PDFed Hacker News Daily

Nice. But limits you to the top 10. I regularly find stuff in the 10-20 positions that I want to read. Ideally you would be able to customise the number of results and add filters to ignore articles with certain words in their title.

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#5

Post by ajx » Tue, Nov 16, 2010, 2:42 PM UTC

This is nice, but the API requires your app to communicate back to some central web server in order to function...

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#6

Post by duck » Tue, Nov 16, 2010, 2:44 PM UTC

I wonder about the copyright issue with this? It is basically packaging someone else's work and producing it in another format. I thought that is why Hacker Monthly had to contact each individual author to get permissions, or is that just because he is selling it?

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#7

Post by vic_nyc » Tue, Nov 16, 2010, 3:00 PM UTC

Very good, for people on the go. If there was a way to also include the HackerNews users' comments on it, it would be even better.

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#8

Post by pavs » Tue, Nov 16, 2010, 3:07 PM UTC

duck wrote: post #6

I wonder about the copyright issue with this? It is basically packaging someone else's work and producing it in another format. I thought that is why Hacker Monthly had to contact each individual author to get permissions, or is that just because he is selling it?

HackerMonthly is repackaging several articles under a unified name. He is also putting ads on the magazine and later selling them after the first couple of issues. Not getting permission would have been both legally questionale and a dick thing to do.

This "web-app" (if I may use the word), is a simple automated way of putting multiple stories in to PDF format. You could do it yourself at home. There is no ad, reformatting, or rebranding or selling involved.

This distinction seems very obvious to me.

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#9

Post by pdx » Tue, Nov 16, 2010, 3:08 PM UTC

bjonathan wrote: post #3

Very nice, you should use http://viewtext.org/ API to clean the pages and comments. The PDF will be easier to read and with less pages :) I love the idea!

I want to implement something like viewtext.org on my own server (not using an API). I recall somebody mentioning a package that did a pretty good job of cleaning up a web page but can't find it. Can anybody recommend anything?

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#10

Post by redpill27 » Tue, Nov 16, 2010, 3:17 PM UTC

duck wrote: post #6

I wonder about the copyright issue with this? It is basically packaging someone else's work and producing it in another format. I thought that is why Hacker Monthly had to contact each individual author to get permissions, or is that just because he is selling it?

I'm aware of the copyright issue. The app is free and is intended for personal use only so I hope copyright owners mostly won't mind.

Anyway, if someone complains that his/her site is included I will remove it.