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Useful apps for Hacker News

metaextension.com

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Re: Useful apps for Hacker News

#2

Post by bemmu »

MetaExtension is my current project.

I started this project after noticing how little usage most Chrome extensions get, even though many of them are quite useful. Most decent Chrome extensions have just some thousands of users, even though there are around 100 million Chrome users.

The idea is to have a directory of apps that go well with certain websites, exposed through a Chrome extension that then informs users if any apps are available for the website they are currently visiting.

It seems this would benefit both users and the app developers.

Re: Useful apps for Hacker News

#4

Post by simias »

I use HNdroid from time to time, it's very slow on big comment threads and doesn't format everything properly. I think I read it's because there's no HN API so it just parses the HTML. Are there any plans to provide such an API? It would make it much easier to... hack on top of the website.

Re: Useful apps for Hacker News

#7

Post by wvl »

bemmu wrote: post #2

MetaExtension is my current project. I started this project after noticing how little usage most Chrome extensions get, even though many of them are quite useful. Most decent Chrome extensions have just some thousands of users, even though there are around 100 million Chrome users. The idea is to have a directory of apps that go well with certain websites, exposed through a Chrome extension that then informs users if…

Is this manually curated, or are you querying extension permissions from the app store?

I've got an extension that combines the collapsible threads with the ability to highlight new comments. However, I never did put it in the chrome extension directory. It's available here: http://hckrnews.com/about.html

Re: Useful apps for Hacker News

#8

Post by notintokyo »

bemmu wrote: post #2

MetaExtension is my current project. I started this project after noticing how little usage most Chrome extensions get, even though many of them are quite useful. Most decent Chrome extensions have just some thousands of users, even though there are around 100 million Chrome users. The idea is to have a directory of apps that go well with certain websites, exposed through a Chrome extension that then informs users if…

My challenge now is to grow the userbase of MetaExtension itself, otherwise this would become one of those forgotten apps and fail to fulfill its promise. Besides just throwing the app out there on the Chrome store and hoping for installs, I'm also trying to create linkbait-type pages targeted to certain websites. I did one for Digg and HN now as first tests. Digg was total failure, not one person besides myself even clicked the link.

Re: Useful apps for Hacker News

#9

Post by notintokyo »

wvl wrote: post #7
bemmu wrote: post #2

MetaExtension is my current project. I started this project after noticing how little usage most Chrome extensions get, even though many of them are quite useful. Most decent Chrome extensions have just some thousands of users, even though there are around 100 million Chrome users. The idea is to have a directory of apps that go well with certain websites, exposed through a Chrome extension that then informs users if…

Is this manually curated, or are you querying extension permissions from the app store? I've got an extension that combines the collapsible threads with the ability to highlight new comments. However, I never did put it in the chrome extension directory. It's available here: http://hckrnews.com/about.html

Manually curating now, I look at a list where new submissions arrive and click accept / deny after checking that the submission seems to work and isn't of lower quality than some submission from before. I think having several apps that do exactly the same thing isn't very beneficial.
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