4 ms·

Mini Web

38 points by Mini-WWW 16y ago

adambyrtek 16y ago
> Although launched with a zero funding, the business model for the Mini-WWW is highly scalable: The more you invest into it, the more reviwers can be hired. I don't think this is what we usually mean by scalability. If you find a good algorithm to measure the "simplicity" of a page, it could be useful, but relying on a manual review process is a recipe for failure.
- Mini-WWW 16y ago
  The MiniRank algorithm is described here: http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_rank_formula/ http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_rank_formula/
  - mahmud 16y ago
    I described your algorithm elsewhere here without seeing your spec. Ok, if you have a history of delivering software, you should be able to pull this off. You will need some massive crawling work, but you can narrow down an initial target by using "good" bookmarks as a starting point.
    - Mini-WWW 16y ago
      That's exactly what I will try to do next! However, the soft will be no more than some tips for pre-selection purposes only. Yet the final stage should be manual anyway.
- Mini-WWW 16y ago
  Relying on a manual review process would be a failure only in the case you want to include into your search engine the whole Web. In contrast, the proposed niche is for a small Sub-Web, where a slow, - yet quality! - manual reviewing would be quite sufficient: http://mini-www.com/blog/next_big_thing-be_small/ http://mini-www.com/blog/next_big_thing-be_small/ Use Google to access the Web. And Mini-WWW for the "Mini Web"
  - joelhaasnoot 16y ago
    Manual reviewers are people. You'll still need guidelines to determine what's minimal. People are points of failure... Will be hard to determine what really is minimal.
    - mahmud 16y ago
      It's not too hard to measure what might be considered a "minimal" page, if he means simple, uncluttered web pages. Here is what you do; number-of-CSS-blocks + number of images + javascript-dependencies + some magic function involving unique HTML elements in pages = minimal# The lower the minimal# the better. You can also throw in some weight products as well, to skew the results and penalize specific components (say flash=1000, gif=300, java-applet=1000, real-media=2000, etc.)
  - Terretta 16y ago
    Yahoo! Directory is new again.
  - NathanKP 16y ago
    The problem is that such a slow reviewing process means that the results are likely bad, because only manually submitted pages are indexed. For example: http://mini-www.com/search/?find=c%2B%2B http://mini-www.com/search/?find=c%2B%2B The results are currently terrible, and at $1 per page indexing fee, or a backlink to mini-www.com required I expect the results will stay bad for a long time, perhaps forever.
    - Mini-WWW 16y ago
      Who said the actual implementation for the Mini-WWW search would be the same next week? And WHO SAID THE MINIMAL INTRODUCTION PRICE OF $1 IS FOREVER?!!
      - adambyrtek 16y ago
        Don't shout, please.
arethuza 16y ago
So what you want to do is to create a minimalist web? By working out what we could remove and still leave a reasonable functioning core? Having used the Web since '92 I can see the attraction of that :-) What practical steps do you see for realizing such a vision?
- Mini-WWW 16y ago
  Rather, I want to highlight existing Minimal sub-Web through introducing the special niche Search Engine http://Mini-WWW.com http://Mini-WWW.com! Hopefully, it can encourage webmasters to create more USABLE pages, like mobile or RSS movement. But to get to that point the project must become a really popular service!
corin_ 16y ago
http://mini-news.com/2008/04/bye_bye_ads/ http://mini-news.com/2008/04/bye_bye_ads/ Reading that article made me stop caring in any way about this submission.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Agreed, there are some crank elements to this, but it's better to give people the benefit of the doubt. If he re-tools this to some kind of sever-side Readability, a good chunk of people who can't use bookmarklets will jump on board.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    "sever-side Readability" Maybe add NoScript like features as well. Does anything like that exist?
    - inerte 16y ago
      You would use? Seems "simple": crawl webpages, remove html tags from source, wrap blocks of newlines around <p>s, style accordingly (good, readable font and generous white spacing). Depending on the execution, this could be characterized as stealing other people's content, but anyway, are the above mentioned "features" what you want?
      - Mini-WWW 16y ago
        Nope, it's not that simple: The Unformatted Web you propose is simply too dull and boring! That's why the MiniRank Formula specifically degrades such TEXT-ONLY pages! http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_competitors/ http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_competitors/
        inerte 16y ago
        It's a simple idea and simple to do. Other than the person I was replying to, I made no assumptions if you or anyone else would like. I really don't want to be dragged into this discussion with you, we have opposite personalities and I don't want to talk about the MiniRank Formula TEXT-ONLY whatever. Thank you for understanding :)
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
For instant Mini-Web, just use this browser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29
- rogeriopvl 16y ago
  For even better instant Mini-Web, just use Instapaper.
  - Mini-WWW 16y ago
    As far as I remember, the Instapaper simply saves web pages for reading later. Although it may somehow facilitate easy reading of long text content (e.g., by moving it into another reading platform like Kindle), but not too much.
