8 ms·

Show HN: Bit of News

108 points by sinzone 13y ago

olog-hai 13y ago
The stories at http://evening-edition.com/ http://evening-edition.com/ are much more meaningful.
andrewcooke 13y ago
auto-generated? if so, that's pretty impressive. [edit] huh, so that's TextTeaser? https://www.mashape.com/mojojolo/textteaser#!documentation https://www.mashape.com/mojojolo/textteaser#!documentation - i had no idea that summaries of that quality were now commodity apis.
- MojoJolo 13y ago
  Well, why not try the TextTeaser API yourself (http://www.textteaser.com/ http://www.textteaser.com/)? I'm the creator of the said API and thanks if you think it's impressive. Also thanks for bitofnews for using the API.
  - bitofnews 13y ago
    Great API, and thank you!
hmslydia 13y ago
Most useful and relevant new summary I've never read. Sold.
b0z0 13y ago
Nice. I kind of like "news that matters" better than "news that matter," though.
abdophoto 13y ago
This is great. I'm trying to make http://thetechblock.com http://thetechblock.com a destination for tech articles and news that matter. Would love any feedback.
jaseflow 13y ago
Awesome but did you need to blatantly rip the Medium design?
- zhs 13y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking, it's pretty much a direct clone.
  - aw3c2 13y ago
    The typefaces are completely different as is the whitespace.
- krrishd 13y ago
  Wasn't there recently an open-sourced Medium clone? This probably used that.
christiangenco 13y ago
Oh hey, I like this. Users++
Nogwater 13y ago
I like the simplicity, but how can it deliver it every morning without asking for your time zone? The confirmation says it'll deliver at 9am. UTC?
- sonier 13y ago
  Maybe it uses your IP to guess at a location?
jonnathanson 13y ago
Very cool! Minor nitpick, though: "news" is most commonly singular, so your tagline should probably read "news that matters."
- wyclif 13y ago
  Yes, I noticed that right away. The good thing is that it's an easy edit.
- bitofnews 13y ago
  Creator here. I can't believe I overlooked that. Fixed :) Sorry for being late, I didn't know this was posted here.
  - jonnathanson 13y ago
    Cool, and btw, I really love your service! It's so simple and useful. I have been telling people about it and wish you the best of luck with it.
MojoJolo 13y ago
Awesome! Hi guys, I'm the creator of TextTeaser API that was used by Bit of News. :) I first thought that bitofnews is just a bot in Reddit. I'm really surprised that this is now a full blown website/app. Thanks for Bit of News for using the TextTeaser API.
- diminish 13y ago
  Hi, congrats on quality results. Will you open source the algorithm and the implementation, as you were mentioning on HN few months ago? What are your startup plans?
  - MojoJolo 13y ago
    Yes, I will open source it soon. Here's a teaser: https://github.com/MojoJolo/textteaser https://github.com/MojoJolo/textteaser
- Zakuzaa 13y ago
  Good work. Have you developed your own technology for this? Care to share how it works in a nutshell?
  - MojoJolo 13y ago
    Yep. :) Well, like any other summarization algorithms, I consider the title, sentence position, sentence length, and keyword frequency. The difference is that I improved the keyword frequency in which I used a special algorithm for it. I have plans to open source it, you'll see the whole algorithm soon.
    - Zakuzaa 13y ago
      Awesome that you're planning to open source it. Looking forward.
- bitofnews 13y ago
  Hi MojoJolo! Creator of the bot / site here. Sorry for being late to the thread, I didn't even know someone posted this! Great API :) There were few hours of outage last night, but overall I'm loving it. Link to the API: https://www.mashape.com/mojojolo/textteaser https://www.mashape.com/mojojolo/textteaser
hayksaakian 13y ago
It sucks that that first article right now is about that woman who got shot at the capital building. Will this news ultimately matter? Probably not. The other articles seem to be about more impactful things so other wise good job
- nashequilibrium 13y ago
  It's funny that what we see as not eventful is usually seeds for something big. I remember this with egypt both times and syria. I am not saying that this is going to lead to something big but you never know, there could be an uprising over the police moving towards kill at any cost vs kill only if necessary. If you look at the video, at one point there was six cops surrounding the vehicle, one cop had his forehead on the front passenger window yet they could not see a little kid in there, also they could have shot out the tires, someone that has no gun training could have done that as it was at point blank range. In the 80s polics had better judgement and less police injuries, today a guy can have a knife be 10 metres away and a group of cops will go for the kill shot, amazing.
