7 ms·

Show HN: Bit of News – Intelligent news summaries

95 points by xux 13y ago

nmcfarl 13y ago
These are actually really good summaries, though in one case it was to commenting policy that was summarized, not the article... Still I think the best summaries I've seen. I'd love to know what the tech behind this is like.
- haraball 13y ago
  On the about page it says that it's powered by pyteaser, which can be found here: https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser
- xux 13y ago
  Thanks! You can find out more about the tech behind it here: http://bitofnews.com/about.html http://bitofnews.com/about.html Each sentence is ranked by using four criteria: - Relevance to the title - Relevance to keywords in the article - Position of the sentence - Length of the sentence
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  The about page[0] says it uses PyTeaser[1] which looks great. [0] http://bitofnews.com/about.html http://bitofnews.com/about.html [1] https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser
- sesqu 13y ago
  The new Xbox vs PS article summary is horrible, though: * It's also a great gaming system – it has great games this year. * Ronald Reagan was president, MTV had just launched and choosing a video game system was easy. * " This holiday season buying a video game system is a bit more complicated.
ajiang 13y ago
I'm impressed - clean interface, consumable, and actually really great summaries. The e-mail newsletter version of this sounds very useful. It would be great to be able to select the categories you're interested in too. I actually have been working on an app that wakes you up in the morning with a voice reading your schedule for the day, the weather and the latest news, and the API for this looks perfect to fill the last part.
- xux 13y ago
  Sounds cool! When you implement it, please let me know (email in profile). I'd be glad to feature your app on the website if it's using the API :)
skadamat 13y ago
Very nicely done! I would check out Twitter bootstrap or look for a font, that's the only thing that I dislike is the times new roman font. For a website that's focused on consuming text summaries, efficiently reading / understanding is important, and having a readable clean font is too :D
- xux 13y ago
  Thanks! What type of fonts do you recommend?
  - computeloops 13y ago
    OpenSans, Lato
    - DigitalSea 13y ago
      I would like to chime in and recommend a serif font. Maybe PT Serif.
rpsubhub 13y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498625
taylorbuley 13y ago
Very cool! Do you use TFDF and then extract the most "meaningful" sentences?
- frakkingcylons 13y ago
  The About page mentions it uses PyTeaser [1]. [1]: https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser
- hnriot 13y ago
  I think you meant TFIDF, but that would only work if you were looking for salient phrases in an article from many articles. When you look at a corpus of news the algorithm would likely work less effectively than an algorithm that using linguistics, for example Topia or even Rake.
dmunoz 13y ago
I was going to ask what happened with the bit of news bot on reddit [0], but I see it just resumed posting! I don't check it all that often, but I like getting a summary of recent news by browsing the bots user page every so often. Was saddened to see it inactive for the past two weeks. [0] http://www.reddit.com/user/bitofnewsbot http://www.reddit.com/user/bitofnewsbot
dublinben 13y ago
There's a similar Android app called Circa.
- aronvox 13y ago
  And another new one called http://www.klipperapp.com http://www.klipperapp.com
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  No, Circa has a large team of actual human editors. That’s why the content is good. Also, Circa started out as an iPhone app. The iPad and Android versions came later.
gojomo 13y ago
Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger is working on something similar, not yet launched, called 'Infobitt': http://infobitt.com http://infobitt.com (Unsure if that'll be its launch name, and there's certainly room for multiple approaches in the faster/fairer news space.)
v1tyaz 13y ago
Do you have any plans to add RSS feeds?
tr4656 13y ago
Seems good although Quartz (http://qz.com/ http://qz.com/) daily newsletter seems more than enough for me.
- sebkomianos 13y ago
  I like Quartz a lot as well but it's too focused on economy stories.
elwell 13y ago
reminds me of summly
scottjad 13y ago
My favorite terse world news source these days is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events For a long time I've wanted a new source that will only show me stories that are likely to be relevant in a year. If no one is going to care or remember something in a month, then I'd rather just skip it. Portal:Current_events is as close to that as I've found. What I love about it: very short summaries with the most important details about stories that people might still care about in a year, no sensational or partisan headlines, one click to excellent summaries of the issues, and I can easily catch up after missing a few days, whereas many news sites make it hard to see what they looked like even yesterday. Take for instance the top story on bitofnews.com. The Portal:Current_events summary is: "<a>A roof collapse</a> at a grocery store in <a>Riga</a>, Latvia, kills more than 50 people." So it's more up to date than the bitofnews summary that has "at least 32," and if I care where Riga is instead of reading "Riga, which is the biggest city in the Baltics and its biggest seaport" I can click the Riga link and see a map and photo and population etc. If I want to know about the ongoing event, I can click the "a roof collapse" link and I'm presented with a pretty good summary of the issue. I'm happy to see more news sources like this appear though. My only problem with the Portal:Current_events is that it doesn't have a good RSS feed and if I check it more than once a day, or mid-day, then it can be hard to see what has changed since my last visit.
- dredwerker 13y ago
  The wikipedia portal is really good thanks for that. Also the bit of news website didnt work for me.
- TossThisIsh 13y ago
  Another vote for Wikipedia's Current Events portal. So much better than nearly everything out there.
drakaal 13y ago
The "summaries" are just bullets. Use a better summary API. https://www.mashape.com/stremor https://www.mashape.com/stremor
brown9-2 13y ago
Looks neat, but you might want to dig into what went wrong with this Bitcoin story: Rise of Bitcoin: Is the digital currency a solution or a menace? (+video) The Christian Science Monitor - Yesterday She downloaded the software that would allow her family-owned floral shop/cafe to accept BTC, as Bitcoin is known.
TossThisIsh 13y ago
I subscribed to the email service a while back. Then on the day the Iranian embassy was bombed, what'd I get summarized? Celebrity news. I won't subscribe again unless there's a "nothing trivial" policy.
tedmiston 13y ago
This is a good chance to mention an alternative news in bullet points site, tldr.io, which uses human created summaries. http://tldr.io/discover http://tldr.io/discover
equilibrium 13y ago
quite similar to http://www.readborg.com http://www.readborg.com
xerophtye 13y ago
Umm.... isn't this a REPOST??

