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Show HN: Lesen.io a multi source tech reader for Hacker News, Reddit and Slashdot

33 points| messutied | 9 years ago |lesen.io | reply

41 comments

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[+] themckman|9 years ago|reply
The German language appears to have a lot of good words for app names. In fact, a lot of times when I'm trying to come up with names for apps and such, I usually just head over to Google Translate and start translating mundane English words into other languages until I get one that sounds cool coming off my American-English tongue.

Lesen is the German verb meaning "to read". There was another submission recently about an immutable/persistent data structure library named Immer which means, roughly, "always".

[+] messutied|9 years ago|reply
Definitively, I'm living in Germany currently and trying to learn the language, hence the inspiration too
[+] cdvonstinkpot|9 years ago|reply
This is great (!) to know.

I'd like to 'favorite' this comment, but don't see a link with which to do so. :-(

Could anyone advise on how?

[+] messutied|9 years ago|reply
I’ve been working on this app for reading Tech news from multiple sources in one place and having easy access to the comments of each one, its something I really wanted for me and didn’t find an app that would do it right.

I’d like to get some feedback before going much further on development, this is the very minimal version of what I want it to be.

Stuff that I plan to add:

- More sources (what other sources you know that would make sense to include?) - Save for later (even though I can already save to pocket from the app, this would be nice to have) - Configurable sources - Allow hiding stories - Detection and hiding of duplicates - User accounts: allow to sync read, hidden and saved articles across platforms

What else would you like seeing in this app? :)

[+] sonofgod|9 years ago|reply
No splash screen. Just show me the web app already, and maybe tell me there's an app on the webapp page. :P
[+] basch|9 years ago|reply
My favorite reading apps.

1) https://longform.org/ http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/longform/id490437064?mt=8

2) https://usepanda.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/panda-lite/id934805959?mt=8

3) https://redef.com/ app not in appstore

4) medium

5) feedly

Longform has a particularly attractive feature that restores your spot in a page when iOS terminates the app. Longform and Panda and Redef are all incredibly useful without customizing them.

If you are looking for sources check out Panda AND these lists https://redef.com/charts/sources/total http://www.aldaily.com/media http://scitechdaily.com/resources/ http://www.techmeme.com/lb http://www.mediagazer.com/lb http://www.memeorandum.com/lb https://longform.org/archive/publications https://longform.org/archive/writers

I prefer when "save for later" buttons are customizable, so you can set it to save to pocket, pinboard, feedly etc.

[+] cdvonstinkpot|9 years ago|reply
>What else would you like seeing in this app? :)

I'd like to be able to select & apply different comment sort methods globally. Maybe a drop-down that applies the user-rating at top like HN does, but for the other sites' comments, too, who don't do it that way themselves. Come to think of it, it might be fun to sort the main list based on the rating of the articles' submitters, as opposed to their being based on the individual articles' score on their origin site. Like ordering the main page like HN orders comments. ...Just an idea-

[+] notjackson|9 years ago|reply
3D Touch integration!

(Quick preview of site, just like on safari)

[+] charlieegan3|9 years ago|reply
How are the rankings for items from HN & Reddit weighted in the 'all' list? Surely this is hard to balance correctly?

When I made http://serializer.io I opted to list items that reached a certain threshold sequentially but I've wondered about how I might better present the vote information.

[+] messutied|9 years ago|reply
Well really I just keep the ranking order as in each source site and intercalate them, like one HN one Reddit, one Slashdot, all keeping the order of each front page.

I'm still thinking on what would be the optimal way to display them, but didn't heard of http://serializer.io is it basically the same concept? the only site I found doing a similar thing was http://reader.one/ but its IOS app is not so nice.

[+] Hydraulix989|9 years ago|reply
Any plans on adding an RSS feed to the web app version?

What about an Android version (many of us don't have iOS, especially techies in South Korea)?

I guess the RSS feed will do.

[+] lewisjoe|9 years ago|reply
A bit off topic here. I'd like to appreciate how tiny, the payload for the site is. The main js, is just over 18 kb. Too small for a SPA. It loads quickly and reacts reasonably quickly. Good job on that.

Noticed that the analytics related js file alone, took over 11kb. We can do a better job at this.

[+] messutied|9 years ago|reply
Thanks :) Im proud at the minimalistic approach I took for this project, been working with react.js lately, I just wanted the simplest and fastest type of app here, and Phoenix seems to be responding pretty well too
[+] notheguyouthink|9 years ago|reply
Sidenote, this UI is really white. Really, really white. A dark option would be huge for me :)
[+] messutied|9 years ago|reply
Thanks for the feedback :) I will consider adding a dark theme option, I thought very white UI would be nice for readability
[+] gressquel|9 years ago|reply
maybe you should make the webapp version the front page, with the "get the app on appstore" as just a link.
[+] anondon|9 years ago|reply
It's nice to have a single interface to access multiple sources, but when you click on the comments you are taken to the origin site's comment section. If you could comment directly from your webapp that would be a very useful.
[+] basch|9 years ago|reply
Panda is already really good at this, specifically for these type of sites, without the customization/personalization hurdles of feedly et al.

https://usepanda.com/

The browser app and chrome extension let you click to go either to the comments or directly to the post. works for tons of sites like hacker news, lobsters etc.

[+] tytrin|9 years ago|reply
Cool! If you've currated the sources that could make it easier. You should take a look at feedly [ http://feedly.com/ ]. You could learn from their UX, and maybe improve upon it. I currently use them on my browser and my phone(android), and I enjoy the experience and control.

Good luck!

[+] messutied|9 years ago|reply
Thanks for the feedback, I thought people would appreciate a more minimalistic UI similar to Hacker News, but I might have gone too far :)
[+] jeremyswank|9 years ago|reply
The web app version should have an RSS feed.
[+] lightedman|9 years ago|reply
So we're aggregating aggregators, now?
[+] messutied|9 years ago|reply
Well yes :D I really like aggregators as for me great part of the experience is the community, reading the comments, so I wanted a place where I can do this for the different aggregators
[+] notheguyouthink|9 years ago|reply
Another good source to add is Lobste.rs. I love it. If it was more popular i'd easily pick it over Reddit/HN, but it's quite small currently.