

Show HN: Datastringer, a tool for hacker-journalists - 5c2v
http://bbc-news-labs.github.io/datastringer/

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zrail
There's another open-source tool named Huginn[1] that does something like
this. You write "agents" that perform a given task and then pass the resulting
onto other agents that do things like run stats, send emails, etc.

[1]: [https://github.com/cantino/huginn](https://github.com/cantino/huginn)

~~~
basilesimon
Thank you for the link, I'm going to have a look at that.

Two other tools do similar things too:

\- Datawi.re, by Annabel Church [1]

\- Stream Tools, by the NYT [2]

[1]: [http://datawi.re/](http://datawi.re/) [2]:
[http://nytlabs.github.io/streamtools/](http://nytlabs.github.io/streamtools/)

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taylorbuley
I got my first reporting job after writing a bot to scrape the SEC for filings
by major financial figures.

Data journalism is very sexy! Unfortunately it's still very hard to find that
story needle, and increasingly so when you open up the data aperture.

~~~
basilesimon
Hey, well done! Got my first after putting together immigration stats from
many European countries and making a nice viz out of it.

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atmosx
Hello,

Nice job but why do you require postfix?!

You should be using either sendmail/mailx or a custom user/password SMTPD
server (e.g. google's smtpd).

~~~
5c2v
sendmail and mailx require a running SMTP server on your computer, which we
chose to be postfix.

To actually send the mails, we use the aptly named 'nodemailer' module, with
the 'smtp' transport mechanism, which also relies on a running SMTP server.
(btw, one can use a 'sendmail' transport mechanism).

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martius
It looks like a meta Google alerts, but it's open source and hackable, which
can be really handy. A documentation of how to write custom alerts would be
useful, I guess.

Also, you should host a demo somewhere.

~~~
basilesimon
Yeah, we thought about a demo. It was kind of hard to picture a way to demo
it, given that you can't really see it in action. Any suggestions welcome.

Re: Google Alerts - you're right... to a certain extent. Here, you can mash up
datasets, compile them, tweak them, THEN and only then compare them to
parameters you set. Alerts++, then.

~~~
martius
How about a screenshot of the alerts configuration page, and the screenshot of
an alert, in your mail client?

~~~
basilesimon
A very large part of the work is configured by the user, and the "alerts
configuration page" is not yet functional.

Here is a screenshot of the alerts I received this morning:
[http://imgur.com/vG0PqDf](http://imgur.com/vG0PqDf)

The alert was set for London Euston area.

I will add an issue to the repo because, as you see, the styling is not very
pretty - and the wording is far from eloquent!

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gren
The install procedure is a bit complex, this should just be done with a "npm
install -g ..".

Especially the install.sh only works on Linux.

Otherwise very cool idea :-)

~~~
hnnewguy
As a person with a penchant for data, but with limited coding experience, I
agree.

I have hard time reconciling:

 _" Don't know how to code? That's fine."_

With:

 _" The code is available on Github, and that's where you should start. Just
clone the repo and run the installation script located at root."_

I think you seriously overestimate the layman's abilities here. Is this for
programming laymen? Github is one of the _last_ things people learn, for
better or worse.

Intriguing, nonetheless. Will follow.

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neoeldex
Funny, it talks about being easy, but I had a hard time finding a snippet of
the real use.

~~~
basilesimon
Or why you shouldn't do the doc last minute! Any suggestions here are very
welcome.

To have a look at some snippets, I would recommend going through the wizard,
then cracking open one of the examples. The plumbing is a bit overly-
complicated, though, I am sure there is a way to make queries in a simpler
way.

