Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#1

Post by meteor333 » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC

I got fed up with the news reader apps out there so I decided to make my own. Its a simple concept where it tracks all your favorite news sources for new posts and the social shares it received. Then it ranks it HN/Reddit style using social shares as upvotes. It's not meant to be alternative to HN, just a focused way to track your favorite sources. Please try it out and let me know what do you think,

http://telescope.surf/

Note: you can do 'Add to Homescreen' on mobile to make it as an app.

Please leave a feedback or any feature wishlist you may have.

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#2

Post by nsriv » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:01 PM UTC

I love this! Desktop view could use more page width, but I love the concept. Adding in custom RSS URLs as sources could be a good direction to take as well.

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#3

Post by drvortex » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:05 PM UTC

Nice, but really, it is a narrow column on a 4K screen. Can you make it adapt to screen sizes so that it can use at least 80% of the screen?

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#4

Post by meteor333 » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:06 PM UTC

nsriv wrote: post #2

I love this! Desktop view could use more page width, but I love the concept. Adding in custom RSS URLs as sources could be a good direction to take as well.

thanks a lot! you made my day! Feel free to add any wishlist through the comment bubble of the app. I'll try to be quick for new features.

Will work on screen size and RSS soon.

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#5

Post by meteor333 » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

drvortex wrote: post #3

Nice, but really, it is a narrow column on a 4K screen. Can you make it adapt to screen sizes so that it can use at least 80% of the screen?

Good point. I'll work on it!

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#6

Post by yodon » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

Two news sources that I'd like to see added are memeorandum.com (the best algorithmicly generated news feed I've found) and drudgereport.com (whose politics I disagree with but it's a hugely influential site and I try to avoid trapping myself in a bubble).

I haven't found a news reader type app that handles those two sites, so I find myself wasting huge amounts of time hitting those two pages and trying to skim their entire link list looking for the couple new articles since the last time I visited, guessing wrong, and re-opening articles I've already read twice before. I'd love to be able to use your site to newsreader those two.

(Memorandum is tricky, as it groups related articles together because so many news articles feed from the same source report, and that greatly reduces needlessly redundant reading. Even if you could only easily add drudge, that would be a huge time savings for folks like me)

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#7

Post by 5_minutes » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 6:03 PM UTC

It's nice, good work there. Have any plans to open source it or sell it as a script?

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#8

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 6:06 PM UTC

Very nice!

Any idea why the image from the NYT article "United Nations General Assembly Convenes in New York" is so low quality?

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#9

Post by meteor333 » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 6:08 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #8

Very nice! Any idea why the image from the NYT article "United Nations General Assembly Convenes in New York" is so low quality?

Unfortunately the feed im working off of has that low quality image. I need find a better way.

Re: Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app

#10

Post by meteor333 » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 6:14 PM UTC

5_minutes wrote: post #7

It's nice, good work there. Have any plans to open source it or sell it as a script?

Thank you! I don't have concrete plans yet about this, but if i decide to do open source, I'll follow up.