The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) has expanded its tech ambitions online: it has relaunched its tech section in a major way, and added some cool features, including what can be characterized as a Techmeme competitor. It has added third party sources such as IDG and selected stories from our site as well. Besides the syndication deals, it has added an automated tech news/blog aggregator from its other site Blogrunner (which it bought early last year). Says Saul Hansell, the tech section editor in an e-mail: “Unlike Google (NSDQ: GOOG) News and Techmeme, we aren’t trying to prove machines can be better editors than people. We have a hybrid model, with Web Crawlers and Editors both helping find and ranks posts.” More details in the release.

From from Saul on the Bits blog about the relaunch.

Disclaimer: We have a syndication deal with NYTimes.com, whereby the site is publishing selected stories from paidContent.org.