95 points by xux 13y ago

These are actually really good summaries, though in one case it was to commenting policy that was summarized, not the article... Still I think the best summaries I've seen. I'd love to know what the tech behind this is like.

haraball 13y ago
On the about page it says that it's powered by pyteaser, which can be found here: https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser
xux 13y ago
Thanks! You can find out more about the tech behind it here: http://bitofnews.com/about.html http://bitofnews.com/about.html Each sentence is ranked by using four criteria: - Relevance to the title - Relevance to keywords in the article - Position of the sentence - Length of the sentence
mcintyre1994 13y ago
The about page[0] says it uses PyTeaser[1] which looks great. [0] http://bitofnews.com/about.html http://bitofnews.com/about.html [1] https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser
sesqu 13y ago
The new Xbox vs PS article summary is horrible, though: * It's also a great gaming system – it has great games this year. * Ronald Reagan was president, MTV had just launched and choosing a video game system was easy. * " This holiday season buying a video game system is a bit more complicated.

ajiang 13y ago

I'm impressed - clean interface, consumable, and actually really great summaries. The e-mail newsletter version of this sounds very useful. It would be great to be able to select the categories you're interested in too. I actually have been working on an app that wakes you up in the morning with a voice reading your schedule for the day, the weather and the latest news, and the API for this looks perfect to fill the last part.

xux 13y ago
Sounds cool! When you implement it, please let me know (email in profile). I'd be glad to feature your app on the website if it's using the API :)

skadamat 13y ago

Very nicely done! I would check out Twitter bootstrap or look for a font, that's the only thing that I dislike is the times new roman font. For a website that's focused on consuming text summaries, efficiently reading / understanding is important, and having a readable clean font is too :D

xux 13y ago
Thanks! What type of fonts do you recommend?
- computeloops 13y ago
  OpenSans, Lato
  - DigitalSea 13y ago
    I would like to chime in and recommend a serif font. Maybe PT Serif.

rpsubhub 13y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498625

taylorbuley 13y ago

Very cool! Do you use TFDF and then extract the most "meaningful" sentences?

