

Rate/review Newsbrane.com - personalized news recommendation - lincolnq
http://newsbrane.com/

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Kaizyn
No, it won't replace HN. It would need good content and less fluff to start.
Additionally, it would need a way to quickly scan through the article
headlines without having to deal with article content so that you can more
easily skip the filler articles. In short, this might be a nice alternative to
digg.

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lincolnq
OK, thanks.

What I'm understanding from your post is that the front page needs work. Is
this accurate -- you didn't see anything you liked on the front?

(Edit: I also understood that you want to be able to scan the headlines, and
that's something that I'm interested in too.)

There's lots of high-quality content in the site (we pull from several hundred
RSS feeds), but you are going to have to train it for a while before Newsbrane
will learn what you think constitutes quality.

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makecheck
I generally like the layout.

I assume the tabs on a story are to represent duplicates? You might want to
make them more subtle or not make them at the top. When a tabbed link is shown
first on the page, it looks like the entire page is tabbed, and it also makes
the site confusing (e.g. is the entire site about Dinosaur comics?).

~~~
lincolnq
Hey, that's great feedback, thank you!

The tabs show you the same story from different sources. Dinosaur Comics
appearing twice with the same content is a bug, oops. :) I agree they can be
confusing, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to represent this
information without being as confusing.

~~~
makecheck
If you put the "tabs" at the bottom of each story instead of the top, or even
on the side, it would probably avoid the confusion.

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chaostheory
UI wise I like being able to scan titles quickly, so I can skip content I'm
not really interested in. Your site feels like it's just another blog, not a
news site.

~~~
lincolnq
Useful feedback - thanks!

If you want to quickly skip stuff, the shortcut keys (J and K to go up and
down) might be good for you. :)

Other than that, we've considered making a condensed view before -- it seems
like that might be valuable.

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lincolnq
Hey! We created Newsbrane because we were frustrated with the skew between the
popular stuff and the quality stuff on social news sites like this one and
Reddit. Easy-to-upvote stuff gets to the top quickly, which is not always what
you want.

Newsbrane learns your personal tastes, so it avoids this problem. Now
whatever's at the top of your recommendations is completely up to you, and if
you don't like it, you can change it with a few downvotes. It learns
instantly, so just refresh the page after making a few votes either way.

We wrote a more detailed article about this "lowest common denominator
problem" and how Newsbrane solves it: <http://blog.newsbrane.com/?p=4>

Anyway, if you'd try Newsbrane, I'd be appreciative. If you send us feedback
-- UI suggestions, security flaws, whatever -- I'll be VERY appreciative.
Emailing feedback@newsbrane.com is the easiest way for me, but feel free to
post here if it adds to the discussion! I intend to respond to every piece of
feedback.

The main question I want to answer is whether it can replace Hacker News for
you. If not, why not?

When you first sign up, you'll have to spend a little time training Newsbrane
before it's useful. A good way to train it, if you know what you usually want
to read, is to click 'Add Subscription' and add the Hacker News feed (or
whatever other feeds you like), and vote on the recent articles there.

Good luck!

~~~
newsio
I'd like to offer a small observation about how you are pitching your idea to
this group:

I know you are thinking about how to unseat the competition, but asking people
to try out your tool with an eye toward abandoning something that we like is
not the best approach, in my opinion.

I don't want to "replace" Hacker News. I assume that I am not alone -- many
people are very loyal to HN, and like the community and the information found
here. We're not looking to dump it in favor of something else, although if
it's a compelling product I might use it in addition to HN.

~~~
ynniv
Yes - suggesting that your product might "replace" HN creates preconceptions
in my mind before I get there. I see the link, I imagine startup relevant
topics, I see dinosaur comics. WTF? Fail.

~~~
lincolnq
Whoops, sorry to give you the wrong preconceptions. If you train it by voting
a bunch, you can make it give you whatever topics you like, startup news
definitely included. If you don't have the patience to train it, I've heard
that feedback before, and that's an axis along which we don't have a good
answer yet -- though hopefully we will soon!

~~~
ynniv
Thats okay, marketing is a learned skill.

You might try making some profile templates that I can start with. The landing
page could say, if you like Hacker News, click here, if you like XKCD, click
here, etc. Clicking would copy the profile of a user that you have pre-trained
with items that are like that site.

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lincolnq
Well, I changed the title of the post in response to feedback that we were
setting the wrong expectations.

The old title was "Rate/review -- can it replace HN for you?"

I'm still interested in answering that question, but it's not because I hate
HN -- I love it, especially the community -- it's because I feel like there's
a niche for personalized news.

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decavolt
It's ugly as hell. While I see what Newsbrane is attempting to do, it's
failing miserably when it comes to execution.

~~~
lincolnq
Heh, that's fair -- we haven't ever hired a graphic designer or UI designer,
and we definitely need it.

Thanks for being honest!

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YuriNiyazov
Explicit up/down voting is a bad idea. You should remove that and concentrate
on implicit behavior acquisition.

~~~
lincolnq
Hello!

I agree that there's a lot of stuff we can do without requiring users to give
us specific feedback. And we're doing some of it, and we probably will do a
lot more in the future.

But when I'm looking at a news site, I often find myself thinking "this is
good" or "I am not interested in this", and Newsbrane allows me to express
that preference. It's not the only way we get data into the recommendation
engine, but it's an important way.

Why do you say it is a bad idea?

