NPR One • Hacker News Board

Re: NPR One

#31

Post by gress » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:01 PM UTC

grrrando wrote: post #23

Anyone else find the concept a little weird? NPR is already like this in many ways (heavily left-leaning) so this argument is already somewhat moot, but: hearing news stories tailored just for me sounds ignorant. News shouldn't be a thing which I am allowed to filter based on my biases.

Whose biases should your news be filtered by?

Re: NPR One

#32

Post by stronglikedan » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

minivan wrote: post #27

Cool, hopefully it will replace the All Songs Considered audio stream (which is great). Side note: Is it just me, or this "scroll to reveal stuff in steps" is a bit frustrating? It seems to be used more and more often and I am sometimes puzzled by the fact that I'm missing the scrolling step. I try scrolling and get either too far (which shows half an image coming from above) or don't get anywhere (which makes me scr…

It's not just you. It's an annoying trend. Perhaps it's good for phones and tablets (that's arguable), but I don't think it's good for mouse input. At least this landing page (NPR) has optional buttons on the right side, unlike most pages I've seen like this (Spendee). It's turning "mobile first" into "mobile only", and I am being dragged kicking and screaming into it.

Re: NPR One

#33

Post by rootbear » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

grrrando wrote: post #23

Anyone else find the concept a little weird? NPR is already like this in many ways (heavily left-leaning) so this argument is already somewhat moot, but: hearing news stories tailored just for me sounds ignorant. News shouldn't be a thing which I am allowed to filter based on my biases.

I'll have to see how this actually works, but it's not clear that the news itself will be tailored to the listener. For example, I might pick "Science News" and "Arts News" but not "Sports News" and I don't see that as putting myself in an echo chamber. If the categories were "News for Democrats" and "News for Social Conservatives", then that might be a concern. Also, NPR is more than just news. I regularly listen to NPR programming that isn't entirely aligned with my own world views.

Re: NPR One

#34

Post by samskeller » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

minivan wrote: post #27

Cool, hopefully it will replace the All Songs Considered audio stream (which is great). Side note: Is it just me, or this "scroll to reveal stuff in steps" is a bit frustrating? It seems to be used more and more often and I am sometimes puzzled by the fact that I'm missing the scrolling step. I try scrolling and get either too far (which shows half an image coming from above) or don't get anywhere (which makes me scr…

Couldn't agree more about the scrolling. It's trying too hard to be fancy and ends up just being frustrating and hard to use

Re: NPR One

#35

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

grrrando wrote: post #23

Anyone else find the concept a little weird? NPR is already like this in many ways (heavily left-leaning) so this argument is already somewhat moot, but: hearing news stories tailored just for me sounds ignorant. News shouldn't be a thing which I am allowed to filter based on my biases.

[deleted]

Re: NPR One

#36

Post by gress » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

x1798DE wrote: post #6

I don't understand why this needs to be an app. I listen to many things that aren't NPR, and I don't want to switch between BeyondPod and NPR One just to get some sort of curated list. This reminds me of a few years ago where a bunch of podcasts were offering personalized apps that just downloaded the archives and maybe some extra content. I might have paid for the extra content, but I didn't need an app on my phone…

The alternative you suggest would be better for a tiny number of highly sophisticated users, and a lot worse for most people.

Also, I see no reason both shouldn't exist. Why not make the thing you want?

Re: NPR One

#37

Post by eddieroger » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

rglover wrote: post #2

Super cool. Only thing, though, is that they should be charging for this. Seeing as how NPR stations rely on listener donations, this seems like a missed opportunity to earn some extra revenue and bolster the budget for stations.

I imagine most of the local fees go to very tactical things like keeping the transmitter on, which is non-trivial. Not that streaming should exclude local affiliates from funding, but it should be the local channel's responsibility to handle the cost of things it can't share (transmitters, office space, staff, etc), and share or get money for content and such which it can share back.

Re: NPR One

#38

Post by blueplanet » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:07 PM UTC

grrrando wrote: post #23

Anyone else find the concept a little weird? NPR is already like this in many ways (heavily left-leaning) so this argument is already somewhat moot, but: hearing news stories tailored just for me sounds ignorant. News shouldn't be a thing which I am allowed to filter based on my biases.

I think they mean tailoring in two ways:

1. Play stories local to where you live. 2. A lot of shows on NPR aren't straight news, so it'll remember which shows you particularly enjoy.

Re: NPR One

#39

Post by tomjen3 » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:09 PM UTC

Beware if you use google or facebook to login to it (what the fuck do you need to login in the first place) it requires the right to get your friends lists and to post content on your behalf.

Re: NPR One

#40

Post by x1798DE » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 4:09 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #14

x1798DE wrote: post #6

I don't understand why this needs to be an app. I listen to many things that aren't NPR, and I don't want to switch between BeyondPod and NPR One just to get some sort of curated list. This reminds me of a few years ago where a bunch of podcasts were offering personalized apps that just downloaded the archives and maybe some extra content. I might have paid for the extra content, but I didn't need an app on my phone…

Podcasts (especially on android) is still remarkably broken for most people. I have installed an app and subscribed to several podcasts for a number of people who are below average in their tech literacy. They all fail at being able to consistently manage the app and get the content they want. Finding and subscribing to a new podcast, even if they know which one they want and can get to the website is an almost 100%…

I suppose you could offer an app in addition to an RSS feed, but honestly I've never encountered someone who didn't know how to download a podcast.

If they are primarily worried about people having trouble downloading podcasts for whatever reason, it seems like they could have saved themselves a lot of work by just contacting some of the biggest podcast apps on the market (BeyondPod I think is the biggest) about making it easy to subscribe to this particular feed. They could make a custom-built plugin that just installs the feed, they could potentially license a special distribution of the app that has the feed pre-installed.

Fragmentation of the audio listening market is really not justified and is not really going to help anything.