
We're Building A Reader - cooldeal
http://blog.digg.com/post/45355701332/were-building-a-reader
======
themgt
I think a 2013 Reader should be an open source web app you can run yourself or
pay to use as a service, which runs on a server pulling in feed data, and then
as a detachable HTML5+JS+localstorage client that downloads the data and can
run offline.

Building another hosted RSS reader project just gets us back to step 1 in
terms of one company's ability to yank away a tool that functions almost like
a newspaper to many people today.

NewsBlur looks like it just got a ton of new github watchers since this
announcement, and would maybe be good to treat as the defacto "open RSS reader
platform" leader - <https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur>

~~~
chrismarlow9
As someone who works on an RSS crawler day to day, this is much more difficult
than you think because of how poorly most people implement RSS.

If everyone stuck to the standards and did things the same way, it would be
easy. If you can't account for these errors your reader wont work with 80% of
feeds, and nobody will use it.

Rss feeds are usually programmed more poorly than a website itself, because
it's one of those features that comes from a discussion that usually goes:
"well everyone has an rss feed, so we should have one, so make one". Yet they
know people will rarely use it.

You could make it work for the popular CMS's but even between those there are
standards problems. The majority of the problems are in storing the stuff
that's crawled.

~~~
dgesang
> "how poorly most people implement RSS."

^upvoted! I agree, it's horrible! Not only are the many different versions of
RSS & ATOM a problem, but the freedom of putting any kind of data in any of
the fields. I've seen "descriptions" in the "title" property, "images" in
"links", "links" in "images", "links" as "urls", "UUID" as "ids", and so on
and on and on. If it wasn't for Java ROME, I would be spending dozens of hours
just making our aggregator compatible to any newsfeed our users come up with.

Stick to the standards, folks!

~~~
dclowd9901
We should really be ditching RSS in favor of more flexible platforms like
those on schema.org. The web is constantly evolving and changing; to try to
keep some extremely legacy tech in tow is just asking for trouble. It's not
even useful for its structure, as people are misusing it, so I don't see why
we should. At least following schema.org conventions aides in your SEO.

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publicfig
I'm actually fairly optimistic about this idea. Digg hasn't found its place
yet really after their pivot, and I think a reader will really give them a
lens to look forward with.

What I'd really like to see Digg do is move towards dealing with social
sharing of news not completely unlike Kippt. They could have it so that your
personal feed could be a(n easily seperable) mix of both your rss feed and
your friends/folowees. Then they could make their frontpage an aggregation of
commonly shared stories, sortable by tags. I think that would really allow
them to be a social news hub that's different than a lot of the social news
hubs out there now, with the name recognition of Digg.

~~~
niggler
"Digg hasn't found its place yet really after their pivot, and I think a
reader will really give them a lens to look forward with."

That's not clear. FTA it was much later in the roadmap, so its not clear
whether stepping up that process now makes sense (or if they are reacting to
current demand that is quickly dissipating as people commit to other products)

~~~
publicfig
I think stepping up any process that can get them a user base that even
passively interacts with them on a regular basis is better than anything else
for them right now. They're in that odd position that they have a well known
name but no well known product behind it. They kind of have to play it
reactionary if they're going to keep that name in the position it's in.

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webwanderings
Digg has always been late with everything since they lost their throne at the
top. I doubt the world will wait for them to deliver something new.

Sites like Digg, Reddit, Tumblr etc should provide their own version of RSS
readers. Wordpress.com has recently introduced their own reader and it
supposedly has a feature to browse external sites. Why can't Reddit and Tumblr
do the same thing?

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Sites like Digg, Reddit, Tumblr etc should provide their own version of RSS
> readers._

Why?

~~~
pseut
I've wanted Tumblr to allow you to subscribe to external rss feeds for a while
(I think it did at one point) -- some of he blogs I read are text heavy, some
are graphics heavy, etc., and it would be nice to have separate readers
optimized for the different types of content. It would be nice to be able to
subscribe to "tumblrs" on the tumblr dashboard whether or not they're actually
hosted on tumblr.

Reddit's kind of the same thing: it would be nice to have a reader integrated
with the discussion.

~~~
rhdoenges
The dashboard isn't good at telling you whether you've seen a post already and
moves much too fast for traditional blogs that post once a day or less to even
show up within the first few pages. I don't think Tumblr has the right UI for
an RSS reader.

~~~
pseut
Sure, but there are plenty of light, "pretty" blogs that I'll browse when I
have time to kill, and tumblr wouldn't be bad for that. I'm not arguing in
favor of Tumblr necessarily, but specialization. I'd love Twitter to have a
separate but connected rss reader, for "twitter-like" content, for example.
Any of these social network or quasi social network services could offer a
customized rss reader - it's like having the best JavaScript "share this page
on..." button possible.

