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Duly noted for the signup ;) When you first log in, you are presented with the cards from our curated Catalog, organized in main topics (News, Tech, etc.) Norm

by david16 11y ago

Duly noted for the signup ;) When you first log in, you are presented with the cards from our curated Catalog, organized in main topics (News, Tech, etc.) Normally all the cards in the first category(News) are selected by default so you only have to press Continue to finish the signup process. You can of course select or deselect as many cards as you want from the various topics. The logic behind this is to have some initial content on your page, otherwise it would be empty. So, to respond to your question, you have to select at least one card and then the Continue button becomes active so you can move on. The site is fully responsive and it works on mobile and also on desktop. My guess is that maybe there's some network latency and it takes some time to load the card's images on your iPhone. But when the images finish loading, you can tap on the cards you want to keep and unblock the Continue button. Note that you can browse the topics also at a later time by going to the Catalog section and add other cards to your page. I hope it's more clear now and you'll be able to finish the signup process. If you have any other questions or remarks, please let me know and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Cheers

charlieegan3 11y ago
So I had a go on my tablet on wifi. I selected continue and so got all the default news sources. I then went on to additionally select 4 tech sources. The content seems to show up nicely in a two column feed but there are a few issues I'm still having. Firstly, I don't seem to be able to turn off sources. I seem to be able to delete items but not the sources themselves. There seem to be duplicate items, for example the guardian homepage shows up twice with no clear difference. Finally, tapping an item just seems to take me to the homepage for that source, not the article. This is the news reader I made and use myself: http://www.serializer.io http://www.serializer.io and it's what I'll continue using. I do like the look of the site but I think that it could be more reactive on mobile. As outlined above I think I'm either not getting it or there are some functionality issues.
- david16 11y ago
  Hello again, I'm glad you were able to finish the signup and play a little with the app. It's also nice to hear you like the look of the site and how the content shows up. As for the sources, you can't indeed turn them off, because they're always there as curated content to choose from. And there's also no restriction on how many times an item can be added from the Catalog, thus resulting the possibility to have duplicate items. But you can always delete the extra cards. Concerning the fact that when you tap on an item it takes you to the homepage of that site, I'm currently working on a feature that will allow users to go directly to the articles featured on the card. It's a request that many users have asked for, so it will certainly be included in a future version of Hinto. Thanks for your feedback anyways, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I also took a look at serializer.io and it's quite nice and easy to use. However, I didn't find a way to add other sources beside the ones by default and neither to add a custom subreddit for example. The simple look and only displaying the text headlines has its advantages, but I personally prefer a more visual presentation, with more images instead of text. On the other hand, you were right, it's nice to be able to test the app without having to create an account, that's something I should definitely consider for Hinto. BTW, I found serializer's page on Product Hunt and I upvoted it, I hope you'll get some traction with your app! Cheers!
  - charlieegan3 11y ago
    It seems to odd that you cannot remove sources, to me at least. Even stranger that sources can be added more than once (leading to duplicate items). Perhaps I'm not quite getting the idea. About custom subreddits, I've opted to only let users select from a list sources. The main reason being that I poll a number of subreddits every 10mins as it is and I want to keep my collection times down to preserve CPU time on my Droplet ($5 tier 😀). The same kind of goes for showing images of stories - I'd have to cache a ton to cloudinary and I'm on the free tier over there too. serializer is never going to turn a profit and I guess there are somethings that come with that which limit it. That said if you think there's a subreddit that would have wider appeal let me know and I'll consider mixing it in. Cheers for the vote on product hunt - glad you like the site.

by david16 11y ago

charlieegan3 11y ago

So I had a go on my tablet on wifi. I selected continue and so got all the default news sources. I then went on to additionally select 4 tech sources. The content seems to show up nicely in a two column feed but there are a few issues I'm still having. Firstly, I don't seem to be able to turn off sources. I seem to be able to delete items but not the sources themselves. There seem to be duplicate items, for example the guardian homepage shows up twice with no clear difference. Finally, tapping an item just seems to take me to the homepage for that source, not the article. This is the news reader I made and use myself: http://www.serializer.io http://www.serializer.io and it's what I'll continue using. I do like the look of the site but I think that it could be more reactive on mobile. As outlined above I think I'm either not getting it or there are some functionality issues.

david16 11y ago
Hello again, I'm glad you were able to finish the signup and play a little with the app. It's also nice to hear you like the look of the site and how the content shows up. As for the sources, you can't indeed turn them off, because they're always there as curated content to choose from. And there's also no restriction on how many times an item can be added from the Catalog, thus resulting the possibility to have duplicate items. But you can always delete the extra cards. Concerning the fact that when you tap on an item it takes you to the homepage of that site, I'm currently working on a feature that will allow users to go directly to the articles featured on the card. It's a request that many users have asked for, so it will certainly be included in a future version of Hinto. Thanks for your feedback anyways, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I also took a look at serializer.io and it's quite nice and easy to use. However, I didn't find a way to add other sources beside the ones by default and neither to add a custom subreddit for example. The simple look and only displaying the text headlines has its advantages, but I personally prefer a more visual presentation, with more images instead of text. On the other hand, you were right, it's nice to be able to test the app without having to create an account, that's something I should definitely consider for Hinto. BTW, I found serializer's page on Product Hunt and I upvoted it, I hope you'll get some traction with your app! Cheers!
- charlieegan3 11y ago
  It seems to odd that you cannot remove sources, to me at least. Even stranger that sources can be added more than once (leading to duplicate items). Perhaps I'm not quite getting the idea. About custom subreddits, I've opted to only let users select from a list sources. The main reason being that I poll a number of subreddits every 10mins as it is and I want to keep my collection times down to preserve CPU time on my Droplet ($5 tier 😀). The same kind of goes for showing images of stories - I'd have to cache a ton to cloudinary and I'm on the free tier over there too. serializer is never going to turn a profit and I guess there are somethings that come with that which limit it. That said if you think there's a subreddit that would have wider appeal let me know and I'll consider mixing it in. Cheers for the vote on product hunt - glad you like the site.