frakkingcylons 13y ago
The About page mentions it uses PyTeaser [1]. [1]: https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser https://github.com/xiaoxu193/PyTeaser
hnriot 13y ago
I think you meant TFIDF, but that would only work if you were looking for salient phrases in an article from many articles. When you look at a corpus of news the algorithm would likely work less effectively than an algorithm that using linguistics, for example Topia or even Rake.

dmunoz 13y ago

I was going to ask what happened with the bit of news bot on reddit [0], but I see it just resumed posting! I don't check it all that often, but I like getting a summary of recent news by browsing the bots user page every so often. Was saddened to see it inactive for the past two weeks. [0] http://www.reddit.com/user/bitofnewsbot http://www.reddit.com/user/bitofnewsbot

dublinben 13y ago

There's a similar Android app called Circa.

aronvox 13y ago
And another new one called http://www.klipperapp.com http://www.klipperapp.com
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
No, Circa has a large team of actual human editors. That’s why the content is good. Also, Circa started out as an iPhone app. The iPad and Android versions came later.

gojomo 13y ago

Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger is working on something similar, not yet launched, called 'Infobitt': http://infobitt.com http://infobitt.com (Unsure if that'll be its launch name, and there's certainly room for multiple approaches in the faster/fairer news space.)

v1tyaz 13y ago

Do you have any plans to add RSS feeds?

tr4656 13y ago

Seems good although Quartz (http://qz.com/ http://qz.com/) daily newsletter seems more than enough for me.

sebkomianos 13y ago
I like Quartz a lot as well but it's too focused on economy stories.

elwell 13y ago

reminds me of summly

scottjad 13y ago

My favorite terse world news source these days is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events For a long time I've wanted a new source that will only show me stories that are likely to be relevant in a year. If no one is going to care or remember something in a month, then I'd rather just skip it. Portal:Current_events is as close to that as I've found. What I love about it: very short summaries with the most important details about stories that people might still care about in a year, no sensational or partisan headlines, one click to excellent summaries of the issues, and I can easily catch up after missing a few days, whereas many news sites make it hard to see what they looked like even yesterday. Take for instance the top story on bitofnews.com. The Portal:Current_events summary is: "<a>A roof collapse</a> at a grocery store in <a>Riga</a>, Latvia, kills more than 50 people." So it's more up to date than the bitofnews summary that has "at least 32," and if I care where Riga is instead of reading "Riga, which is the biggest city in the Baltics and its biggest seaport" I can click the Riga link and see a map and photo and population etc. If I want to know about the ongoing event, I can click the "a roof collapse" link and I'm presented with a pretty good summary of the issue. I'm happy to see more news sources like this appear though. My only problem with the Portal:Current_events is that it doesn't have a good RSS feed and if I check it more than once a day, or mid-day, then it can be hard to see what has changed since my last visit.

dredwerker 13y ago
The wikipedia portal is really good thanks for that. Also the bit of news website didnt work for me.
TossThisIsh 13y ago
Another vote for Wikipedia's Current Events portal. So much better than nearly everything out there.

drakaal 13y ago

The "summaries" are just bullets. Use a better summary API. https://www.mashape.com/stremor https://www.mashape.com/stremor

brown9-2 13y ago

Looks neat, but you might want to dig into what went wrong with this Bitcoin story: Rise of Bitcoin: Is the digital currency a solution or a menace? (+video) The Christian Science Monitor - Yesterday She downloaded the software that would allow her family-owned floral shop/cafe to accept BTC, as Bitcoin is known.

TossThisIsh 13y ago

I subscribed to the email service a while back. Then on the day the Iranian embassy was bombed, what'd I get summarized? Celebrity news. I won't subscribe again unless there's a "nothing trivial" policy.

tedmiston 13y ago

This is a good chance to mention an alternative news in bullet points site, tldr.io, which uses human created summaries. http://tldr.io/discover http://tldr.io/discover

equilibrium 13y ago

quite similar to http://www.readborg.com http://www.readborg.com

xerophtye 13y ago

Umm.... isn't this a REPOST??