
Show HN: Bit of News – Intelligent news summaries - xux
http://bitofnews.com/
======
scottjad
My favorite terse world news source these days is
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events)

For a long time I've wanted a new source that will only show me stories that
are likely to be relevant in a year. If no one is going to care or remember
something in a month, then I'd rather just skip it. Portal:Current_events is
as close to that as I've found.

What I love about it: very short summaries with the most important details
about stories that people might still care about in a year, no sensational or
partisan headlines, one click to excellent summaries of the issues, and I can
easily catch up after missing a few days, whereas many news sites make it hard
to see what they looked like even yesterday.

Take for instance the top story on bitofnews.com. The Portal:Current_events
summary is:

"<a>A roof collapse</a> at a grocery store in <a>Riga</a>, Latvia, kills more
than 50 people."

So it's more up to date than the bitofnews summary that has "at least 32," and
if I care where Riga is instead of reading "Riga, which is the biggest city in
the Baltics and its biggest seaport" I can click the Riga link and see a map
and photo and population etc. If I want to know about the ongoing event, I can
click the "a roof collapse" link and I'm presented with a pretty good summary
of the issue.

I'm happy to see more news sources like this appear though. My only problem
with the Portal:Current_events is that it doesn't have a good RSS feed and if
I check it more than once a day, or mid-day, then it can be hard to see what
has changed since my last visit.

~~~
TossThisIsh
Another vote for Wikipedia's Current Events portal. So much better than nearly
everything out there.

------
ajiang
I'm impressed - clean interface, consumable, and actually really great
summaries. The e-mail newsletter version of this sounds very useful. It would
be great to be able to select the categories you're interested in too.

I actually have been working on an app that wakes you up in the morning with a
voice reading your schedule for the day, the weather and the latest news, and
the API for this looks perfect to fill the last part.

~~~
xux
Sounds cool! When you implement it, please let me know (email in profile). I'd
be glad to feature your app on the website if it's using the API :)

------
dmunoz
I was going to ask what happened with the bit of news bot on reddit [0], but I
see it just resumed posting!

I don't check it all that often, but I like getting a summary of recent news
by browsing the bots user page every so often. Was saddened to see it inactive
for the past two weeks.

[0]
[http://www.reddit.com/user/bitofnewsbot](http://www.reddit.com/user/bitofnewsbot)

------
gojomo
Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger is working on something similar, not yet
launched, called 'Infobitt':

[http://infobitt.com](http://infobitt.com)

(Unsure if that'll be its launch name, and there's certainly room for multiple
approaches in the faster/fairer news space.)

------
rpsubhub
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498625)

------
skadamat
Very nicely done!

I would check out Twitter bootstrap or look for a font, that's the only thing
that I dislike is the times new roman font. For a website that's focused on
consuming text summaries, efficiently reading / understanding is important,
and having a readable clean font is too :D

~~~
xux
Thanks! What type of fonts do you recommend?

~~~
computeloops
OpenSans, Lato

~~~
DigitalSea
I would like to chime in and recommend a serif font. Maybe PT Serif.

------
brown9-2
Looks neat, but you might want to dig into what went wrong with this Bitcoin
story:

 _Rise of Bitcoin: Is the digital currency a solution or a menace? (+video)

The Christian Science Monitor - Yesterday

She downloaded the software that would allow her family-owned floral shop/cafe
to accept BTC, as Bitcoin is known._

------
nmcfarl
These are actually really good summaries, though in one case it was to
commenting policy that was summarized, not the article... Still I think the
best summaries I've seen.

I'd love to know what the tech behind this is like.

~~~
sesqu
The new Xbox vs PS article summary is horrible, though:

    
    
      * It's also a great gaming system – it has great games this year.
      * Ronald Reagan was president, MTV had just launched and choosing a video game system was easy.
      * " This holiday season buying a video game system is a bit more complicated.

------
tedmiston
This is a good chance to mention an alternative news in bullet points site,
tldr.io, which uses human created summaries.

[http://tldr.io/discover](http://tldr.io/discover)

------
TossThisIsh
I subscribed to the email service a while back. Then on the day the Iranian
embassy was bombed, what'd I get summarized?

Celebrity news.

I won't subscribe again unless there's a "nothing trivial" policy.

------
drakaal
The "summaries" are just bullets. Use a better summary API.
[https://www.mashape.com/stremor](https://www.mashape.com/stremor)

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tr4656
Seems good although Quartz ([http://qz.com/](http://qz.com/)) daily newsletter
seems more than enough for me.

~~~
sebkomianos
I like Quartz a lot as well but it's too focused on economy stories.

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xerophtye
Umm.... isn't this a REPOST??

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taylorbuley
Very cool! Do you use TFDF and then extract the most "meaningful" sentences?

~~~
frakkingcylons
The About page mentions it uses PyTeaser [1].

[1]:
[https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser](https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser)

------
v1tyaz
Do you have any plans to add RSS feeds?

------
equilibrium
quite similar to [http://www.readborg.com](http://www.readborg.com)

------
dublinben
There's a similar Android app called Circa.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
No, Circa has a large team of actual human editors. That’s why the content is
good.

Also, Circa started out as an iPhone app. The iPad and Android versions came
later.

------
elwell
reminds me of summly

