of course, MyTimes wasn't actually available then, and, six week later, it's still not. But good news: It's getting close! A memo to Times staffers yesterday afternoon announced it is finally being introduced internally. ("Please do not distribute information about it outside the company," the memo says. So: Shhh!) Invitations will go out to those readers who signed up to be notified in a week or two, and it'll go to all readers a bit later. We can barely contain ourselves till then.

Full memo after the jump.

From: Rich Meislin
Date: May 17, 2006 3:02 PM
Subject: Please try My Times
To: List Suppressed

Folks,

I'm pleased to introduce you to My Times — a new way to personalize NYTimes.com. It lets you create a customized page gathering your favorite information from The Times and elsewhere on the Web, with guidance (if you want it) from Times reporters and editors.

Consider this your invitation to hammer on it.

I'm going to tell you as little as possible about it so you can have the experience a typical user of NYTimes.com would have in coming to the site. Point your browser here:

http://beta.my.nytimes.com/inbox/

Right now it works on Firefox for Windows and the Mac; it will be available on Internet Explorer for Windows in a day or two. (Safari support for Mac OS X will be coming.)

For now, My Times is accessible only internally — you must be physically within the New York Times network or attached via SecurID to use it. Please do not distribute information about it outside the company. We're keeping it to ourselves for the next week or two in order to find any major bugs, and to get your comments and suggestions.

Expect the unexpected — this software is still under development, and it's not unlikely that you will encounter some difficulties. Please help us by providing your comments and suggestions through the form you'll find here:

http://www.nytimes.com/membercenter/formmytimes.html

After we have hammered out any major bugs and tested how My Times performs with larger numbers of users, we will invite readers who have expressed an interest in My Times to join the test. Finally, we will enable any NYTimes.com member to use it. If all goes well, this should happen by early June.

A special thanks goes to Philippe Lourier, the engineer who has helped pull all this together, and to the team that has worked hard to bring this idea to life. Thanks also to the reporters, critics, columnists and editors who have provided us with views of their suggested sources from both NYTimes.com and around the web.

Best, Rich