

Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing - mauriciogardini
http://mauriciogardini.com/post/53784250046/lector-a-news-reader-for-people-who-want-one-simple

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crux
This might be sufficient for a first draft but it's also a great illustration
of a lazy cliche that I'm seeing a lot—especially in this newly invigorated
field, feed readers.

This is the sort of app that leads to minimalist-style marketing. '...One
simple thing: read'. The current crop of online text editors has a similar
impulse: 'The app for people who just want to write.' What these apps'
creators mean is that their apps strip down the experience to the bare
essentials of the activity, and don't throw a lot of extraneous bullshit in
your face when you're trying to get your reading/writing/weather-checking
done.

Which misses the mark a little bit. If your interface is simply a
recapitulation of the received wisdom around feed reading, or text editing—if
your app looks like what you'd get if you took all the feed readers that have
been made and incorporated only those features that occur in all of them—then
you haven't achieved minimalism. You've achieved superfluousness—the very
thing you were trying to avoid!

Minimalism, as we should all know by now, isn't simply _not including_
features. It's putting a lot of hard work into eliding the cognitive load
around the accomplishment of a specific task. The text editing web app that
sets my world on fire won't be another Markdown-enabled text box that lets me
go to full screen, it's going to be a Markdown-enabled text box that
understands my intention and fulfills it in ways that I, not being a brilliant
application designer, have not yet imagined.

At the very least, if you can't or won't tout a new, whiz-bang feature, get me
excited about what it is that you've cut away, what you've devised how to do
without, to really deliver on the promise of simplicity (that is, simplicity
of use—not design or construction) and essentialism. On the other hand, the
promise of a wide range of features to come, many ideas to be implemented,
seems to work directly against the header of this article. One's audience
should not be, I believe, people who want one simple thing now and a bunch of
neat gizmos later.

~~~
juliogreff
You got a point. About the features to come, I have to disagree with you
tough. We didn't disclose on the page what features we're going to include, so
I don't blame you. On the top of our list, there's pubsubhubbub (so your news
get to you faster), a mobile webapp, offline reading and some interface tweaks
that a lot of people told us they want. I don't consider this "neat gizmos",
they are only supporting the one simple thing you want, which is reading.
We'll not be adding tons of social features, fancy viewing modes or anything
like that.

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helper
The one feature that I actually care about and no one seems to have is full
text search of your feed history. This is a feature I'm willing to pay money
for. Why isn't anyone doing this?

~~~
mauriciogardini
Yeah, that's a feature that I want too, helper. We even discussed about it
when we were deciding the features we would include in this initial release,
and we decided not to include search at all. For now.

Full-text search is a feature that is very resource-intensive, and providing
something like that for now would be like a shot in the foot: for us, that
manage the servers, which would have a bad time trying to balance the things;
and for you, users, which wouldn't have a good user experience.

So, yeah, it always've been on our mind, but not for now.

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tux1968
Signed up and added a few feeds, added a double by mistake, couldn't figure
out how to remove it. Waited 10 minutes and still no items in any feeds. Could
turn into something nice, but I think the $36/year is a little premature at
this point. Will check back.

~~~
juliogreff
We're now finishing the interface to properly manage your subscriptions.
Should be online within a week or so.

About the feeds, the updates are taking a little longer than expected, it's
around 15 to 20 minutes now. HN effect probably, I'm working on speeding
things up. Let me know if things are still not working for you.

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frio
The design of this seems very similar to yoleoreader.com. I'm not having a go;
I suspect that as this market space becomes more popular, we will see lots of
similar designs (even if they're arrived at independently) -- but it might be
worth spending some time to differentiate yourself a little more.

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deanacus
Certainly looks nice. I'm primarily curious as to whether there'll be mobile
version (whether app or webapp). I couldn't see anything about it in the post
or on the site.

$36/year might be a touch too much at this point, but if with a mobile app,
I'd definitely be willing to pay it.

~~~
juliogreff
We're planning to add a webapp for mobile very soon, right after we fix the
issues that invariably will pop up from the launch. We'll be avoiding native
apps for now. Offline reading is also on our plans, if that's important for
you.

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muglug
If your app is designed to do one thing, please take the time to find a
typeface that is incredibly legible, and then set it so that scanning long
paragraphs is a simple matter.

That condensed typeface you've chosen, and the fit-to-width paragraph size
make it harder than necessary for users.

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anakha
In light of all the recent talk of privacy, I'd want to know more about how
this is handled by the service. The web page is remarkably lacking in any
click throughs for detail on the bullet points. Definitely a sticking point
for deciding whether to sign up.

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dysoco
The fact that we have created news readers for people who just want to read
news, and blogging platforms for people who just want to blog, shows us how
much we have degenerated... This shouldn't be the exception, but the norm.

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jhasse
It's missing "All feeds". ("What's new" has no list view)

Otherwise very good job! I like it :)

~~~
juliogreff
This has been requested a thousand of times already, and we're listening. It's
on the top of our list. We're dealing with some problems about feed data right
now, but as soon as they're fixed we'll start working on it.

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irq
Does this service provide an emulated Google Reader API endpoint so I can
point client programs at it (like iOS's Reeder)?

~~~
juliogreff
Not yet, but we wouldn't be opposed to implement it if there's enough demand.
It may take a while though, as we have other priorities atm.

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moseymosey
[http://readable.cc](http://readable.cc)