    - adambyrtek 16y ago
      When you click on a "Text" button in Instapaper you get a simple uncluttered textual representation of the page.
      - Mini-WWW 16y ago
        Unlike Mini-WWW, the problem with Instapaper is the resulting format is the SAME for all pages! It's rather boring world!
  - adambyrtek 16y ago
    Which was inspired by the Readability experiment[1]. Not to mention that Safari has a similar feature now. Overall I like this approach better because I don't want to limit myself to a tiny subset of the web. [1] http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
yawniek 16y ago
combine this with the semantic web and we would have a truly ubiquitous computing capable information architecture. why not start it in ipv6 sphere only.
- Robin_Message 16y ago
  Your first sentence is buzzworded to hell. Do you mean a structured database of all published facts and opinions? Because I'd say the facts worth having are in wikipedia, or should be, so that's the place to work on semantics of facts, and opinions worth hearing are distributed by journalists, so work out how to make the New York Times semantic and work down from there. As to your second question, because that would be a very stupid and bloody-minded idea. In order to make a simple web everyone can use it might just make sense to do it over a transport everyone can reliably and easily access, i.e. ipv4. Why the hell would you want to restrict it? ipv6 is not magic, just a complex new protocol for routing internet traffic that is not yet rolled out, and has no particular benefits for web transactions. It won't affect the web (that is, HTML served over HTTP) a damm.
  - adambyrtek 16y ago
    I think you are taking this too seriously, the post looks like a good irony which has been down-voted because most people just didn't get it.
    - yawniek 16y ago
      thanks :)
lukeqsee 16y ago
I like the idea. The execution is suspect. The site seems cluttered. The mixture of typefaces, italics, and colors grate against everything I've come to love about minimal sites. If this is what is ahead for the minimal web, count me out.
- Mini-WWW 16y ago
  Thank you, Lukeqsee! The execution is just in early ALPHA stage. I even run it on a cheapest shared web account (more powerful dedicated server and search soft are to be in October only). As for what minimal page is, I would tell you I've seen a LOT of websites that call themselves Galleries (Top Lists, or whatever) for MINIMAL Webpages, where only few of their links point to really minimal ones. No matter what the name for the Minimal pages could be, I see them as SMALL and FAST ONLY!
  - lukeqsee 16y ago
    If that "Thank you" was sincere: you're welcome. If it's not, sorry, I'm only trying to help. My definition of a minimal webpage: a design that doesn't get in the way of it's content. Unfortunately your current font-* styles get in the way of your content. It's that simple. It doesn't matter what web server you use, or how you define a minimal page. If I can't read your content, I'm not going to take stock in what it's trying to present.
    - Mini-WWW 16y ago
      My "Thank you" was sincere! I launched the Mini-WWW Search Engine because I SIMPLY COULD NOT READ many beautiful websites their developers still very proud of. So, that's my first criteria for the Ideal Minimal Webpage, - the one that it's EASY FOR DOWNLOADING!!! I'm also sorry that you don't like my current fonts and styles (in fact, the only serious drawback about them I know is that fonts are with fixed size). Tastes differ, and although I accept my pages may not be excellent, they are very good in emphasizing idea of SIMPLICITY! More important, - they LOAD FAST!
ramanujan 16y ago
How did this obvious troll make it to the front page of Hacker News? And why is anyone taking this seriously? The post is almost incoherent. pg might want to investigate how exactly an account created 3 hours ago got 25 votes for such a bizarre Time-Cube-ish link.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Hard to tell right now, 25 upvotes is quite a bit, but all it really takes is about 4 or so in the first couple of minutes for anything at all to get a bunch more upvotes, I've seen that often enough. If it had a bunch of upvotes in two minutes or so that would be definitely suspect. Even PGs posts don't go that fast, so that's a good indicator something is fishy. The http://mini- http://mini- news.com/ (url messed up on purpose) seems to be an SEO spam site, so you're probably right.
  - Mini-WWW 16y ago
    Hey, jacquesm, honestly, - have you EVER VISITED the http://mini- http://mini- news.com/ (url messed up on purpose) you mentioned so angry? Does it look like a spam site full of ads? Absolutely not! The spam is to tell people you don't know for sure!
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      > have you EVER VISITED the http://mini- http://mini- news.com/ (url messed up on purpose) you mentioned so angry? Actually, yes, I looked at it before I wrote that.
    - shortformblog 16y ago
      I think he's saying that the way you keep repeating "iPad" on that page is very spammy and seems to be designed to game SEO. Also, your site needs something. It looks kind of drab. Have you ever considered throwing some AdMob ads on there? :P
- Mini-WWW 16y ago
  Ramanujan, you would be surprised even more if I tell you that during last 2 hours I even wasn't online: my Internet provider had some problems and cut off Internet for me during recent hours.
bhjodokast 16y ago
Try this one: http://mini-www.com/search/?find=anything http://mini-www.com/search/?find=anything