contextual 13y ago
The first story of the woman driver shot to death is the rotten apple in the barrel. The rest of the stories are better, and with broader appeal. Just so you know, I'll probably never visit this site again because of that godawful story. It didn't enhance my life or my understanding of the world. It did the opposite.
- krapp 13y ago
  I don't understand why you seem to have to much anger about this story.
  - contextual 13y ago
    No, it's only economics. Back to my analogy, if I buy a bag of apples from you and I find a few rotten ones inside, I'll never buy from you again. It's simple, really.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - krapp 13y ago
      Nevertheless, if this site is just collecting general news into a feed, you can't call the story 'rotten' because you don't like it and don't find it edifying. It is news, it did happen, it was relevant to someone. I think your expectation of the purpose that news is supposed to serve might be somewhat skewed.
- yesimanotter 13y ago
  >female driver Fixed that for you. Also I'm not sure why you're so mad over that story. Most news doesn't enhance your life or your understanding of the world, it's just news. You have to put it in context to extract any meaning from it.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
tikhonj 13y ago
Really impressive automatically generated summaries. Of course, there are some funny parts as well. One of the bullet points for "Russia halts adoptions to Sweden over gay nuptials" is just • "It's terrible. Very frank :D. I certainly agree, but I imagine a person summarizing the article would not have used this phrasing.
- bitofnews 13y ago
  Hey creator of bitofnews here. Thanks for the compliments. If you liked the summary, please checkout TextTeaser on Mashape, the supporting API. As of right now, u/bitofnewsbot is banned from r/worldnews :( I'm getting in touch with the mods to see what's up.
tsheng 13y ago
Nicely presented application of textteaser. A little put off by the focus on the "ivy experience" though. Is that some sort of marketing play?
Kronopath 13y ago
I'd love to see a site like this specifically focused on business news. Keeping up with the latest news in business is important, but I've found most business papers are so full of useless fluff stories that it drowns out the ones that are most important.
- SuperChihuahua 13y ago
  I've tried to attack that problem with http://www.trejdify.com/ http://www.trejdify.com/ which is similar to HN
- bitofnews 13y ago
  Hey creator of bitofnews here. I plan on adding different news sections (business, technology) soon. In the mean while, check out Wall Street Breakfast. It gives summary of today's market performance: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1728342-wall-street-breakfast-must-know-news http://seekingalpha.com/article/1728342-wall-street-breakfas... And sorry for being late to the thread! I didn't know this was posted here.
xerophtye 13y ago
This is pretty cool, but does it have some feature to select the sources? or at least what type of news you are interested in? That would make things so much better!
p4bl0 13y ago
This is great. Could there be an RSS or Atom feed?
SuperChihuahua 13y ago
Is it legal?
ck2 13y ago
Very well done! Now trying to get over the horrifying news that someone poured gasoline on themselves and tried to burn themselves to death in self-immolation near the white house. What the heck is going on in DC
- yesimanotter 13y ago
  It was a man, it says so right in the title. "Man sets himself on fire on the National Mall"
mnx 13y ago
Bit of feedback: It seems quite US centric. I'm not sure how the selection is done, but maybe you could add a 'Rest of the world' section?
aroman 13y ago
What does this have to do with Ivy League schools? Is that just total fluff or is there any sort of meat behind those words? Does the author attend an Ivy league school? If so, why does he/she feel that he/she can or should speak for all the other Ivies? What am I missing?
- avyfain 13y ago
  This is exactly what I thought when I looked at it... Is there any relationship to the schools?
level09 13y ago
Nice but I was wondering why would you develop anything on top of a deprecated (Google news) API ?

