Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
mauriciogardini.com
Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#2Signed up and added a few feeds, added a double by mistake, couldn't figure out how to remove it. Waited 10 minutes and still no items in any feeds. Could turn into something nice, but I think the $36/year is a little premature at this point. Will check back.
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#3Signed up and added a few feeds, added a double by mistake, couldn't figure out how to remove it. Waited 10 minutes and still no items in any feeds. Could turn into something nice, but I think the $36/year is a little premature at this point. Will check back.
We're now finishing the interface to properly manage your subscriptions. Should be online within a week or so.
About the feeds, the updates are taking a little longer than expected, it's around 15 to 20 minutes now. HN effect probably, I'm working on speeding things up. Let me know if things are still not working for you.
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#4This might be sufficient for a first draft but it's also a great illustration of a lazy cliche that I'm seeing a lot—especially in this newly invigorated field, feed readers.
This is the sort of app that leads to minimalist-style marketing. '...One simple thing: read'. The current crop of online text editors has a similar impulse: 'The app for people who just want to write.' What these apps' creators mean is that their apps strip down the experience to the bare essentials of the activity, and don't throw a lot of extraneous bullshit in your face when you're trying to get your reading/writing/weather-checking done.
Which misses the mark a little bit. If your interface is simply a recapitulation of the received wisdom around feed reading, or text editing—if your app looks like what you'd get if you took all the feed readers that have been made and incorporated only those features that occur in all of them—then you haven't achieved minimalism. You've achieved superfluousness—the very thing you were trying to avoid!
Minimalism, as we should all know by now, isn't simply not including features. It's putting a lot of hard work into eliding the cognitive load around the accomplishment of a specific task. The text editing web app that sets my world on fire won't be another Markdown-enabled text box that lets me go to full screen, it's going to be a Markdown-enabled text box that understands my intention and fulfills it in ways that I, not being a brilliant application designer, have not yet imagined.
At the very least, if you can't or won't tout a new, whiz-bang feature, get me excited about what it is that you've cut away, what you've devised how to do without, to really deliver on the promise of simplicity (that is, simplicity of use—not design or construction) and essentialism. On the other hand, the promise of a wide range of features to come, many ideas to be implemented, seems to work directly against the header of this article. One's audience should not be, I believe, people who want one simple thing now and a bunch of neat gizmos later.
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#5Certainly looks nice. I'm primarily curious as to whether there'll be mobile version (whether app or webapp). I couldn't see anything about it in the post or on the site.
$36/year might be a touch too much at this point, but if with a mobile app, I'd definitely be willing to pay it.
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#6Does this service provide an emulated Google Reader API endpoint so I can point client programs at it (like iOS's Reeder)?
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#7Certainly looks nice. I'm primarily curious as to whether there'll be mobile version (whether app or webapp). I couldn't see anything about it in the post or on the site. $36/year might be a touch too much at this point, but if with a mobile app, I'd definitely be willing to pay it.
We're planning to add a webapp for mobile very soon, right after we fix the issues that invariably will pop up from the launch. We'll be avoiding native apps for now. Offline reading is also on our plans, if that's important for you.
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#8Does this service provide an emulated Google Reader API endpoint so I can point client programs at it (like iOS's Reeder)?
Not yet, but we wouldn't be opposed to implement it if there's enough demand. It may take a while though, as we have other priorities atm.
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#9This might be sufficient for a first draft but it's also a great illustration of a lazy cliche that I'm seeing a lot—especially in this newly invigorated field, feed readers. This is the sort of app that leads to minimalist-style marketing. '...One simple thing: read'. The current crop of online text editors has a similar impulse: 'The app for people who just want to write.' What these apps' creators mean is that the…
You got a point. About the features to come, I have to disagree with you tough. We didn't disclose on the page what features we're going to include, so I don't blame you. On the top of our list, there's pubsubhubbub (so your news get to you faster), a mobile webapp, offline reading and some interface tweaks that a lot of people told us they want. I don't consider this "neat gizmos", they are only supporting the one simple thing you want, which is reading. We'll not be adding tons of social features, fancy viewing modes or anything like that.
Re: Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing
#10If your app is designed to do one thing, please take the time to find a typeface that is incredibly legible, and then set it so that scanning long paragraphs is a simple matter.
That condensed typeface you've chosen, and the fit-to-width paragraph size make it harder than necessary for users.