38 points by Mini-WWW 16y ago

> Although launched with a zero funding, the business model for the Mini-WWW is highly scalable: The more you invest into it, the more reviwers can be hired. I don't think this is what we usually mean by scalability. If you find a good algorithm to measure the "simplicity" of a page, it could be useful, but relying on a manual review process is a recipe for failure.

Mini-WWW 16y ago
The MiniRank algorithm is described here: http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_rank_formula/ http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_rank_formula/
- mahmud 16y ago
  I described your algorithm elsewhere here without seeing your spec. Ok, if you have a history of delivering software, you should be able to pull this off. You will need some massive crawling work, but you can narrow down an initial target by using "good" bookmarks as a starting point.
  - Mini-WWW 16y ago
    That's exactly what I will try to do next! However, the soft will be no more than some tips for pre-selection purposes only. Yet the final stage should be manual anyway.
Mini-WWW 16y ago
Relying on a manual review process would be a failure only in the case you want to include into your search engine the whole Web. In contrast, the proposed niche is for a small Sub-Web, where a slow, - yet quality! - manual reviewing would be quite sufficient: http://mini-www.com/blog/next_big_thing-be_small/ http://mini-www.com/blog/next_big_thing-be_small/ Use Google to access the Web. And Mini-WWW for the "Mini Web"
- joelhaasnoot 16y ago
  Manual reviewers are people. You'll still need guidelines to determine what's minimal. People are points of failure... Will be hard to determine what really is minimal.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    It's not too hard to measure what might be considered a "minimal" page, if he means simple, uncluttered web pages. Here is what you do; number-of-CSS-blocks + number of images + javascript-dependencies + some magic function involving unique HTML elements in pages = minimal# The lower the minimal# the better. You can also throw in some weight products as well, to skew the results and penalize specific components (say flash=1000, gif=300, java-applet=1000, real-media=2000, etc.)
- Terretta 16y ago
  Yahoo! Directory is new again.
- NathanKP 16y ago
  The problem is that such a slow reviewing process means that the results are likely bad, because only manually submitted pages are indexed. For example: http://mini-www.com/search/?find=c%2B%2B http://mini-www.com/search/?find=c%2B%2B The results are currently terrible, and at $1 per page indexing fee, or a backlink to mini-www.com required I expect the results will stay bad for a long time, perhaps forever.
  - Mini-WWW 16y ago
    Who said the actual implementation for the Mini-WWW search would be the same next week? And WHO SAID THE MINIMAL INTRODUCTION PRICE OF $1 IS FOREVER?!!
    - adambyrtek 16y ago
      Don't shout, please.

