

Show HN: A news search engine – need feedback - avaku
http://www.readrz.com

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read
Congratulations on putting this out there and on the courage needed to tackle
a new design. There's a lot of hard work here.

\- Would removing text make the UI clearer? I wish the black readrs margin was
completely gone, along with the grey search bar underneath it. And in return
the search circle became bigger.

\- The most striking change compared to a Google Search is that it forces you
to change your perspective on what's important to search for. I find myself
pausing most of the time. This is probably more of a good sign than it
originally appears. It fights off the urge of the fingers to type. One more
reason to put the search bar out of sight.

\- This is probably an indulgence: I wished it could show me things going on
around where I live. Like a TimeOut magazine. I see there's an Entertainment
section, but it doesn't seem to work using my IP address for geolocation.

I love it! I can't wait to see what comes next.

~~~
avaku
Hi read, thanks a lot!

\- I think you're right. I am already hiding the top bar when you scroll a bit
down. Should probably move the search box. How about the following crazy idea
- I was thinking to have another mode when all you see is keywords. That would
allow even faster overview of everything. You could see articles on "mouse
hover". What do you think?

\- Yeah, this is a double-sided sword. It's kind of google, asking you first -
so what do you want? Instead of showing you everything. I should probably show
summary of everything at first, but I decided to go with just a circle on the
front page for now - to increase impression that this is something new. Great
advice though, thank you!

\- No geolocation for now, sorry. I am a single founder, so if I find some
financing, I will put this on top of the list ;)

Thanks again! I can't wait too ;)

~~~
read
Seeing all keywords is another cool idea. I'd love to try it.

People don't ask enough the question 'what do you want'.

~~~
avaku
Now I'll have to recover my old GUI... Should not have listened to the wrong
people, and instead kept it as an alternative... Thank you!!

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alexeichemenda
Love the navigation ! Really easy and fast, and my eyes are only focused on
this area. Very cool. Two comments : \- Why do the results open in a new tab ?
Is there something I'm not understanding definitely rename "related" with
something like "sub-section" or "add filter". Great job !

~~~
avaku
Thanks Alex! The reason results open in a new tab, is because any keyword you
click results in a new "search". For that search, a new summary is calculated
and displayed "with the same interface". I haven't had time to design how this
could be done by expanding within the current page. But it definitely should
be done, you're right!

I am thinking to apply this to books and movie abstracts too. Any other ideas?
Apart from obviously classifying HN comments :)))

~~~
alexeichemenda
Have you thought about building an API to let websites use it with their own
content ? Also, a search engine would be pretty cool ;) Instead of clicking on
an item in circle #1 and then sub-section in circle #2, user could type his
own keyword in circle #1 and add his own sub-section in circle #2. Obviously
you can already do this on Google using + and all the others signs, but I'm
pretty sure a lot of people do not know how to use it.

~~~
avaku
I thought about the API - this is a good idea. I was thinking that I also can
do a widget that people could put on their website. For example, they could
put: "Top news mentioning USA in Finance category". I think that would be
really useful for a lot of websites. However, no time for this now. Improving
design based on feedback and looking for investors.

I didn't really get your idea about search engine. You can already type
anything you want in the search bar at the top. The results then can be
further categorized.

P.S. Too bad HN doesn't send out notification when someone replies, I missed
your comment three days ago.

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olog-hai
It seems to be impossible to get an uncluttered view of U.S. sports stories.
When I clicked on Sports on the left, some U.S. stories did appear, but they
were buried among UK-based pieces. To narrow it down, on the right I clicked
Countries and then Americas. I was left with 2 items: one about a UK team
scouting a Brazilian soccer player, and one non-sports story about a cellist.

~~~
avaku
Sorry about that. I think I don't have enough sources for US sport. I have
tried the following. Search for "US" and then select section "Sport". But
obviously, by "US sport" you don't mean only articles that mention "US"
explicitly. So I would need to have a fuzzy classifier for US Sport. I will
actually do it, but it will require more work. Thanks for a useful data point
in feedback!

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avaku
Core: automatic hierarchical classification

Potential subject areas: news, movies, books...

Feedback needed: GUI, subject areas, anything

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sfrechtling
Nice concept, but I'm a little unsure of two things: what is the difference
between section and related, and what does the 1day pulldown mean at the top
of the page?

~~~
avaku
Once you select a section, you can cross it with a different section. For
example, select "Countries" and in related "Disasters". The reason it's called
related, is because it's conditional on your first selection.

1 day pulldown allows you to choose different summarization period. You could
for example choose 3 days, and section "Countries - Europe" \- that would
select top news for you within the last 3 days, arranged by countries in
Europe.

Any ideas how I can make this clearer?

~~~
sfrechtling
Thanks - that clarifies it. Would I be right in thinking its a visual way of
doing faceted search? If so, maybe the issue is the word "related" \- not sure
what the best option would be. Possibily 'topic' and 'subtopic'?

For the day pulldown, the first thought to come to mind is that it is
dependant on the specific search being performed - and not global across all
searches.

~~~
avaku
Yeah, possibly "Topic" and "Subtopic" is a good idea, but not sure how this
will work for a general user.

The dropdown - it should work like you say, I just didn't have the time to
implement it that way - nor position it better on the page.

The thing is that I can apply this auto-classification to anything. Can also
create custom categories for any text collection. Any ideas for potential
applications?

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danso
The circular nav thing is cool, on first glance, but it ends up harming the
actual usability of the app. Nevermind the difficulty of reading radial
layouts, it pushes all of the actual content below the fold.

It's a cool widget, but one that is likely to confuse users on top of
obfuscating the content

~~~
avaku
Thanks danso,

One problem I had is that I need to keep users by giving them first impression
that this is something new. Otherwise, they think "ah, another news
aggregator"... I could possibly push the content for flow on the right of the
first circle, what do you think?

The key thing is that the algo allows very precise hierarchic classification
of any texts. It is unmatched by anything available on the market. Think that
it can automatically find such things as articles related to US Politics, or
Human Rights. Any ideas how I can prominently feature these ideas?

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forlorn
Looks like you're grabbing only economical news. I see only stocks, trading
and finance.

~~~
avaku
Go to the front page, and select in the circle:

"Business > Sectors > Technology" \- does it work?

------
avaku
Question: now many visitors from HN it takes to disable your system :)

