My project, updated: Trending Tech News. Feedback appreciated
technosplode.comPeople are comparing this to The Drudge Report, but your layout is much cleaner, and your headlines less hyperbolic, and you don't seem ideologically motivated. Otherwise, this is like The Drudge Report for Tech news! Good job.
- I don't think that your site is much like The Drudge Report.
Also, if you are so interested in news for Linux, please just keep it as one of the main topics.
It looks like you are doing a simple frequency analysis to determine words for titles. In some cases it works, in others it reduces to just brand names. The Linux tab is filled with "Linux" for example.
Perhaps you need a learning filter that catches words that are too common and filters them out.
I don't really see why Linux should have a separate category at the top. Doesn't really fit the line of Business / Gadgets / Programming. Maybe add a category for UX/Design? Or maybe a category focused on startups?
Overall, awesome project. Keeping an eye on it!
I agree about Linux. People using different OSes (fanboys) might mistakenly think that this site is mostly Linux news (the first impression is the most important one). You obviously don't want loosing this kind of audience. So add categories for other major OSes or remove Linux entirely.
1. Awesome stuff. Keep iterating.
2. Honest feedback: Your category titles seem straight out of a topic modeling paper (see: David Blei). That is to say, as a fellow computer scientist, I get why they are what they are... but they're not very good.
Point 1 is the best bit of feedback here, and to a large degree pre-empts point 2.
But yeah, awesome, bookmarked and buckled in for the long haul.
Feedback: 0. The logo is way too big. Make it smaller. At least 50% smaller. This way people can have more of their screen estate used for reading the news and not for your logo. 1. Remove the underline from all text. It makes the text harder to read. 2. Add a sans serif font. 3. I love the spartan feel of the website, but you can add some color to it. For instance the 3 categories of news could each have a different color. (btw, choose colors which match) 4. Make the links a bit bigger. The text is way to small. I know I could zoom in but then the proportions just don't feel right.
Other than that, it looks alright.
Good luck
Really nice. I think you could increase accessibility and click through increasing news titles font size and adding some padding. I noticed that it's verys easy to read block titles but difficult to focus on actual news, with the result that I scroll the page searching for "interesting blocks" more than "interesting news". Well done anyway ;) Any thoughts about exposing some rdf views?
I think a feed would be too high-volume. But you can get topic updates from @TECHNOSPLODE on Twitter.
Really like it and in an interesting space. Social filtering (i.e. Twitter as RSS) works for news sometimes, but it leads to filter bubbles.
Worth thinking about how this could even power 'slower' news (a.k.a. Economist-style) by utilizing the algorithm to find out 'what' is important over a period of time and then later finding the best writing about the topic and highlighting that.
I like it! I'm curious as to what kind of implicit editorial process is happening based on which sources you've chosen. Would you be willing to share your full list of sources and how you chose them? (How well can I infer the former based on all of the links actually currently present?)
I wouldn't be opposed to posting a dynamic list of feeds on the about page.
To answer your parenthetical question: not very well. Since articles are sorted based on the weight of their feed, and since I only show the first few articles for each topic, articles from feeds with lower weights may rarely appear. They will, however, contribute to the overall weight of the topic and force it into the top ten.
Really awesome site! Kinda like a live Drudge Report for tech news. Love the layout. Bookmarked :)
Hard to scan, the keyword headings are a good start but I still have to drill down into the article headlines to see what the article is actually about.
A summary of the issue (eg."Google buys Zagat" instead of "Google, Zagat") would be helpful when scanning.
What is the underlying tech? Can you talk about your listening and topic modeling algos?
very cool. i might just stop using techmeme!
I agree with the other commenter about having a "more" button.
The thing that bugs about techmeme is they make it appear as if the tech word consists of a handful of companies (Apple, FB, Twitter, Google, MS), and you basically have no other news outside of that.
Your site has that, to a lesser degree, but its still there. I see 2 google stories, 2 twitter stories, 2 yahoo stories. It might be useful to compile a small list of company names and group on company name if you see it appear twice.
Reminds me of the drudge report.
I made this: http://tech.rawsignal.com
Maybe we can share tips on algos?
Nicely done. It would be nice if there was a "more" link.
Well done and usable!
I suggest showing complete news titles, without cuttting them off with ...
Idea is great, keep experimenting with the UI.
It's kind of interesting, I like how clean it is, and that the most important keywords are presented in 2-word titles, which makes it very easy to scan.
I would remove "via", it's polluting the page.
EDIT: And maybe add the timeframe selector. Since it's a news site, it would be cool to see the trending news of the last hour, for instance.