
Review My One-Day Project: Shared Words - aaronbrethorst
http://sharedwords.org/
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dbingham
I know we like to keep Hacker News non-political, but I can't help this. Get a
load of Fox. Could they be _any_ more blatant? I mean, seriously! Compare
their five most shared headlines with all the other news sites. You read those
and you think the world's going to end. Then you read the other headlines and
its like wait, the world's not ending?

~~~
iuguy
Of all the headlines, the most 'normal' seems to be Al-Jazeera.

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dbingham
It's strange, given everything you hear about Al-Jazeera back in the states,
but their English language service is the best news I've ever gotten short of
NPR's All Things Considered or the PBS New Hour.

I was never even exposed to it until we got here to Thailand. And all you hear
about Al-Jazeera back in the states is bad stuff. They are an _Islamic_
broadcast station. Said in that way to mean extremist, terrorist or
theocratic. But they're not! They're like the BBC world only less sensational
and with better investigative journalism. That or they're so sneaky and subtle
about it that I'm being brainwashed by subliminal messaging and am not even
aware of it.

~~~
iuguy
I spent some time in Qatar years back and got to know a couple of guys that
were working there then when it was being set up. They wanted to have an Arab
equivalent to the BBC or CNN. They were very impressed with the first Gulf War
coverage on CNN and with the BBC's quality, but wanted an unbiased Arab news
channel that would make the middle east the primary focus, rather than solely
a source of trouble.

I tend to find there's not much by way of Islamic content in it (compared to
other state news channels in the region) but the quality is far greater than
say, Russia Today.

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mortenjorck
This could be especially interesting as a record if you start archiving by day
or perhaps week. Imagine jumping back to a Shared Words page just about this
time two years ago...

Also, I see you have "Seattle;" are you toying with the idea of adding
regional groupings of sources?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
As the database grows i'll definitely look into adding time-based views. I
added Seattle because that's where I live, but I'm planning on adding some
customization features so you could make it regional.

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gusper
Like the Tech page a lot and the idea in general.

Some thoughts/suggestions:

\- Change the font. Really distracting.

\- Like the simplicity and little splash of color provided by the favicons.

\- Agree with photon_off on the popup menu. It also overlaps with its
headline.

\- I'd make the 'shared by' column more subtle (e.g., gray text instead) so
the headlines jump out more.

\- Add some padding between it and the headline as the longer headlines run
right into it.

\- A more visual way of representing the 'shared by' column might be nicer as
well. It's not clear it matters to me exactly how many people shared an
article but getting a sense of one headline vs. the others seems valuable.

\- Totally a personal preference for me, but how repetitive "People" is in the
'shared by' column distracts me; the fact that it's a capital 'P' does too. :)

Nice work though. I can see this becoming a nice browser home page if you add
some more customizability around the sources and their ordering.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Thanks, excellent feedback. I'll do all of this. Also, I do plan on adding
some more customization options.

~~~
donpark
I would also move source column to right. Readers want to focus on article
titles, not where it came from.

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photon_off
I like it. I spent a few minutes looking at some headlines and was satisfied
with it.

I think it's more important to group stories by category (if it's possible),
than it is by source.

Where are you getting the "shared" data from? Ah, I see it says "facebook" on
the bottom. What's the specific API call to get this data?

I dislike the menu thing that pops up when I hover over a link. It is
distracting. There's no need for it to be that easily accessible, because most
of the time I won't use the feature, and it doesn't need to be shown before I
even click through to the link. Perhaps show a little + icon to the left (or
right) of the link, and have it open up this menu when I click it.

One last thing, I really dislike the font.

All-in-all, a very nice production. I've bookmarked it and will probably check
it once a day. Good work.

~~~
petercooper
+1 for not being keen on the font. Or, more accurately, the typography. Goudy
isn't a horrible font but it doesn't work well at the sizes used, the source
titles don't line up with the stories, the leading is bad in the "logo", and
so on.

Even just diving to Georgia (or Helvetica) with default leading and getting
the layout grid right would make a massive difference to this page.

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dawgyDoo
A comments section for the stories would be cool too. Make it like HN. It
feels so lonely without community feedback.

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paulsb
Very nice. I am beginning to use these summary sites more often.

I did notice one thing/error: Some of the titles for the stories don't show up
correctly and are just the URL to the story. Sometimes you can tell what the
story is from the URL but this is not always the case, especially for HN URLs.

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jasonz
Very nice, it would be cool to sort by topic.

also I would want to change the order of the sources.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I'm definitely planning on adding customization features.

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agentultra
Awesome. Finally. I really needed a news site like this. I'm tired of reading
the same articles all over the place.

More so, I hate having to explain to some of my nerd friends, "yeah I read
that too."

Now hopefully it can be implied that we all read the same stuff.

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Joeboy
The numbers seem a bit implausible to me. The top Fox News page only has 530
shares? A sixth as many as the top Huffington Post story? Maybe my sense of US
media empires' importance is skewed.

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CrazedGeek
I think I've just found my new news site. My only issue is the way the sharing
links work- I browse a bit from my phone and iPad, and neither like mouseovers
much. Works great though!

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I'm planning on adding a custom iOS interface. I just haven't had a chance
yet. Soon though!

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nessence
Nice and clean look. Have you considered lexical parsing to generate a list of
trending phrases?

I suppose there are several possibilities to track trends this way.

Great job.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
That's definitely something I'm considering doing in the future...Maybe on day
3 :)

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known
Please include <http://foxnews.com> and <http://salon.com> to cover the
extreme ends.

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fgblanch
It's great. I just miss two features to be an everyday use service:

\- Time periods: Shares in a week, month, year \- Being able to add the sites
each user like

Great work!

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thepumpkin1979
Great Idea, just one thing: consider adding a favicon, I don't use titles in
my bookmarks so I have no way to identify your website in my bookmarks bar.

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revorad
Looks interesting. Wouldn't it be better if you ranked the news sources in
descending order of total shares instead of alphabetically?

~~~
pilom
I agree, I want to know the most popular sites and the most popular articles
overall.

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may
Awesome. _tweets_