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shenedu
Hi, I am the author of open source rss reader Rssminer, live demo:
<http://rssminer.net/demo>

How about your guy build on top it, I can contribute the whole source code
(anyway, it's open source)

The reasons I do so:

1\. Rss Reader needs a lot of hardware resources for storing/fetch feeds. A
big company have much better resource than I can offer. 2\. I can provide some
paid support for rssminer's code.

The reasons why it may be helpful for you guys:

1\. Rssminer is fully working, you can save a lot of time, faster product 2\.
The code is very clean. <https://github.com/shenfeng/rssminer> 3\. The code is
very fast. In order for it to be fast, I even write an event driven http clent
and server: <https://github.com/http-kit/http-kit>

If interested, drop me an email: shenedu@gmail.com

------
baby
It actually sounds awesome that Digg is behind it.

I can already picture the frontpage of Digg made of posts that were most liked
by individual users on their RSS feed. of Comments on Digg about the RSS item.

Anyone sees this as a huge potential? You don't need to post anything, you
just need to like your own rss feed and posts gets promoted. You can check
comments in case other users are following the same rss feed as you etc...

~~~
udfalkso
I tried and failed to do this about 4 years back (<http://feedeachother.com>).
Alas. Still think the idea has huge potential if someone does it right.

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niggler
Doesn't this seem a bit too-little-too-late? Right now is the big shuffle, and
unless there's a really big revolution I don't see another such opportunity
coming for a long time.

~~~
notatoad
I see two big shuffles: there's one right now, when all the proactive people
are finding replacements for google reader. There will be another when google
reader actually shuts down, when all the procrastinators are looking for a
replacement.

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chesh
For me the dream team was GReader combined with the PostRank (Chrome
Extension) to filter based on social metrics. Unfortunately PostRank was the
second most important product that Google is its wisdom (and evilness) decided
to shut down. For an idea of the power see:
[https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=tWri7T3f4...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=tWri7T3f4Ex6-uVU8i9-FFQ&type=view&gid=0&f=true&sortcolid=10&sortasc=false&rowsperpage=250&pli=1&pli=1).
Each row of the GReader would be lighter or darker based on the PostRank or
you could simply filter based on minimum PR rating.

The one and only enhancement beyond this would be to integrate an Instapaper-
type functionality so I have all my content in one place, whether fed by RSS,
or random pages that I tag to read later as I come across them.

Digg is one of the few companies that I could see pull off the social
dimension successfully.

------
owenjones
Can anyone tell me why every one of these articles has this quote or a similar
on in there?

"We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its
current incarnation it is..." I've seen about a dozen posts on HN about Google
Reader being retired so RSS readers clearly still appeal to at least this
demographic. My girlfriend will also dearly miss Google Reader so it can
clearly appeal to non-technical folks as well...

What has replaced RSS readers, Twitter? Facebook? Reddit? As someone who
doesn't use social media I would say no. Google Reader is, for me, still the
quickest way to get interesting news / information. I don't understand why all
the articles state RSS is dead as a fact.

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thirdstation
> We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its
> current incarnation it is,

Does the author mean RSS as a format or aggregated feeds being "a thing of the
past"?

I don't think feeds have achieved their potential yet.

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buddylw
I really miss the social aspect of Google reader before they axed it back in
2011. It's not really social in the traditional sense, it's social in the
sense that I could outsource the job of scouring feeds on various topics to
other people. Everything they found interesting would be mainlined right into
my reader interface so I didn't have to personally check 20 feeds on Android.

I do hope that Digg can create a simple and fast interface that captures this
concept without too much clutter from the more traditional social features.

------
marknutter
"Like many of you, we were dismayed to learn that Google will be shutting down
its much-loved, if under-appreciated, Google Reader on July 1st."

Somehow I doubt they are dismayed. Excited, maybe?

~~~
jlgray
Step 1: Build totally awesome Google reader replacement. Step 2: ???? Step 3:
Get acquired by Google.

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waylandsmithers
I like that the subheadline on their front page for the story is "The Rumors
Are True", implying people were talking about Digg.

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jccalhoun
If this is as successful as their Digg reboot then I'm sure it will have
hundreds of users...

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BaconJuice
A bit off-topic, but does anyone know where I can find a very simple wordpress
theme like diggs blog? It looks so beautiful and simple!

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mrwnmonm
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377291>

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Deprogrammer9
Why does anyone give a shit about digg these days? FUCK EDITORS!

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WalterSear
Good for you. Don't eat the paste.

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barista
It will be nice if this surfaces as an RSS feed rather than an email.

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nwzpaperman
It's exciting to see everyone interested in reading news again! It seems many
people were taking it for granted.

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kirillzubovsky
Smart move.

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sambreed
What's digg?

~~~
nichols
It's like Facebook, but for doggs.