108 points by sinzone 13y ago

The stories at http://evening-edition.com/ http://evening-edition.com/ are much more meaningful.

auto-generated? if so, that's pretty impressive. [edit] huh, so that's TextTeaser? https://www.mashape.com/mojojolo/textteaser#!documentation https://www.mashape.com/mojojolo/textteaser#!documentation - i had no idea that summaries of that quality were now commodity apis.

MojoJolo 13y ago
Well, why not try the TextTeaser API yourself (http://www.textteaser.com/ http://www.textteaser.com/)? I'm the creator of the said API and thanks if you think it's impressive. Also thanks for bitofnews for using the API.
- bitofnews 13y ago
  Great API, and thank you!

hmslydia 13y ago

Most useful and relevant new summary I've never read. Sold.

b0z0 13y ago

Nice. I kind of like "news that matters" better than "news that matter," though.

abdophoto 13y ago

This is great. I'm trying to make http://thetechblock.com http://thetechblock.com a destination for tech articles and news that matter. Would love any feedback.

jaseflow 13y ago

Awesome but did you need to blatantly rip the Medium design?

zhs 13y ago
Exactly what I was thinking, it's pretty much a direct clone.
- aw3c2 13y ago
  The typefaces are completely different as is the whitespace.
krrishd 13y ago
Wasn't there recently an open-sourced Medium clone? This probably used that.

christiangenco 13y ago

Oh hey, I like this. Users++

Nogwater 13y ago

I like the simplicity, but how can it deliver it every morning without asking for your time zone? The confirmation says it'll deliver at 9am. UTC?

sonier 13y ago
Maybe it uses your IP to guess at a location?

jonnathanson 13y ago

Very cool! Minor nitpick, though: "news" is most commonly singular, so your tagline should probably read "news that matters."

wyclif 13y ago
Yes, I noticed that right away. The good thing is that it's an easy edit.
bitofnews 13y ago
Creator here. I can't believe I overlooked that. Fixed :) Sorry for being late, I didn't know this was posted here.
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  Cool, and btw, I really love your service! It's so simple and useful. I have been telling people about it and wish you the best of luck with it.

MojoJolo 13y ago

Awesome! Hi guys, I'm the creator of TextTeaser API that was used by Bit of News. :) I first thought that bitofnews is just a bot in Reddit. I'm really surprised that this is now a full blown website/app. Thanks for Bit of News for using the TextTeaser API.

diminish 13y ago
Hi, congrats on quality results. Will you open source the algorithm and the implementation, as you were mentioning on HN few months ago? What are your startup plans?
- MojoJolo 13y ago
  Yes, I will open source it soon. Here's a teaser: https://github.com/MojoJolo/textteaser https://github.com/MojoJolo/textteaser
Zakuzaa 13y ago
Good work. Have you developed your own technology for this? Care to share how it works in a nutshell?
- MojoJolo 13y ago
  Yep. :) Well, like any other summarization algorithms, I consider the title, sentence position, sentence length, and keyword frequency. The difference is that I improved the keyword frequency in which I used a special algorithm for it. I have plans to open source it, you'll see the whole algorithm soon.
  - Zakuzaa 13y ago
    Awesome that you're planning to open source it. Looking forward.
bitofnews 13y ago
Hi MojoJolo! Creator of the bot / site here. Sorry for being late to the thread, I didn't even know someone posted this! Great API :) There were few hours of outage last night, but overall I'm loving it. Link to the API: https://www.mashape.com/mojojolo/textteaser https://www.mashape.com/mojojolo/textteaser

hayksaakian 13y ago

It sucks that that first article right now is about that woman who got shot at the capital building. Will this news ultimately matter? Probably not. The other articles seem to be about more impactful things so other wise good job

nashequilibrium 13y ago
It's funny that what we see as not eventful is usually seeds for something big. I remember this with egypt both times and syria. I am not saying that this is going to lead to something big but you never know, there could be an uprising over the police moving towards kill at any cost vs kill only if necessary. If you look at the video, at one point there was six cops surrounding the vehicle, one cop had his forehead on the front passenger window yet they could not see a little kid in there, also they could have shot out the tires, someone that has no gun training could have done that as it was at point blank range. In the 80s polics had better judgement and less police injuries, today a guy can have a knife be 10 metres away and a group of cops will go for the kill shot, amazing.

