

Show HN: Hinto – Follow sites in real-time and read news - david16
http://www.hinto.co/

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timotei99
As a first impression, I found it very easy to add a bunch of sites at once to
my page.

Although I'm not quite sure I understood how to add content from a new site,
one that's not in the curated collection.

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david16
Hi,

In order to add a new site to your page, type its address in the field at the
top of the page and press Add. When the web page is loaded, you can select the
content you are interested in and save it. Each time the source site changes,
your selection will be updated on Hinto as well.

Hope this helps.

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miri23
I like how the news are displayed and that the snippets are synced with the
origin website automatically.

~~~
david16
Thank you so much! Please don't hesitate to share any feedback you may have.

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david16
What do you think about Hinto?

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charlieegan3
From what I can tell this looks cool, news readers are always something I make
a point of checking out. However, I find the Facebook login a big turn off.

Is there a way to use the site without it?

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david16
Thank you for your comment and I'm really glad you think it looks cool! For
now, the Facebook login is the only option, but Google and Twitter logins will
be available soon.

Have you given it a try yet, despite the FB login? If you did, please let me
know what you think about it.

Cheers

~~~
charlieegan3
I signed up. I personally always prefer an email option. Or no signup at all
where possible, especially to let people try it out.

I got to the source selection list and the continue button was unresponsive.
Do I need to choose a minimum number? I'm on my iPhone and can try on desktop
tomorrow if I remember.

~~~
david16
Duly noted for the signup ;)

When you first log in, you are presented with the cards from our curated
Catalog, organized in main topics (News, Tech, etc.) Normally all the cards in
the first category(News) are selected by default so you only have to press
Continue to finish the signup process. You can of course select or deselect as
many cards as you want from the various topics.

The logic behind this is to have some initial content on your page, otherwise
it would be empty. So, to respond to your question, you have to select at
least one card and then the Continue button becomes active so you can move on.

The site is fully responsive and it works on mobile and also on desktop. My
guess is that maybe there's some network latency and it takes some time to
load the card's images on your iPhone. But when the images finish loading, you
can tap on the cards you want to keep and unblock the Continue button.

Note that you can browse the topics also at a later time by going to the
Catalog section and add other cards to your page.

I hope it's more clear now and you'll be able to finish the signup process. If
you have any other questions or remarks, please let me know and I'll get back
to you as soon as I can.

Cheers

~~~
charlieegan3
So I had a go on my tablet on wifi. I selected continue and so got all the
default news sources.

I then went on to additionally select 4 tech sources.

The content seems to show up nicely in a two column feed but there are a few
issues I'm still having. Firstly, I don't seem to be able to turn off sources.
I seem to be able to delete items but not the sources themselves. There seem
to be duplicate items, for example the guardian homepage shows up twice with
no clear difference.

Finally, tapping an item just seems to take me to the homepage for that
source, not the article.

This is the news reader I made and use myself:
[http://www.serializer.io](http://www.serializer.io) and it's what I'll
continue using.

I do like the look of the site but I think that it could be more reactive on
mobile. As outlined above I think I'm either not getting it or there are some
functionality issues.

~~~
david16
Hello again,

I'm glad you were able to finish the signup and play a little with the app.
It's also nice to hear you like the look of the site and how the content shows
up. As for the sources, you can't indeed turn them off, because they're always
there as curated content to choose from. And there's also no restriction on
how many times an item can be added from the Catalog, thus resulting the
possibility to have duplicate items. But you can always delete the extra
cards.

Concerning the fact that when you tap on an item it takes you to the homepage
of that site, I'm currently working on a feature that will allow users to go
directly to the articles featured on the card. It's a request that many users
have asked for, so it will certainly be included in a future version of Hinto.
Thanks for your feedback anyways, I really appreciate you taking the time to
reply.

I also took a look at serializer.io and it's quite nice and easy to use.
However, I didn't find a way to add other sources beside the ones by default
and neither to add a custom subreddit for example. The simple look and only
displaying the text headlines has its advantages, but I personally prefer a
more visual presentation, with more images instead of text. On the other hand,
you were right, it's nice to be able to test the app without having to create
an account, that's something I should definitely consider for Hinto. BTW, I
found serializer's page on Product Hunt and I upvoted it, I hope you'll get
some traction with your app!

Cheers!

~~~
charlieegan3
It seems to odd that you cannot remove sources, to me at least. Even stranger
that sources can be added more than once (leading to duplicate items). Perhaps
I'm not quite getting the idea.

About custom subreddits, I've opted to only let users select from a list
sources. The main reason being that I poll a number of subreddits every 10mins
as it is and I want to keep my collection times down to preserve CPU time on
my Droplet ($5 tier 😀). The same kind of goes for showing images of stories -
I'd have to cache a ton to cloudinary and I'm on the free tier over there too.

serializer is never going to turn a profit and I guess there are somethings
that come with that which limit it. That said if you think there's a subreddit
that would have wider appeal let me know and I'll consider mixing it in.

Cheers for the vote on product hunt - glad you like the site.

