

My project, updated: Trending Tech News. Feedback appreciated - lucasoman
http://technosplode.com

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shoham
People are comparing this to The Drudge Report, but your layout is much
cleaner, and your headlines less hyperbolic, and you don't seem ideologically
motivated. Otherwise, this is like The Drudge Report for Tech news _! Good
job.

_ \- I don't think that your site is much like The Drudge Report.

Also, if you are so interested in news for Linux, please just keep it as one
of the main topics.

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necrecious
It looks like you are doing a simple frequency analysis to determine words for
titles. In some cases it works, in others it reduces to just brand names. The
Linux tab is filled with "Linux" for example.

Perhaps you need a learning filter that catches words that are too common and
filters them out.

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mva
I don't really see why Linux should have a separate category at the top.
Doesn't really fit the line of Business / Gadgets / Programming. Maybe add a
category for UX/Design? Or maybe a category focused on startups?

Overall, awesome project. Keeping an eye on it!

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kia
I agree about Linux. People using different OSes (fanboys) might mistakenly
think that this site is mostly Linux news (the first impression is the most
important one). You obviously don't want loosing this kind of audience. So add
categories for other major OSes or remove Linux entirely.

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eob
1\. Awesome stuff. Keep iterating.

2\. Honest feedback: Your category titles seem straight out of a topic
modeling paper (see: David Blei). That is to say, as a fellow computer
scientist, I get why they are what they are... but they're not very good.

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tomelders
Point 1 is the best bit of feedback here, and to a large degree pre-empts
point 2.

But yeah, awesome, bookmarked and buckled in for the long haul.

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plainOldText
Feedback: 0\. The logo is way too big. Make it smaller. At least 50% smaller.
This way people can have more of their screen estate used for reading the news
and not for your logo. 1\. Remove the underline from all text. It makes the
text harder to read. 2\. Add a sans serif font. 3\. I love the spartan feel of
the website, but you can add some color to it. For instance the 3 categories
of news could each have a different color. (btw, choose colors which match)
4\. Make the links a bit bigger. The text is way to small. I know I could zoom
in but then the proportions just don't feel right.

Other than that, it looks alright.

Good luck

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dewiz
Really nice. I think you could increase accessibility and click through
increasing news titles font size and adding some padding. I noticed that it's
verys easy to read block titles but difficult to focus on actual news, with
the result that I scroll the page searching for "interesting blocks" more than
"interesting news". Well done anyway ;) Any thoughts about exposing some rdf
views?

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lucasoman
I think a feed would be too high-volume. But you can get topic updates from
@TECHNOSPLODE on Twitter.

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andycroll
Really like it and in an interesting space. Social filtering (i.e. Twitter as
RSS) works for news sometimes, but it leads to filter bubbles.

Worth thinking about how this could even power 'slower' news (a.k.a.
Economist-style) by utilizing the algorithm to find out 'what' is important
over a period of time and then later finding the best writing about the topic
and highlighting that.

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zethraeus
I like it! I'm curious as to what kind of implicit editorial process is
happening based on which sources you've chosen. Would you be willing to share
your full list of sources and how you chose them? (How well can I infer the
former based on all of the links actually currently present?)

~~~
lucasoman
I wouldn't be opposed to posting a dynamic list of feeds on the about page.

To answer your parenthetical question: not very well. Since articles are
sorted based on the weight of their feed, and since I only show the first few
articles for each topic, articles from feeds with lower weights may rarely
appear. They will, however, contribute to the overall weight of the topic and
force it into the top ten.

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davedx
Really awesome site! Kinda like a live Drudge Report for tech news. Love the
layout. Bookmarked :)

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garethsprice
Hard to scan, the keyword headings are a good start but I still have to drill
down into the article headlines to see what the article is actually about.

A summary of the issue (eg."Google buys Zagat" instead of "Google, Zagat")
would be helpful when scanning.

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shafqat
What is the underlying tech? Can you talk about your listening and topic
modeling algos?

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lurchpop
very cool. i might just stop using techmeme!

I agree with the other commenter about having a "more" button.

The thing that bugs about techmeme is they make it appear as if the tech word
consists of a handful of companies (Apple, FB, Twitter, Google, MS), and you
basically have no other news outside of that.

Your site has that, to a lesser degree, but its still there. I see 2 google
stories, 2 twitter stories, 2 yahoo stories. It might be useful to compile a
small list of company names and group on company name if you see it appear
twice.

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mysteryleo
Reminds me of the drudge report.

I made this: <http://tech.rawsignal.com>

Maybe we can share tips on algos?

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Todd
Nicely done. It would be nice if there was a "more" link.

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luckyisgood
Well done and usable!

I suggest showing complete news titles, without cuttting them off with ...

Idea is great, keep experimenting with the UI.

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rorrr
It's kind of interesting, I like how clean it is, and that the most important
keywords are presented in 2-word titles, which makes it very easy to scan.

I would remove "via", it's polluting the page.

EDIT: And maybe add the timeframe selector. Since it's a news site, it would
be cool to see the trending news of the last hour, for instance.

