

Prismatic creates a special signup for Google reader users - harper
http://getprismatic.com/reader

======
pudquick
For Google Reader refugees coming here hoping for their salvation, some
advance warning: Prismatic is not a straightforward RSS reader.

It's more similar in concept to Pandora - you tell it what content you're
interested in, it tries to generate a content feed you might find similarly
interesting.

This does not mean it's a poor source for information, quite the contrary -
it's a very useful information discovery tool.

However, it will not show you every post (unread or otherwise) from RSS feeds
of your choosing. It's just not that kind of tool.

Here's an (older) article on NYTimes regarding it:

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/prismatic-hopes-
to-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/prismatic-hopes-to-offer-a-
new-category-of-social-news/)

This new entry page on their site seems to be an extension of their Google
Reader integration they added last June, automating the import of your current
RSS feeds as 'seed' interests to generate your Prismatic feed:

[http://blog.getprismatic.com/blog/2012/6/1/prismatic-
integra...](http://blog.getprismatic.com/blog/2012/6/1/prismatic-integrates-
google-reader.html)

~~~
bradfordcross
u can subscribe directly to all your rss feeds and we're investing heavily in
being a better rss replacement in the next big release!

~~~
pudquick
From what I read from you elsewhere in these comments, though, subscribing to
an RSS feed in Prismatic does not (currently) mean you will see 100% of the
content in them - correct?

... If you are indeed changing it to include 100% of the feeds of my choosing,
that's great to hear.

What I ALWAYS want + 'a little extra I might like' is something I can
appreciate.

~~~
w01fe
Right on all counts. On the upside, we're smarter than an RSS reader for high-
volume feeds currently, and sort things based on how much we think you'll like
them (based on topics, social information, and more) rather than just by time.
Support for the 100%-of-feed use case is in the works, stay tuned.

~~~
danjessen
Hopefully that feature can be disabled ?!

~~~
pudquick
If by 'that feature' you mean the sort by perceived importance vs. time, I
hope they make that possible to configure.

If you instead mean the suggestion of additional content into your feed -
that's really the core point of Prismatic. I wouldn't expect to see that
configurable / given an "off" switch ever. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how
they'll monetize the product - slipping in pay-for-placement content that's
relevant to what you're reading.

------
karpathy
I used to be a huge fan of Prismatic until it mysteriously decided about a
month ago that all I want to hear about on main feed is Apple, Gadgets and
Social Media. My other 63 interests (including Physics/Web
dev/Genomics/Machine Learning/etc...) are nowhere to be seen and I find myself
having to navigate through some of them manually to see more awesome stories
that somehow don't make it to my main feed.

This is the problem I have with "smart" services that learn about you. They
eventually start doing things you don't want them to do and you don't know how
to change the behavior.

On the other hand, services like Google Reader have complete transparency. If
you subscribe to a blog you really like, a new post will light up on the left
and you don't have to be afraid of missing out. It places a little more burden
on the user sometimes, but at least I feel that I am in control and that I
know what is going on. It gives me peace of mind when I want it.

My (hopefully) constructive criticism amounts to asking for more transparency,
and more user control. Find ways of being clever and impressing me, but also
allow me to correct/improve or constraint you explicitly when I want to.
Otherwise, keep up the great work!

~~~
pilooch
I see you're a machine 'learnist'. If you feel like building your own
'intelligent' reader based on unsupervised learning, you can try
<https://xplr.com/developers/> (PM me for beta access).

We're playing a bit with news as demo, see
<https://xplr.com/products/illuminate/browser/>

I believe there's room for more innovation, beyond the 'classic' RSS reader,
without compromising on user control.

This is the reason why I'm mentioning the API above here (I'm a co-founder) as
I am personally unhappy with the existing readers, though Prismatic is good
(though too messy for my taste and usage).

------
lucb1e
> Prismatic is requesting permission to:

> View basic information about your account - OK

> Manage your data in Google Reader - Of course.

> View your email address - I get it, but I'd rather not.

> Manage your contacts - What?!

> Perform these operations when I'm not using the application - ...

Did anyone do it and notice anything weird?

~~~
w01fe
Don't worry, we're on your side :) We ask to read your contacts to help
autocomplete email addresses for email shares and help you find friends on
Prismatic (if you choose to do so). Last time I checked, Google didn't have a
read-only contacts permission level, or we'd be using it.

~~~
lucb1e
Okay that makes sense, but isn't it possible to make this optional? It's not
that I don't trust you in particular, but there have been a little too many
leaks for me to trust anyone with my full contact list. They don't need to get
spammed some day because I signed up for an alternative RSS reader and they
happened to get hacked or whatever.

I don't share things by e-mail anyway; if I wanna tell anyone about something
I've read I mostly use Google+ or MSN. That's why I ask if it could be made
optional (you'd be the first that I know to do this, but that'd make it that
much more awesome!).

~~~
antback
I agree. Sorry but I won't allow anyone to manage my contacts. This should be
optional.

------
dirtyaura
Why it needs an access to "manage my contacts"?

Compared to early crazy years of Facebook apps, there has recently been a
pleasant trend of apps asking just a minimum needed access rights and
gradually asking for more if it needs. Now that all major platforms (Facebook,
Google, Twitter, iOS) offer a pretty good way to display access rights - I
think Facebook's way of showing them is the most clear of the pack - access
right management seems a natural part of the application signup flow and not a
chore.

