• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, March 29, 2007

For a cherished old media institution, The New Yorker’s cartoons are becoming a Web 2.0 fixture — downloadable, e-mailable and personalized. And now, courtesy of start-up RingTales, the black-and-white cartoons can be viewed as animated clips — in color.

The 15- to 30-second clips can be watched for free on the New Yorker Web site or via a podcast at the iTunes Store or RingTales.com. The company hopes to syndicate the animations across the Web and mobile devices.

“We want to get them out there so they’ll become a habit-forming experience,” says Jim Cox, a feature animation writer and producer, who co-founded RingTales last year with cartoonist Michael Fry.

The cartoons have already broken into the top 25 podcasts charted on iTunes. Working with mobile ad specialist Ad Infuse, RingTales plans to sell short post-roll ads to monetize the project.

With the exclusive right to animate all 70,000 New Yorker cartoons, the company has no shortage of material to work with.