

Good Noows: A well designed news reader - kksm19820117
http://goodnoows.com/

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dusklight
I saw that it wanted me to sign up before I could try it out, and clicked the
back button. I have no idea if your service is a good one or not, I guess I
never will.

And facebook integration? Seriously I think it is quickly becoming the obvious
sign of a douchey website. Not saying that facebook integration isn't a useful
feature in some sites, but nowadays when I see a site and it has a whole row
of social network integration buttons it just looks desperate and
exploitative, like the site cares more about using the audience to gain
traction than to provide a good service.

~~~
marknutter
As someone who creates apps that are somewhat experimental, I have to point
out how irritating your comment is. He wasn't asking you to become a customer,
he was asking for some feedback about his app, one HNer to another. Sometimes,
that involves signing up for the service (gasp!). Perhaps this is a barrier to
entry for the OP's potential users, but you could just express that in your
comment in a less - to use your terminology - douchey way.

And the offhand dismissal of Facebook integration? Are you kidding? You bitch
about having to sign up to use site while in the same breath complain that the
OP is providing too many (convenient) ways for users to sign up for the
service I'm sad this comment has so many up votes.

~~~
dusklight
That is exactly my point.

Your unhappiness with my comment shows that you care more about what is good
for your application than what is good for the user.

No matter how good your application actually is, with that kind of attitude I
just can't trust you.

Your second sentence is a non sequitur btw. I'm not looking for easier ways to
sign up, I am looking not to sign up at all. If a mugger provided me with
convenient credit card and paypal options for how to give him my money, I
wouldn't be happy with that either.

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NathanKP
Bad things happen to the layout if the screen's vertical dimension is not
large enough. The semi-transparent screenshots at the bottom move up over the
text.

Also, I didn't like the bar at the bottom of the screen. If feels strange and
also gets in the way. Personally I feel that the design could still use some
fine tuning.

~~~
anigbrowl
Yeah, it's a bit over-designed. The giant purple signup button draws the eye
so strongly that at first I didn't notice the existence of a video and
screenshots, or the little strip menu along the bottom.

It's kinda like a sales assistant that rushes up to ask if you're finding
everything before you've gotten halfway from the door to the shelves...give me
a chance to indulge my curiosity first, eh?

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danielfranz
Hi there, I am the developer behind Good Noows and I'd like to respond to a
few posts here. I currently work on Good Noows in my spare time and I earn my
living as a Product Manager at a mobile network operator. I started Good Noows
because I simply couldnt find a news reader out there that serves my needs. I
assume thats because it's very hard to get funding for it. Google Reader is
top when it comes to functionality but I dont agree with their UI. Good Noows
tries to address two segments of users and I hope that both are served ok-ish
(feedback is actually quite good): 1) RSS reader users sharing my customer
pain for a better browsing experience, and 2) the average consumer who doesnt
even know what RSS is and just wants to set up a personal news stream (the
twitter-like terminology with "stream" and "follow" is intended). Simple and
quick.

\- No we dont get paid for listing feeds. I'd love that because it would be a
great business model.

\- Sorry if the predefined sources in the catalog are not what you are looking
for. Since I am German I do not have a complete overview of i.e. US-American
politics blogs. I definitely was not biased when choosing them. I just used
Technorati's top lists and looked for properly formatted feeds.

\- The layout is not yet optimized for touch devices at all. Apologies. I hope
I'll find the time to work on it soon...

\- I decided to use Meebo because their sharing function does a good job. If
you dont like the bar at the bottom, feel free to hide it (arrow icon at the
right).

\- You have to sign on before using it because I (and my legal counsels) see
copyright issues when they look at my product vision and feature roadmap. If
you re logged in it's private consumption. I won't display third party content
publicly.

\- Logging in with your social network account just simplifies registration.
We dont get any personal data or anything from these auth services, just an ID
(which is in some cases an email address).

Feel free to post any suggestions for feeds or features, other ideas, or just
criticism here <http://support.goodnoows.com> I really try to do this very
agile and user-focused...

Cheers

~~~
WiseWeasel
Personally speaking, the login requirement was a non-starter. Unless you can
work out a deal with content providers to supply at least a sampling of the
experience without an account, I'd say you're going to have a tough time
attracting users.