~~~
w01fe
We ask to read your contacts to autocomplete email addresses for email shares
and help you find friends on Prismatic (if you choose to do so). Last time I
checked, Google didn't have a read-only contacts permission level, or we'd be
using it.

~~~
dirtyaura
Ok, thanks for the explanation.

------
grayrest
Since the Prismatic team is reading, I'll post a couple requests/annoyances.

Context:

I'm on the obsessive side when it comes to news reading. I'm trying to
accurately predict the future, which mostly works. I clear out my full
Prismatic feed twice a day supplemented with first page HN twice daily and my
google reader subscription covering ~300 low-volume blogs and 5 planets. Out
of the 700-800 feed items I scan in a day, usually about 15 are interesting.
Prismatic sources 2-3 of these that I don't get in other sources and usually
has 10-11 of the 15 covered. I consider this to be excellent performance for a
single source and recommend it to pretty much everybody.

Issues:

* I get a lot of (exact) duplicate articles. It seems like my feed tries to pull ~350 articles. If I cover them all, then refresh, I'll frequently but not always get ~200 unread articles, 90% of which I've just skimmed. I've also had this happen a couple hours later with the same 90% previously read behavior. On a more infrequent basis, I get the same article repeated for months. As an example, I've been getting 'Journey through the MVC Jungle' once every two weeks or so since it was published last summer.

* Topic clustering for medium volume topics. I know you're doing this for higher volume topics (though I'd prefer slightly more pruning) but I get a lot of repeat articles for lower volume topics. My annoyance at the moment is the rash of "no Firefox on iOS" articles. It's a stupid story (no actual change in Moz policy) but I've had like 40 articles on the topic all from different sources over the last 3 days or so. Don't know if there's a great solution but I'd like to be able to blacklist `Firefox AND iOS` for the next two weeks.

* Integration of low volume sources. Personal blogs by clever people are the absolute best source material and I do not want to miss any articles in these feeds. Looks like you're on top of this.

* Topic bucketing. I find it easier to partition the news by topic and then do my skim. For example, I want to do all my Clojure articles in one pass, then Mozilla articles in a second pass, then Web Design articles in a pass, etc. This seems to be an unusual pattern but it helps me filter out duplicates faster which is important due to volume. I do it on Google Reader by grouping feeds into folders and 'gu[foldername]'.

* Can't read on the subway (Android). I emailed back and forth with Jacob last October and said that I'd write an offline capable mobile version of the site but I still haven't gotten around to it. Happily, my framework is coming together and with the closing of Reader I actually have a deadline to finish this.

Regards.

------
616c
Host your own, and support a FOSS developer by buying the mobile app on
Android (what I do).

<http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki>

~~~
rogerbinns
I like that it actually shows the feeds and articles. So many of the other
viewers out there including Prismatic seem obsessed with showing articles in
rectangles as graphically as possible. 99% of the items I read are text with
occasional complementary images.

------
sideproject
ok. I'll admit this.

Though I'm sad to see GR disappearing, the primary reason for not using GR for
me in the past 3 months has been because of Prismatic.

I've tried a NUMBER of content aggregators, content discovery tools, social
feeds (whatever you call it) because I do like finding good reads, so far I
think Prismatic team has very closely 'got it'.

It's by far the more accurate "we will find articles that you would be
interested based on your taste" tool from my opinion.

~~~
bdc
I gotta be honest, I can't figure out how to use this.

I imported my Google Reader data (or so I am led to believe), but all I see is
a generic feed full of (admittedly interesting, but not what I want) generic
news stories. I see a way of adding 'interests' but not 'feeds'.

My confusion is somewhat assuaged by the awesome '/people' page.

Is this a Reader replacement, or a Reader poaching?

\--

[edit: I see that this tool does not include an RSS reader, which I thought it
would based on the invitation screen. This does not do anything that I use
Google Reader for... which is to read RSS feeds!]

~~~
bradfordcross
You can add both feeds and topics - it'sa bit of a whole new world :) give it
a go and see how things work out for you. we are always actively listening on
twitter and feedback@getprismatic.com

------
conikeec
Prismatic is beyond Google Reader in terms of features and utility. It's my
default application for discovery at this point

~~~
bradfordcross
boom! and let us know how we can make it better!

~~~
NickNameNick
I'm getting a 400 error when I try to complete the 'choose a username' screen.
No visible reaction to pushing the continue button at all, but the error shows
up in chrome's console. "Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token O"

~~~
bradfordcross
what browser and os? does it persist?

~~~
NickNameNick
Chrome 25 on windows 7. I just tried again from scratch, without going through
the google oAuth page, and its worked this way. No idea what went wrong the
first time around.