contextual 13y ago

The first story of the woman driver shot to death is the rotten apple in the barrel. The rest of the stories are better, and with broader appeal. Just so you know, I'll probably never visit this site again because of that godawful story. It didn't enhance my life or my understanding of the world. It did the opposite.

krapp 13y ago
I don't understand why you seem to have to much anger about this story.
- contextual 13y ago
  No, it's only economics. Back to my analogy, if I buy a bag of apples from you and I find a few rotten ones inside, I'll never buy from you again. It's simple, really.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - krapp 13y ago
    Nevertheless, if this site is just collecting general news into a feed, you can't call the story 'rotten' because you don't like it and don't find it edifying. It is news, it did happen, it was relevant to someone. I think your expectation of the purpose that news is supposed to serve might be somewhat skewed.
yesimanotter 13y ago
>female driver Fixed that for you. Also I'm not sure why you're so mad over that story. Most news doesn't enhance your life or your understanding of the world, it's just news. You have to put it in context to extract any meaning from it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

tikhonj 13y ago

Really impressive automatically generated summaries. Of course, there are some funny parts as well. One of the bullet points for "Russia halts adoptions to Sweden over gay nuptials" is just • "It's terrible. Very frank :D. I certainly agree, but I imagine a person summarizing the article would not have used this phrasing.

bitofnews 13y ago
Hey creator of bitofnews here. Thanks for the compliments. If you liked the summary, please checkout TextTeaser on Mashape, the supporting API. As of right now, u/bitofnewsbot is banned from r/worldnews :( I'm getting in touch with the mods to see what's up.

tsheng 13y ago

Nicely presented application of textteaser. A little put off by the focus on the "ivy experience" though. Is that some sort of marketing play?

Kronopath 13y ago

I'd love to see a site like this specifically focused on business news. Keeping up with the latest news in business is important, but I've found most business papers are so full of useless fluff stories that it drowns out the ones that are most important.

SuperChihuahua 13y ago
I've tried to attack that problem with http://www.trejdify.com/ http://www.trejdify.com/ which is similar to HN
bitofnews 13y ago
Hey creator of bitofnews here. I plan on adding different news sections (business, technology) soon. In the mean while, check out Wall Street Breakfast. It gives summary of today's market performance: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1728342-wall-street-breakfast-must-know-news http://seekingalpha.com/article/1728342-wall-street-breakfas... And sorry for being late to the thread! I didn't know this was posted here.

xerophtye 13y ago

This is pretty cool, but does it have some feature to select the sources? or at least what type of news you are interested in? That would make things so much better!

p4bl0 13y ago

This is great. Could there be an RSS or Atom feed?

SuperChihuahua 13y ago

Is it legal?

ck2 13y ago

Very well done! Now trying to get over the horrifying news that someone poured gasoline on themselves and tried to burn themselves to death in self-immolation near the white house. What the heck is going on in DC

yesimanotter 13y ago
It was a man, it says so right in the title. "Man sets himself on fire on the National Mall"

mnx 13y ago

Bit of feedback: It seems quite US centric. I'm not sure how the selection is done, but maybe you could add a 'Rest of the world' section?

aroman 13y ago

What does this have to do with Ivy League schools? Is that just total fluff or is there any sort of meat behind those words? Does the author attend an Ivy league school? If so, why does he/she feel that he/she can or should speak for all the other Ivies? What am I missing?

avyfain 13y ago
This is exactly what I thought when I looked at it... Is there any relationship to the schools?

level09 13y ago

Nice but I was wondering why would you develop anything on top of a deprecated (Google news) API ?