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CWuestefeld
What's the deal with this? I see that it's a news reader. But I'll be darned
if I can find any kind of description of its features, so I can decide if it's
worth my time to move off of Google.

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Oompa
Am I the only one that really enjoys a simple RSS reader like NewFire? Give me
a big view of the current article, and every time I hit space bar, move
forward to the next unread article.

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Semiapies
That doesn't look _startlingly_ like the Times Skimmer or anything.

<http://www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer/>

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Meh. There are several of these for the iPad. Not sure it's super uncommon to
have a different browsing interface anymore...

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mithaler
Two things:

1) I need OPML import. Before that's there, all I can really do is play with
the interface to see if I like it; I imagine this will be the case for anyone
who already uses a lot of RSS feeds. (Other users new to the concept, on the
other hand, would be fine getting started with the sample feeds given.)

2) The Meebo toolbar needs to go. I get that social networking is a major
focus, but adding an IM client to the interface is not helpful for anyone but
iPad users (and even that's doubtful). If you must have it, I suggest
detecting the user agent and removing it for anyone but them, or at least
giving the option to disable it entirely in the options (instead of just
"hiding" it).

Otherwise, it's a great start and I'd love to see where it's going. :)

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Qz
This is a little nitpicky, but "Noows" keeps causing my speech center to blue
screen.

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pedrokost
Maybe it's just me, but the only thing i don't like is the toolbar at the
bottom. Maybe the site would look simpler without it. And what's worse, the
bar is almost useless at least in Chrome, as a link url appears at the botton
left every time i hover over one, so that the bar is barely readable.
Otherwise great app. I think it will replace Google News for me. I even
included a tab with Ycombinator news.

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cjoh
Kind of a wacky set of default sources for the political section. The only
independent blog offered in their list of political sources is
BigGovernment.com which is a great source of nonsense (let me be clear -- this
isn't a partisan complaint. DailyKos is also a source of nonsense). Puzzled as
to why they'd even include it.

~~~
w1ntermute
_Puzzled as to why they'd even include it._

Probably got paid to.

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j_b_f
It's a little weird that the iPad-ish device on the homepage appears to be
running the Windows version of Firefox.

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camflan
Awful UX for an iPad or touch screen device. Don't know about the rest because
i gave up using it after 30 seconds, when i was shown the management panel and
noticed how bad it was for touch screens.

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RossM
I love the UI on this, it's the kind of app that I'd run full-screen because
it looks like a desktop app.

I'll give it a proper try when they can import OPML.

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kksm19820117
I see there may have been a misconception here; I haven't built this app. I
discovered it while looking for an alternative to Google Reader.

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kordless
Locked up on me several times in Chrome.

~~~
pedrokost
Me too a few times. The drag and drop feature in the setup window is a bit
slow.

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fname
I know it's coming, but until Google Reader importing is functional, it's of
no use to me.

~~~
netmau5
There are so many new RSS apps out there but it seems like they don't even
admit to themselves that Google Reader exists. The project doesn't seem worth
doing if you're just going to provide a subset of that functionality.

Do we want to comment on your site rather than the blog post itself? Probably
not. Hacker News is an exception because there is a community of like-minded
people here; that will not be the case on a generic aggregator. Solving the
community issue is more important than dumping a ton of social features on it.

There are some enticing possibilities around RSS readers, but I think they
mostly revolve around the incorporation of other ideas into them. Even a
modest follower of RSS is going to hit information saturation after 20ish
blogs, so a recommendation and ranking service would definitely be useful.

I looked over the screenshots and they didn't wow me. I would have been
willing to try it, like the above poster said, if I could simply access the
reader and add a feed to see what it was like. I'd understand that my settings
weren't saved until I signed up.