------
sans_seraph
Prismatic has been my favorite "rss reader replacement" for awhile now, great
marketing idea to try to capitalize on this.

~~~
bradfordcross
delighted to hear it! how can we make it better?

------
vdm
Kudos for moving on this quickly, here is my feedback.

When I clicked the OP link, I got a 'Sign up with Google Reader' link even
though I have a logged-in Prismatic account already. After clicking through
Google's authorize UI I received a 'Welcome to Prismatic' email so I think I
might have created a dup account, but I can't tell. I would expect to be able
to see my Twitter account and my Google Reader account in the same
profile/settings page.

I expected a 'connect' UI like is used with OAuth on StackOverflow, alongside
Twitter etc.

I think my Google Reader account will be a better source of data for Prismatic
than my Twitter account. I would like to drill down to the explicit mapping
inferred by Prismatic from generic 'Interest' to specific 'Feed' and be able
to follow a feed ad hoc, bypassing the inference.

~~~
osi
+100

I already have prismatic via twitter, i'd love to add my google reader stuff.

------
corroded
I'm sorry, I tried this and thought it imported my google reader stuff but it
didn't. Instead, it suggested articles for me to read etc and eventually I
decided this is not my GR replacement. (Don't get me wrong, I'd totally use
this IF I wasn't on GR. This is good for first time, but for migrating from
GR, I don't think so)

I wanted to delete my account since I don't plan on using it....but then
there's no delete account! Shouldn't that be one of the first features?
(Although I do understand people make it hard for users to delete to give
their apps a chance)

~~~
w01fe
Sorry for your bad experience. The import adds both your subscriptions as well
as topic feeds we think you'll be interested in based on your GR activity, so
it's not going to be exactly the same content. You can remove them if you like
by going from 'interests' in the home or profile header.

We currently process delete account requests manually -- if you use the
feedback tool within the app or email us at feedback@getprismatic.com we'll be
happy to take care of it for you. Adding this as an option directly within the
app is in the works as well.

~~~
corroded
Thanks. No worries there :) I am not into bashing other people's hard work,
but sometimes you just know it's not fit for you (case in point, mine).

I got confused the first tie with those jumping bubbles after the import as
well. So I just went straight and clicked "Get Started". Anyway, I'm just
saying it's not for me, but everyone, please try it first to see for yourself
:) It has a neat UI and all.

------
bravura
@bradfordcross: Since you've been asking what you can do to make Prismatic
better...

I want a weekly heads-up on all important news items in a particular domain.
So I can make sure I'm staying on top of it.

I like to browse Prismatic daily because of the mix of recommendations
relevant to my space, and fun pieces. When I skip reading Prismatic for a few
days, I feel like I might have missed important news.

So essentially, I want a really heavily filtered Prismatic for a few
particularly crucial topics of interest to me, that I can review weekly.

~~~
w01fe
Thanks for the feedback -- this is a great idea, and something we've been
thinking about for awhile ... stay tuned :)

------
blntechie
Looks awesome. Believe, it is similar to Zite that it recommends news based on
interest rather than predefined feed?. I love Zite for the fact.

Also, hate to be that guy. I'm one among the rarest who use Windows Phone. The
site looks okay in IE but for few minor UI issues. Will be great if you can
correct some of them without going much out of your way considering your
priorities. Also, if it works in desktop IE 10, it will most probably work
well in mobile IE 10 as well in case you want to check it.

Good luck!

~~~
genwin
Zite sounds a bit like Niflet.com, which adapts to your interests. No pretty
pictures but loads super fast. Works on every device that has a browser.

------
eaurouge
I already have a Prismatic account. Can I merge my Google Reader account with
my existing Prismatic account? I tried to do this but it doesn't look like
it's possible.

------
gertburger
For the oauth login it requires the following permissions: View basic
information about your account, Manage your data in Google Reader, View your
email address Manage your contacts, View and manage your Google Contacts,
Perform these operations when I'm not using the application

Why would it want access to view AND MANAGE my contacts? This seems a bit odd.

~~~
w01fe
I understand your concern ... see my response here:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5373701>

Short answer, we don't want access to _manage_ your contacts, there's just not
a read-only option (last time I checked).

------
jshen
Can I put individual feeds into prismatic and be shwb every post?

~~~
jami
The answer to the first half of your question is no, so the whole question
evaluates to false, whatever the second half may be.

~~~
bradfordcross
changing soon

------
sideproject
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A25VgNZDQ08#at=78)

------
misiti3780
i cant say enough positive things about prismatic. i have been using it for
months and it bubbles up 90% of what i want to read. i thought it was just me,
so I recommended it to non-tech friends and three of them all have come back
and admitted they do most of their reading via prismatic. i was very skeptical
initially, but have been presently surprised.

~~~
bradfordcross
thanks so much! what can we do to make it even better?

~~~
bmjunk
Please get some more sharing integrations into the app. I want Buffer
integration. Also I would love to have Pocket integration for reading
something later.

------
sidcool
What do they need my contacts for. Nop.

