

Show HN: Your personal Hacker News reader - Skim HN - raimonds
http://www.skimhn.com/

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klapinat0r
I appreciate the categories, even if it wasn't personalized.

One idea for future development might be to add a point score based on Naive
Bayes (which has been discussed previously). Not as a filter per say, but just
as an indicator.

E.g. <http://joelgrus.com/2012/02/16/hacking-hacker-news/>

Sure, you can use a bookmarklet or write your own thing, but I've always
thought it'd be an interesting idea to have a centralized like/hate server,
where you could add different sources, say HN. That might be a different
project, but adding a score based on the likelihood of "I'd read this" (not
recommendation as I should note) would be a interesting in terms of skimming.

Let's say one of your users is in a hurry, he might want to skim the most
(homogenous) likely news that'd interest him/her, whereas if it's late at
night in leisure time, one might be more interested in new/abnormal stories.

Just a though. Good job.

~~~
raimonds
Wow, that's an awesome feedback and great link! Thanks for your kind words!
That's a pity there's no API access to user's saved stories (as far as I
know). This would be great source for Bayes training. Maybe a chrome extension
could train Bayes on HN visited links.

~~~
klapinat0r
I agree that it's a difficult issue, as some might feel it's an intrusion of
privacy if that data is used. Other might feel it's annoying to have to
up/downvote stories both on HN and on your site. That's a trade-off. Perhabs
both, or allow import of saved data, so users can make a dump from HN and
import it in your site.

I think _the other_ HN api used to have that (if people trust them to pass
their user/pw to HN safely), but seems to be disabled:
<http://api.ihackernews.com/>.

 _So yeah, the easiest way to start it_ would be to have people up/down vote
on your site, or use a heuristic measure such as: if you click a link, you
"like" it, if you're shown a link, but don't click a link you "ignore" it
(which should be less negative than hate, as there can be a number of reasons
for not clicking a link).

As in:

I get a list of 10 items from each category, of those 10, which do I click,
which don't I. So once an item is shown to me - save it as "bad" by default in
the DB. If I click it, change it to a good result.

You'd might have to change the weight more than this, but it should be a good
start, and requires the least amount of effort for the user.

~~~
raimonds
Yeah, that makes sense! Totally agree. I will try to implement this.

~~~
pilooch
You also can build a simple recommender based on categorization of articles.

XPLR (<https://www.xplr.com>) for whom I work, has an API that among other
things, allows to easily tag articles and build recommenders.

If you're interested we'd be happy to let you use the API. Contact us or pm me
for an access to the beta.

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dmart
I like it, but I wouldn't mind an option to customize the line spacing and
font colors (alternating colors, maybe?) - it's pretty dense to skim through.

~~~
rumberg
I used a chrome extension called StyleBot to do a little styling:
<http://cl.ly/image/3w1y3G0p083J>

~~~
raimonds
Wow, that looks gorgeous! Could I use it as a style guide? Could you share
specific things you changed?

~~~
rumberg
I'd love to, raimonds. You can download Stylebot here:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha?hl=en)

After installing the extension, just open Stylebot and copy the following
design for skimhn.com: <http://pastebin.com/5Nupsm3B>. it's still rough, but
it's a start :)

The design is using Lato as typeface. You can download it here:
<http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/lato>

PS: I've been also working on a redesign for Instapaper and Hacker News:

Instapaper Articles: <http://cl.ly/image/1r1T420S042P> Instapaper Features:
<http://cl.ly/image/172h0b3P2u3D> Hacker News:
<http://cl.ly/image/3y3F1v060v1N>

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james-singh
No login? That means I have to personalize it everytime I use it on a
different laptop?

Btw, I wish there was a google chrome extension for this as well.

~~~
raimonds
Sorry about that! And thanks for your feedback! Good point. I will look into
implementing logins.

~~~
traeblain
Don't need to worry about logins. Nothing is stored here. Best thing to do is
to create a custom URL that will always bring the same lists.

i.e. When I setup my personalized options, I have:

<http://www.skimhn.com/djWH3hS5>

That way you don't have to operate with logins and everyone's setup is share-
able. (Then you can look in the future of letting the creator define the url.)

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davidjhall
Really like this -- good job.

Do you have "not" syntax? I would love to have a skim feed that removes
certain news items that overload the front page.

~~~
raimonds
Thanks for the feedback! For "not" syntax prepend keyword with "-". E.g.
-title:facebook. Unfortunately there's no syntax for front-page only posts.

