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Show HN: PaperPup – Discover new articles from blogs and websites in one UI

40 points by mjirv 6y ago

mjirv 6y ago
Hey HN! I had the week off for the 4th of July holiday but canceled my vacation plans due to COVID, so I figured I'd do one of those "7 days of code" things where I do 7 different projects in the week. I wanted to create some things I would use and keep my programming skills sharp since I do data analytics rather than software engineering as my day job. This was supposed to be Day 2, but ended up taking me about 3-4 days to get to the current state. The problem I wanted to solve is that basically, I am addicted to Twitter. I get my news from Twitter, so I'm constantly pulling it up and scrolling through it throughout the day. But there's a lot of noise on Twitter--a ton of low quality content, mean-spirited comments, and so on. I wanted a way to stay on top of the news that met the following criteria: 1. One place to see new articles/posts from a bunch of different sources. I didn't want to have to pull up each news site individually. 2. No comments or noise--just the latest headlines. 3. Customizable - I can add new sources I come across, group them in different ways by subject. 4. Public - If someone else added some interesting news sites, it would be cool to see that and find something new to follow myself. 5. No authentication - Handling passwords and user state is a pain. Just let everyone see everything! So I made "PaperPup" (the name came from the idea of your dog fetching you the morning paper). While there are other RSS aggregators out there, a lot of them feel clunky to me and don't necessarily have the public aspect I wanted. In technical terms, it's a Rails API backend with a "kind-of-vanilla" HTML/CSS/JQuery single-page front-end. As I mentioned I'm not really a software engineer, so this is nothing fancy; I wanted to make sure my skills on some of the basics were still up-to-date rather than experimenting with whatever the hot new languages/frameworks are these days. Anyway, I hope you all like it! If you have any suggestions or questions (technical, feature-wise, or other apps to use), I'd love to hear them.
- wheresvic4 6y ago
  Looks nice! Congrats on shipping! One thing that irked me was the lack of a back functionality. You could use a hash router and just make pages for the categories so one could easily go back to the home page :)
  - mjirv 6y ago
    Ah yes that's probably something I should add. It irked me too when I was starting out but then I got used to using the "Home" button and forgot that I needed to do something about it. UPDATE: There is a back button now.
- pigeonstorm 6y ago
  > No authentication - Handling passwords and user state is a pain. Just let everyone see everything! yes. exactly and the whole concept, though simple, is just amazing. A one-stop shop for updates. Great job!
  - mjirv 6y ago
    Thank you, I’m happy you like it! Glad my laziness as a developer is also appreciated haha.
ci5er 6y ago
It's a bit tighter than Memeorandum. That's kind of cool...
- mjirv 6y ago
  Thanks! I actually hadn’t come across Memeorandum before, but it looks neat. I like its simplicity as well, and the previews it shows. One issue I ran into making this is that not all RSS feeds seem to contain descriptions, so it was hard to make something like that work and look consistent.
  - ci5er 6y ago
    Yeah - It's actually pretty neat because it headlines the stories that people (blogs) are talking about. There used to be a browser plug-in (Memeorandum Colors) that did an SVD breakdown of the top 1500-or-so commenting sites and came up with a "line" from Deep-blue to Deep-red (blue, baby-blue, white, pink, red) and would shade every commenter according to their "bias". https://www.wired.com/2012/04/opinion-baio-site-bias/ https://www.wired.com/2012/04/opinion-baio-site-bias/ It was neat! I liked the site a lot more when the add-on worked. I fixed it for a couple of generations, but FF (which I use) started making it a lot harder to keep up with.
meow81 6y ago
Hey nice work! Any plans for responsive/mobile optimized format?
- mjirv 6y ago
  It’s something I’d like to do, since I’ve noticed using it on my phone isn’t the best experience (though also not the worst-hopefully it’s the same on other kinds of phones! Let me know if not). It’ll probably be the next big “feature” I work on.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    If you'd like some help, let me know. I don't have a ton of time to spare but my gut sez you don't need a ton of time :) Otherwise, kudos! Best of luck.
ljf 6y ago
Really good site. Any plans to add more content or allow user submissions for links to content?
- mjirv 6y ago
  Thanks! Users can add new RSS feeds already, though it’s a bit hidden. If you click the “New Collection” Button, there’s a link at the bottom of the pop-up that says “Don’t see your favorite blog or website? Add it here” which lets you add a new feed.

