

Show HN: kouio, the Reader you've always wanted - stephen_mcd
https://kouio.com

======
heyitsnick
First question i always have - what's the feed refresh frequency? For me (a
journalist who needs keeps very close tabs on hundreds of sites), the only
feed reader so far that's been of acceptable speed is Newsblur (i believe the
refresh rate is 5 minutes), and I'd happily pay more for faster.

~~~
stephen_mcd
Love this question. It's 5 minutes to start with, but it gradually backs off
based on a few things, like average time between the most recent items in the
feed.

Also right now due to the HN rush our worker queue's a little backed up, but
it'll catch up soon enough.

~~~
heyitsnick
Thanks for the reply, will certainly check it out.

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ruswick
This product appears to be decently-executed, but the same can be said about
most RSS readers. Frankly, this looks identical in both aesthetic and
functionality to the dozens of other services that are attempting to supplant
Reader. Feedly and Digg reader already offer this product for free. Fever,
Feedspot et al. offer novel idiosyncrasies that cater to niche markets. (And
"we want to be sustainable" is not a unique justification. There are a myriad
of other services offering the same appeal.)

You've made a great product, but so has everyone else. Why is kouio unique,
and why does it warrant $5 per month?

~~~
aobyrne
We want kouio to offer the absolute best experience for our users, without
compromise. A small monthly fee will allow us to deliver a level of quality &
dependability that a paying customer should expect. We've received a lot of
really encouraging feedback so far from people who 'get' the motivation behind
kouio, and can't wait to support us. Will the pricing be for everyone?
Definitely not, but we're confident that our users won't be disappointed.

~~~
neilbowers
$5 isn't a small monthly fee, for a newsreader.

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harryf
The closest thing to the reader I always wanted is Hackernews; a selection of
significant, educational and relevant articles on topics I'm interested in.

Meanwhile RSS readers have done little, if anything, to figure out how not to
waste my time "nexting" through stuff I have no time or interest in.

The entry point for any software in this field should be "how much time per
day do you have to spend on reading feeds?"

For example medium.com has a brilliant little feature - labelling articles
with the time it takes to read them e.g. "2 min read". Yes! More like this
please.

~~~
rcfox
If you're constantly getting content that you're not interested in, then you
should unsubscribe from that feed.

There have been many attempts at trying to figure out what you'll like. They
either try to recommend stuff that they think you'll like ("Oh, you like
computers? Check out this cat at a computer that 2308234 people have
reshared!" Ugh.) or filter out the stuff they think you won't like. That's not
how I (or the majority of people that I have talked to about RSS) use RSS
though! We want every single update, no matter how unpopular they were.

As for length, it's trivial to see a giant wall of text and either click next
or mark as unread to return to it later. I've tried Google Reader's "magic"
sorting, among other ways of sorting articles, but I always end up on "oldest
first" or "newest first", depending on the content.

------
olegp
Looks really well designed! I added it to our list of reader alternatives
here: [https://starthq.com/apps/kouio](https://starthq.com/apps/kouio)

As a sidenote: I think it's quite ironic that your blog doesn't have an RSS
feed. I noticed the same thing for some of the other alternatives we've
listed.

~~~
stephen_mcd
Thanks a lot!

I guess it's a little embarrassing, but it's not actually a proper blog - just
a static page. We've just been too focused on polishing the app itself to
worry about that :-)

~~~
olegp
Makes sense. Send me a tweet @starthq when you get around to adding the feed
and I'll include it in the directory.

~~~
stephen_mcd
Will do, thanks again.

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JeffJenkins
Is this going to be freemium like NewsBlur or pay-only? I'm happy to use the
service and tell people how much I like it (and at first glance I like it a
lot more than the other readers I've used!), but I have ~20 feeds almost all
of which rarely update so $5/month is a hard sell.

------
rdl
Do you have any plans to develop iPad/iPhone/etc. readers yourself, or just
have them use your API?

~~~
stephen_mcd
Yes to both! Apps for other devices are certainly coming, and they'll make use
of the same API we've published.

------
flgr
While I like the list view, I'm missing one thing:

Would it be possible to add the title of the blog an item is from in lighter
text?

~~~
stephen_mcd
Yeah we've discussed that today actually. It'll either be that, or the blog's
favicon - not sure which but it's definitely needed.

------
manuelflara
Looks good. A few questions, though: 1\. Is there no "Mark all as read" (per
feed, and general)? 2\. Is there a way to only show those feeds with new
items? 3\. It says "Free for July". Afterwards what's the pricing? 4\. Is
there a mobile app or mobile-optimized site? Thanks!

~~~
stephen_mcd
1) There are a few little ui functions like "mark all read" still missing,
those will come over the next day or so - we just wanted to get this out right
now to give people a chance to do the one-step Reader import before it shuts
down. Actually if you look at our API you'll see it already supports mark all
as read, just missing the button.

2) No but that's a great idea, we'll definitely try and work that in shortly,
thanks!

3) We're charging $5 a month - we talk about it in much more detail in our
initial blog post and FAQ.

4) Not yet, that's our next "big ticket" item, but it's absolutely coming.

~~~
manuelflara
Great thanks. About the mobile thing, I absolutely don't need a dedicated
native app. Something like Google Reader's own mobile UI would be totally OK.

------
renke1
j/k missing. Instead up and down are used to go to the next/previous article.
How am I supposed to scroll in an article? I am starting to think I really
have to make my very own feed reader that fits my needs.

Edit: Ah, good luck with your reader though!

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daturkel
Needs the j/k shortcuts of GR!

~~~
ldng
yep, Reader keyboard navigation seems overlooked by most clones sadly

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Sujan
FF22 on Win7 doesn't like your font at all, blog post is very hard, same in
the app. @yoleoreader had the same problem and changed to a different font I
think (maybe only for some users like me?), much better now.

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JoJos
Please allow password verification on account creation. I realize you're going
for minimalism, but it's really bad UX.

~~~
pallinder
Is it?

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rrjanbiah
OT/@Mods: Help required... I can't save/upvote this and recent stories (Upvote
not preserved).

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mosselman
Stop making all these readers please.

~~~
stephen_mcd
Why do you hate reading?

~~~
mosselman
It is just a waste of time and talent. I mean this reader looks great, but why
does it exist? Someone with this talent could have built something more useful
to actually make a difference in something.

Google reader quits and now everybody runs to make some sort of RSS reader.
The times they are a changin', get over it.

~~~
est
Yeah please tell us what you have got over to? Twitter? Facebook?