arethuza 16y ago

So what you want to do is to create a minimalist web? By working out what we could remove and still leave a reasonable functioning core? Having used the Web since '92 I can see the attraction of that :-) What practical steps do you see for realizing such a vision?

Mini-WWW 16y ago
Rather, I want to highlight existing Minimal sub-Web through introducing the special niche Search Engine http://Mini-WWW.com http://Mini-WWW.com! Hopefully, it can encourage webmasters to create more USABLE pages, like mobile or RSS movement. But to get to that point the project must become a really popular service!

corin_ 16y ago

http://mini-news.com/2008/04/bye_bye_ads/ http://mini-news.com/2008/04/bye_bye_ads/ Reading that article made me stop caring in any way about this submission.

mahmud 16y ago
Agreed, there are some crank elements to this, but it's better to give people the benefit of the doubt. If he re-tools this to some kind of sever-side Readability, a good chunk of people who can't use bookmarklets will jump on board.
- arethuza 16y ago
  "sever-side Readability" Maybe add NoScript like features as well. Does anything like that exist?
  - inerte 16y ago
    You would use? Seems "simple": crawl webpages, remove html tags from source, wrap blocks of newlines around <p>s, style accordingly (good, readable font and generous white spacing). Depending on the execution, this could be characterized as stealing other people's content, but anyway, are the above mentioned "features" what you want?
    - Mini-WWW 16y ago
      Nope, it's not that simple: The Unformatted Web you propose is simply too dull and boring! That's why the MiniRank Formula specifically degrades such TEXT-ONLY pages! http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_competitors/ http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_competitors/
      - inerte 16y ago
        It's a simple idea and simple to do. Other than the person I was replying to, I made no assumptions if you or anyone else would like. I really don't want to be dragged into this discussion with you, we have opposite personalities and I don't want to talk about the MiniRank Formula TEXT-ONLY whatever. Thank you for understanding :)

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

For instant Mini-Web, just use this browser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29

rogeriopvl 16y ago
For even better instant Mini-Web, just use Instapaper.
- Mini-WWW 16y ago
  As far as I remember, the Instapaper simply saves web pages for reading later. Although it may somehow facilitate easy reading of long text content (e.g., by moving it into another reading platform like Kindle), but not too much.
  - adambyrtek 16y ago
    When you click on a "Text" button in Instapaper you get a simple uncluttered textual representation of the page.
    - Mini-WWW 16y ago
      Unlike Mini-WWW, the problem with Instapaper is the resulting format is the SAME for all pages! It's rather boring world!
- adambyrtek 16y ago
  Which was inspired by the Readability experiment[1]. Not to mention that Safari has a similar feature now. Overall I like this approach better because I don't want to limit myself to a tiny subset of the web. [1] http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

yawniek 16y ago

combine this with the semantic web and we would have a truly ubiquitous computing capable information architecture. why not start it in ipv6 sphere only.

