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michaelgrinich.com

40 pointsseanl40 comments

I built a very thumb friendly HN interface: http://mhm.gd/hn/ It takes the HN RSS and formats it with big links and text, all loading very quickly.

I use it on my Android all the time.

I use this as my default way to browse HN from my phone. Typically I don't vote much while on my mobile, so sometimes I'm not logged in through the app. I think it works well. My biggest request would be Instapaper support.

Please please please add Instapaper support for this.

Until there is Instapaper support, I think I'll keep using http://icombinator.net/ in Safari, which lets me add articles to Instapaper.

I'll be watching this app, though, as it does look nice.

Yeah, Instapaper support would push me over the edge on this.

Is anyone using this? Is it any good?

So on the balance of comments here I decided to give it a whirl. Posting this from the app, looks pretty good so far.

It's ok. I wish he would do some updates though. There are some annoying bugs and I haven't ever seen this updated.

hey. I'd love to hear about these bugs! you can either post them in this thread or email me at grinich@mit.edu. feature requests are also very welcome.

Two feature requests:

1. Let me pull down the reply field to see the comment I'm replying to. Having to reply blind is frustrating.

2. Figure out how to make it so that I can select text from comments.

Instapaper support would be nice, but not immediately necessary for me.

Overall, I quite like it (better than iCombinator and trying to use HN directly). Only two problems I have:

1) It seems to crash on threads with too many comments... I'm guessing it runs out of RAM, perhaps?

2) I can't log in with my OpenID.

If you can let me know what threads it crashes on, that would be really helpful. I have suspicions that it's actually an issue with the parser, not memory.

I've had it crash on the more "popular" iPad threads recently, where there've been ~193 comments. I'm not sure how much you'd be able to do with this given how HN sends the data.

Ok. I'll check it out. Thanks.

It's seemed like it's anything with over ~100-120 comments, but I'll drop you a line the next time I encounter one.

I've been using it on and off for the last week or so. It has a nice interface and works pretty well overall. I do wish it had the ability to copy and paste the URL of the articles or allow you to open the links in a browser other than Safari, such as Atomic Web (which can be called using the atomic:// protocol).

And actually on that note, if you haven't tried Atomic Web, I highly recommend it.

Doesn't Readability still require the whole thing to be downloaded, which takes ages? Wouldn't it be better to have an option to use the Google reformatter?

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http://news.ycombinator.com/

Yeah, it has to download the entire page. Readability just does a script injection and reformats the page.

My only problem is text size. The google reformatter does strip out a lot of the cruft, but I can't say that it's easier to read, which was my goal.

Example, A NYTimes story: http://cl.ly/bC6

Maybe the two pieces can be combined?

So just a question is this legal? Taking something that is free and charging for it on the app store. Just a question, because I like it and want to use something like this on my android(going to try http://mhm.gd/hn)

It's legal for the reason that there isn't any law that would make it illegal. But it also isn't charging for something that's free. The charge is for the app's features, not for access to HN.

It's like buying bottled water.

i like this. there's a really simple free version for the android platform and i would collaborate to improve it if it was a opensource project. Including readability to it is very important.

Just a note for you, on your website, when you click the screenshots they show up underneath the demo video that's playing - this is on Win7 Google Chrome.

thanks. can you send me a screenshot?

I would buy this Right Now... if only it was also for my iPad...

coming soon ;)

Assuming a nice OCD friendly interface where you can read the article and the comments at the same time?

So if I buy it now will for my iPod, will I have to buy it again for my iPad?

nope, it will be a free update.

Just bought it and am posting this with it. Seems to work...

thanks! let me know how it goes.

What did you use to capture the video?

I used Snapz Pro X for the screen capture.

Here's a great blog post about creating iPhone screencasts by Loren Brichter, who made Tweetie (recently acquired by Twitter).

http://blog.atebits.com/2009/03/not-your-average-iphone-scre...

Did you use SimFinger?

Yep. Snapz Pro X let's you hide the mouse cursor.

SimFinder code is on also github; http://github.com/atebits/SimFinger

Is there anything like SimFinger for Android , at least a fake overlay of android phones?

Glad to know that people are selling my posts for $3 in the app store. Time to write something offensive so the app gets banned.

If Opera started charging $3 for Opera Mini in the App Store, would you be upset? You're paying for a nicer interface to something that is free, not the content of HN.

Finally.

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