16 ms·
My first tiny "weekend project": readable text hosting. Useful?
- vvpan 16y agoMy point was to be able to publish readable "blog posts" on sites like HN and reddit without an actual blog. I'd love to hear feedback on whether it might be useful, and if not, what might make it so.
- srbloom 16y agoanonymous functions:functions::tidypub:blogs
- mrleinad 16y agoIs there any text lenght limitation?
- LiveTheDream 16y agoYou can also do this by emailing anything (e.g. text, pictures, YouTube link, gist URL, etc) from any email address to post@posterous.com. Of course, future emails to the same address are tied to the same blog, so if anonymity is your goal (including no association to a previous anonymous post), that option wouldn't work. Nice clean look & feel though. It looks almost exactly the same as what my Readability bookmarklet turn out.
- netcan 16y agoPosterous does the hard stuff while this eliminates the hard stuff. There's a subtle (and interesting difference). Posterous makes all sorts of decisions for you giving you a good default, eliminating and deferring choices. Here is no hard stuff to do for you. Simple vs easy. I think this way has a much lower overhead and I wouldn't be surprised is link-less posts make use of this.
- vvpan 16y agoWeeeelll... I was somewhat inspired by readability, so a resemblance is not coincidental. I have seen posterous, but I was going for something even simpler. The email to post idea is pretty cool though. Thanks a lot for the feedback.
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoBeing able to send an email and get the URL back without having a full blog set up like posterous would be awesome. It really could become an anonymous blog.
- netcan 16y agoKeep it as simple as possible. If you do implement any features make them as near invisible to people who aren't interested as possible. eg markup rules on a link somewhere else, 'tiny more options text toggle,' etc. Don't compromise simplicity.
- cuchoperl 16y agoIt is useful to share bits of a larger text. A "source" text box to input the URL of the source would be great. Thanks!
- mrleinad 16y agoIf by the source you mean another page, then what's the point? Besides, scraping capabilities should be in place for some kind of text-import functionality to work.
- Veera 16y ago//A "source" text box to input the URL of the source// If the source already has a URL, then why is it needed to create a another (short) URL for that source again! a URL shortener (bit.ly, goo.gl) could be used in that scenario. :)
- GrayRoark 16y agoYou could just send part of the text or you could just want a text with a cleaner look.
- Detrus 16y agoIt's useful as a user interface experiment. Most blogs require signing up before posting. This lets people post first, maybe get some traffic, then you can gradually suggest new features based on how each user uses it. I doubt you'll get enough users though.
- zbanks 16y agoLooks really awesome. I dig the clean interface/presentation. The app is done well enough where nothing is overtly bad or glaring. That being said, I do have a few light thoughts & suggestions. - I agree a source textbox for citations would be nice, but it's not too pressing considering you can include it at the end. In a similar vein, an author box would be nice too. - Any reason why the URLs are 5 letters long? Not to undervalue the popularity of the service, but you could easily start out with 3 letter abbreviations, which would give you ~150k URLs. - For that matter, what is your character set? Are you using just letters, or alphanumeric characters? Again, I'd prefer the former since you aren't going to get a significant boost from the extra choices. You might also want to take out 'O', 'o', and 'l' so its unambiguous when written out. - Finally, although I'd be weary of allowing crazy markup systems, it might be good to implement a lightweight format such as Markdown. Nothing too fancy, but it's nice to be able to add emphasis without having to SHOUT. For fun, my comment on tidypub: http://tidypub.org/moAbu http://tidypub.org/moAbu
- icco 16y agoI agree with the points here. Markdown seems like a great idea. Maybe have a toggle for what the post is in (Markdown / Plain text)? Also I'd like to see a post date on the page. Finally is it open source?
- chancecarroll 16y agoI agree with having both the post date (optional?) and the markdown option, I like the idea of being able to toggle markdown, you could still default to plain-text and so preserve perfect backwards compatibility. Also I can't help but wonder about expiration dates and the ability to edit or delete, maybe have an optional password?
- akkartik 16y agoAt least linkify urls. It's trivial; use http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/liberal_regex_for_matching_urls http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/liberal_regex_for_matching... Interestingly I chose 5 letters as well for my url shortener. e.g. http://twitter.com/akkartik/status/7915316453580803 http://twitter.com/akkartik/status/7915316453580803
- mrleinad 16y agoCould you tell us something about how it was built?
- vvpan 16y agoWell, that is not an exciting story. I used Django. And, oh yeah, its on shared hosting... for now...
- hboon 16y agoSee Infogami. It's not available anymore, but maybe some use ideas there. http://web.archive.org/web/20061107190837/http://infogami.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20061107190837/http://infogami.co...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- masterj 16y agohttp://blettr.com/ http://blettr.com/ seems closer, with support for photos, videos, and privacy controls as well.
- Charuru 16y agoThis has got to be one of the most terrible domain names I've ever seen.
- heyitsnick 16y agoI'd like to see you do blettr.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- wazoox 16y agoDefinitely too complex... Tidypub or jottit win on the simplicity.