Robin_Message 16y ago
Your first sentence is buzzworded to hell. Do you mean a structured database of all published facts and opinions? Because I'd say the facts worth having are in wikipedia, or should be, so that's the place to work on semantics of facts, and opinions worth hearing are distributed by journalists, so work out how to make the New York Times semantic and work down from there. As to your second question, because that would be a very stupid and bloody-minded idea. In order to make a simple web everyone can use it might just make sense to do it over a transport everyone can reliably and easily access, i.e. ipv4. Why the hell would you want to restrict it? ipv6 is not magic, just a complex new protocol for routing internet traffic that is not yet rolled out, and has no particular benefits for web transactions. It won't affect the web (that is, HTML served over HTTP) a damm.
- adambyrtek 16y ago
  I think you are taking this too seriously, the post looks like a good irony which has been down-voted because most people just didn't get it.
  - yawniek 16y ago
    thanks :)

lukeqsee 16y ago

I like the idea. The execution is suspect. The site seems cluttered. The mixture of typefaces, italics, and colors grate against everything I've come to love about minimal sites. If this is what is ahead for the minimal web, count me out.

Mini-WWW 16y ago
Thank you, Lukeqsee! The execution is just in early ALPHA stage. I even run it on a cheapest shared web account (more powerful dedicated server and search soft are to be in October only). As for what minimal page is, I would tell you I've seen a LOT of websites that call themselves Galleries (Top Lists, or whatever) for MINIMAL Webpages, where only few of their links point to really minimal ones. No matter what the name for the Minimal pages could be, I see them as SMALL and FAST ONLY!
- lukeqsee 16y ago
  If that "Thank you" was sincere: you're welcome. If it's not, sorry, I'm only trying to help. My definition of a minimal webpage: a design that doesn't get in the way of it's content. Unfortunately your current font-* styles get in the way of your content. It's that simple. It doesn't matter what web server you use, or how you define a minimal page. If I can't read your content, I'm not going to take stock in what it's trying to present.
  - Mini-WWW 16y ago
    My "Thank you" was sincere! I launched the Mini-WWW Search Engine because I SIMPLY COULD NOT READ many beautiful websites their developers still very proud of. So, that's my first criteria for the Ideal Minimal Webpage, - the one that it's EASY FOR DOWNLOADING!!! I'm also sorry that you don't like my current fonts and styles (in fact, the only serious drawback about them I know is that fonts are with fixed size). Tastes differ, and although I accept my pages may not be excellent, they are very good in emphasizing idea of SIMPLICITY! More important, - they LOAD FAST!

ramanujan 16y ago

How did this obvious troll make it to the front page of Hacker News? And why is anyone taking this seriously? The post is almost incoherent. pg might want to investigate how exactly an account created 3 hours ago got 25 votes for such a bizarre Time-Cube-ish link.

jacquesm 16y ago
Hard to tell right now, 25 upvotes is quite a bit, but all it really takes is about 4 or so in the first couple of minutes for anything at all to get a bunch more upvotes, I've seen that often enough. If it had a bunch of upvotes in two minutes or so that would be definitely suspect. Even PGs posts don't go that fast, so that's a good indicator something is fishy. The http://mini- http://mini- news.com/ (url messed up on purpose) seems to be an SEO spam site, so you're probably right.
- Mini-WWW 16y ago
  Hey, jacquesm, honestly, - have you EVER VISITED the http://mini- http://mini- news.com/ (url messed up on purpose) you mentioned so angry? Does it look like a spam site full of ads? Absolutely not! The spam is to tell people you don't know for sure!
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    > have you EVER VISITED the http://mini- http://mini- news.com/ (url messed up on purpose) you mentioned so angry? Actually, yes, I looked at it before I wrote that.
  - shortformblog 16y ago
    I think he's saying that the way you keep repeating "iPad" on that page is very spammy and seems to be designed to game SEO. Also, your site needs something. It looks kind of drab. Have you ever considered throwing some AdMob ads on there? :P
Mini-WWW 16y ago
Ramanujan, you would be surprised even more if I tell you that during last 2 hours I even wasn't online: my Internet provider had some problems and cut off Internet for me during recent hours.

bhjodokast 16y ago

Try this one: http://mini-www.com/search/?find=anything http://mini-www.com/search/?find=anything