40 points by mjirv 6y ago

Hey HN! I had the week off for the 4th of July holiday but canceled my vacation plans due to COVID, so I figured I'd do one of those "7 days of code" things where I do 7 different projects in the week. I wanted to create some things I would use and keep my programming skills sharp since I do data analytics rather than software engineering as my day job. This was supposed to be Day 2, but ended up taking me about 3-4 days to get to the current state. The problem I wanted to solve is that basically, I am addicted to Twitter. I get my news from Twitter, so I'm constantly pulling it up and scrolling through it throughout the day. But there's a lot of noise on Twitter--a ton of low quality content, mean-spirited comments, and so on. I wanted a way to stay on top of the news that met the following criteria: 1. One place to see new articles/posts from a bunch of different sources. I didn't want to have to pull up each news site individually. 2. No comments or noise--just the latest headlines. 3. Customizable - I can add new sources I come across, group them in different ways by subject. 4. Public - If someone else added some interesting news sites, it would be cool to see that and find something new to follow myself. 5. No authentication - Handling passwords and user state is a pain. Just let everyone see everything! So I made "PaperPup" (the name came from the idea of your dog fetching you the morning paper). While there are other RSS aggregators out there, a lot of them feel clunky to me and don't necessarily have the public aspect I wanted. In technical terms, it's a Rails API backend with a "kind-of-vanilla" HTML/CSS/JQuery single-page front-end. As I mentioned I'm not really a software engineer, so this is nothing fancy; I wanted to make sure my skills on some of the basics were still up-to-date rather than experimenting with whatever the hot new languages/frameworks are these days. Anyway, I hope you all like it! If you have any suggestions or questions (technical, feature-wise, or other apps to use), I'd love to hear them.

wheresvic4 6y ago
Looks nice! Congrats on shipping! One thing that irked me was the lack of a back functionality. You could use a hash router and just make pages for the categories so one could easily go back to the home page :)
- mjirv 6y ago
  Ah yes that's probably something I should add. It irked me too when I was starting out but then I got used to using the "Home" button and forgot that I needed to do something about it. UPDATE: There is a back button now.
pigeonstorm 6y ago
> No authentication - Handling passwords and user state is a pain. Just let everyone see everything! yes. exactly and the whole concept, though simple, is just amazing. A one-stop shop for updates. Great job!
- mjirv 6y ago
  Thank you, I’m happy you like it! Glad my laziness as a developer is also appreciated haha.

ci5er 6y ago

It's a bit tighter than Memeorandum. That's kind of cool...

mjirv 6y ago
Thanks! I actually hadn’t come across Memeorandum before, but it looks neat. I like its simplicity as well, and the previews it shows. One issue I ran into making this is that not all RSS feeds seem to contain descriptions, so it was hard to make something like that work and look consistent.
- ci5er 6y ago
  Yeah - It's actually pretty neat because it headlines the stories that people (blogs) are talking about. There used to be a browser plug-in (Memeorandum Colors) that did an SVD breakdown of the top 1500-or-so commenting sites and came up with a "line" from Deep-blue to Deep-red (blue, baby-blue, white, pink, red) and would shade every commenter according to their "bias". https://www.wired.com/2012/04/opinion-baio-site-bias/ https://www.wired.com/2012/04/opinion-baio-site-bias/ It was neat! I liked the site a lot more when the add-on worked. I fixed it for a couple of generations, but FF (which I use) started making it a lot harder to keep up with.

meow81 6y ago

Hey nice work! Any plans for responsive/mobile optimized format?

mjirv 6y ago
It’s something I’d like to do, since I’ve noticed using it on my phone isn’t the best experience (though also not the worst-hopefully it’s the same on other kinds of phones! Let me know if not). It’ll probably be the next big “feature” I work on.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  If you'd like some help, let me know. I don't have a ton of time to spare but my gut sez you don't need a ton of time :) Otherwise, kudos! Best of luck.

ljf 6y ago

Really good site. Any plans to add more content or allow user submissions for links to content?

mjirv 6y ago
Thanks! Users can add new RSS feeds already, though it’s a bit hidden. If you click the “New Collection” Button, there’s a link at the bottom of the pop-up that says “Don’t see your favorite blog or website? Add it here” which lets you add a new feed.