Show HN: HNText – Top stories daily cleaned for readability

http://www.hntext.com#2014-10-14

by bckmn • 12 years ago

36 20 12 years ago

m90• 12 years ago

Interesting idea, http://www.hntext.com/#543c2fd8ba03530200000008 has "broken" special characters though.

Meekro• 12 years ago

I'm having this problem as well. I took a screenshot just in case op sees it normally and doesn't know what we're talking about: http://i.imgur.com/0GlHrlc.png

Aside from that, looks like an interesting service, though!

JacobJans• 12 years ago

This is absolutely horrible and shows complete lack of respect for copyright. It should be taken down immediately.

Houshalter2• 12 years ago

This isn't qualitatively different than readability or numerous other extensions. The only difference is he is doing it server side.

declan3• 12 years ago

The only difference is he is doing it server side

Ah, but from a legal perspective, this makes all the difference. It is, I'm sorry to say, copyright infringement and goes beyond what fair use permits.

jawns• 12 years ago

Three criticisms, in descending order of importance:

1) The length of these excerpts goes a bit beyond what is typically considered fair use. You're pretty much reprinting the entire articles. So you may run into copyright infringement claims.

2) It looks like you're scraping the content, and your scraper isn't up to the task. One of the excerpts reads: "Your email has been sent. An error has occured and your email has not been sent. Please try again. • You can't enter more than 20 emails. • You must enter the verification code below to send. • Invalid entry: Please type the verification code again."

3) Borrowing the multicolumn text layout predominant in print is great when the columns all fit on the screen, but I found myself having to constantly scroll up-down-up-down-up-down to read these.

So, in sum, you're only presenting the top stories successfully some of the time; when you are successful, you're infringing on copyrights; and the layout is not actually cleaned for readability.

btbuildem• 12 years ago

Speaking of readability, have you heard of https://www.readability.com/ ? Works wonders on all but the most stubborn webpages.

eli• 12 years ago

http://www.diffbot.com/ offers this service as an API

JustThrowinAway• 12 years ago

My first thought was how these articles were in no way more readable than the originals.

Does anyone prefer a multi-column layout?

singlow• 12 years ago

Multicolumn is fine as long as the vertical height is less than the browser window. For long text this is really hard to make work in the browser unless you take over the pagination with javascript. This is not a good example of using multicolumn text.

andremendes• 12 years ago

http://getpocket.com do this "cleanse for readability" to the saved links but I think they got closer to readable than you did. If you get to avoid copyright infringement, and get rid of this multi-column layout, I'm sure it would be better.

dotsam• 12 years ago

The generated podcast is also presumably a violation of copyright (i.e. it creates a derivative work).

Xeoncross• 12 years ago

Neat idea, I'm sure you are violating fair use - but it is a neat little mashup of scrapers and text-to-speech.

I won't ever use it though. I have a bookmark for cleaning up pages.

shmapf• 12 years ago

For those wondering about the usefulness of this. It should be great for those who commute on the tube or somewhere else where there is no phone signal. This lets you load a single lightweight page before boarding, and then be able to browse hn easily. Would be ideal if it was sent out in an email though so you don't have to remember to load the page every time.

lziz• 12 years ago

Cleaned for readability, eh? - http://i.imgur.com/faqQrQi.png

kolev• 12 years ago

I think a script that does this, but puts in your Pocket with an HN label would be even better - you keep track of what's read and what's not as a bonus.

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