- A1kmm 16y agoIt also seems very similar to the (crowded) pastebin space, which according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastebin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastebin have been around since at least 2002. To be honest, I think it would be hard to get a profitable business out of your idea (the cost to acquire customers would probably exceed the lifetime present value). However, I suspect that profit isn't necessarily your intention here.
- daniel_iversen 16y agovery neat.. nice work!
- ryanwaggoner 16y agoLooks very nice. Maybe add a button to toggle between light and dark interface?
- chancecarroll 16y ago+1 for this
- vvpan 16y agoThat's a great idea! When making it I was really torn between a dark and light scheme. You solved the dilemma. Thanks.
- abi 16y agoI like it. One minor suggestion: Put your < link > tags in the head because right now, I'm seeing ugly flashes of unstyled content (http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/fouc.asp/ http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/fouc.asp/).
- vvpan 16y agoThanks for the suggestion. The website is actually in need of much cleanup, even though it is small. I was trying to roll it out asap, in fears that otherwise it would never see the light of day.
- 10smom 16y agogreat idea
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- thenotself 16y agoWhy not expand on the concept that people could use a place to store an annotation of any sort. That way, if I want to leave people text, photos, a presentation, an embedded video, etc, I can do that without the need to create a blog or let that person see a full history of other things I've written. Another idea would be to generate a QR code for the page. That being said, I can't think of very many times I've needed something like this. If I had more to say on a topic than I wanted to leave in a comment, I'd blog about it. If I knew the person, I'd email them.
- Tylergillies 16y ago+1 for QR code gen
- chancecarroll 16y ago+2 I think that would make a nice, easy, useful way to tie a digital comment to the physical world, QR graffiti tied to a manifesto anyone?
- evanrmurphy 16y ago> Why not expand on the concept... Well I'm glad he didn't wait to show it until after he'd expanded on the concept. This is a great example of software that does one thing and does it well.
- crizCraig 16y agoTo get rid of the cutoff gray background after pressing the feedback tab in Chrome, you can add "html {height: 100%}" to your CSS. This adds a vertical scrollbar though, but again just in Chrome. I had to deal with this on my Get Satisfaction widget too. Nice service by the way. I love the low barrier to posting. Like pastie.org, but for publishing.
- entrepreneurial 16y agoNot sure if this was said, but add a little text editor like in gmail so one could add links, etc. The main point of what your trying to do is so people can add this text to twitter, facebook, etc. Like a mini published text based website. Great Job!
- kqueue 16y agoThis is one feature of http://stk8.co http://stk8.co http://stk8.co/Wpbbbc http://stk8.co/Wpbbbc But stk8.co supports links as well, like: http://stk8.co/gkbbbc http://stk8.co/gkbbbc :)
- mkramlich 16y agoneat idea, nice spike at it. i could see this filling a certain use case for some folks.
- cscheid 16y agoThis is great. MathJax support would kick ass too.
- vvpan 16y agoAh, I was looking for something like that. Thanks for the pointer! This is a feature which I, personally, would like to see soon.
- vinutheraj 16y agoHow about adding a print button/link on the same page as the text ?
- FraaJad 16y agoAaron Swartz did it first with http://jottit.com/ http://jottit.com/
- mike-cardwell 16y agoJottit works without JavaScript and also has a HTTPS version: https://jottit.com/ https://jottit.com/ There is also a HTTPS-Everywhere ruleset for it in the current development branch. For those reasons alone, I would always choose jottit over tidypub...
- ido 16y agoWhy is working without js an advantage? Do you often browse on browsers that do not possess a js interpreter?
- _pra 16y agoI use No(t)Script to whitelist sites I trust. Noticing there was blocked JavaScript on a page of simple text would prejudice me against it.
- falcolas 16y agoThere is still a large number of mobile browsers whose javascript support is minimal or non-existant. Sure, the iPhone/Android market will be OK, but what about the Blackberry, Nokia and Motorola folks who still make up a majority of mobile browsers? Also, a good number of security conscious folks who run Firefox also run noscript. This means that they can't use the site without explicitly whitelisting the site's javascript, which reduces it's immediate usability.
- mike-cardwell 16y agoBecause I choose to disable it by default for security and privacy reasons. There is no good reason that this site should require javascript. Nothing it does is improved by the javascript requirement.
- wazoox 16y ago
- InclinedPlane 16y agoInteresting, merits further development I think. The idea has merit but not quite just in this current form, you need to find some other missing element to marry it too perhaps.
- extension 16y agoI love this! Tons of places to dump text on the web but I've never seen one that gives you a clean page. Suggestions: - Set a cookie and let the poster edit/delete the page after it's published. They will make typos, mess up the formatting, post while drunk, etc. - Markdown formatting. You need at least bold and italics. You could even have a small toolbar. I don't think the editor needs to be super minimal, just the viewer. - Make sure the branding and links at the bottom are visually distinct from anything the user could enter. Maybe give it a grey background or invert it or something. Fixed positioning is also an option, but might be too annoying. - Remove the Feedback tab from the viewer.. really spoils the aesthetic.
- mambodog 16y agoI'm not sure if I would agree with Markdown, depending on your audience. I'm of the opinion that trying to teach the concept of markup to ordinary people is always going to alienate some non-technical users. I'd just suggest adding buttons for bold, italic & link. That way you can still keep it simple. I'm all for having a ruthless approach to unnecessary features.
- modulow 16y agoOn the other hand, when faced with a blank text box, some more technical users will type in Markdown out of habit. Adding basic Markdown support while also having a couple buttons for bold/italics/link is an easy way to support both audiences.
- 27182818284 16y agoI used to be on that side, but with Reddit's success and their use of Markdown I've decided that it is OK for even the non-technical audience. (Though there still should be the little "formatting help" button like they have nearby)
- mambodog 16y agoReddit provides enough value for its users for them to invest the effort to learn some Markdown. This is due to Reddit's content and community being the main sources of value for the user, not it's text-formatting features. I couldn't say the same for this app. If they can't pick it up in two seconds, I think most won't bother.
- digispaghetti 16y agoI'm out amd about just now and currently lookimg at this on my Kindle browser. looks fantastic! i'll check it out more when i get home.
- shorbaji 16y agoNice! How about a script for a *NIX command line? $ tidypub -t 'Any Title' < foo.txt http://www.tidypub.org/wHzf3 $
- danielh 16y ago$ ./tidypub -t "How about this?" < tidypub http://tidypub.org/doHLm This is a python script I just wrote. Unfortunately, the white space gets lost. Try https://gist.github.com/721676 https://gist.github.com/721676
- francoisdevlin 16y agoDoes anyone else appreciate the irony of a Python app losing whitespace?
- danielh 16y agoI definitely do, but just for record, it's the browser not rendering the white space. It is there if you look in the page source.
- vvpan 16y agoYou would need to double the whitespaces if you wanted new paragraphs.
- jm3 16y agoGood idea but logo not readable. https://skitch.com/jm3net/rnqge/logo-not-readable https://skitch.com/jm3net/rnqge/logo-not-readable
- mike-cardwell 16y agoNice. If you were to use the placeholder attribute for the title box, and change the publish button to a "submit" type input, then it would work without requiring JavaScript...
- FraaJad 16y agoTo add to my earlier comment: Jottit https://jottit.com https://jottit.com has the same minimalist interface, but has a lot more features to offer. * "WYSIWYG" editing with Markdown syntax. * Custom subdomains * Access control * https * Custom theming etc.,
- mileszs 16y agoI don't think they're after the same thing, despite the similarities. TidyPub is pretty, readable, and, to use a term from the site, 'classy'. It's about ONE entry. One page. Jottit is about making a website -- multiple pages, themes, etc. It's more like a quick wiki. It's certainly not as readable or pretty, but is quite utilitarian -- not a bad thing, just different. So, despite the two both beginning the process with a simple textarea and a button, they're not the same, and neither should strive to be the other.
- FraaJad 16y agoNothing stops the user from using only the frontpage of jottit that provides the exact same functionality with no additional complexity.
- jrmg 16y agoI love it. Don't listen to those asking for markdown, WYSIWYG editing and the like - keep it simple. /Maybe/ do some detection to identify links and linkify them, but that's it. The instant usability and beautiful /enforced/ styling are its strong points, adding more customisability just dilutes this, IMO.
- StudyAnimal 16y agoText should be fully justified, rather than just left justified. Ligatures would be nice too, but I guess that is dependent on things outside the apps control.
- envain 16y agoi built exactly this last year, over a weekend ... it's at http://reduce.li http://reduce.li Though i dont maintain it anymore, there's basic visitor tracking by adding a + to the generated url, just like bit.ly. Very soon, online pharmacy bots started spamming me! In retrospect, looking at all the positive feedback here, I feel that where I went wrong was adding bloat like picture uploading/url shortening etc...
- kmfrk 16y agoAnother similar project is http://wrttn.in/ http://wrttn.in/ (it's a royal pain to spell). Is it true that tidypub really has no admin link to edit the original post from?
- pmiller2 16y agoInteresting. What I like the most about it is that it ends up looking very similar to my Readability setup. :-)
- crad 16y agoNice looking service. I'm not sure it's something I'd use but I could see it being used. One thing to look out for is spammers. I find that the most of spam that I get on paste site I run is deplorable link spam for illegal content. I'm not talking about warez or torrent links either. I ended up having to write a filtering to look for keywords and url to content analysis and then submit content that triggers the filter to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Best of luck.
- lisper 16y agoYour competition: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability
- baby 16y agoWhat about pastebin ?
- vandahm 16y agoI like this a lot. I can already think back to a number of times when I or a friend could have used this. I can't imagine it being simpler to use, and I like the nice, clean presentation of the text.