Useful apps for Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

Useful apps for Hacker News

metaextension.com

43 pointsbemmu28 comments

MetaExtension is my current project.

I started this project after noticing how little usage most Chrome extensions get, even though many of them are quite useful. Most decent Chrome extensions have just some thousands of users, even though there are around 100 million Chrome users.

The idea is to have a directory of apps that go well with certain websites, exposed through a Chrome extension that then informs users if any apps are available for the website they are currently visiting.

It seems this would benefit both users and the app developers.

Is this manually curated, or are you querying extension permissions from the app store?

I've got an extension that combines the collapsible threads with the ability to highlight new comments. However, I never did put it in the chrome extension directory. It's available here: http://hckrnews.com/about.html

Manually curating now, I look at a list where new submissions arrive and click accept / deny after checking that the submission seems to work and isn't of lower quality than some submission from before. I think having several apps that do exactly the same thing isn't very beneficial.

I think having several apps that do the same thing is very beneficial. Competition from competitors is probably the biggest reason why apps improve.

I use wvl's extension (hckr news), and it's awesome, especially the "new comments highlighting" feature.

My challenge now is to grow the userbase of MetaExtension itself, otherwise this would become one of those forgotten apps and fail to fulfill its promise. Besides just throwing the app out there on the Chrome store and hoping for installs, I'm also trying to create linkbait-type pages targeted to certain websites. I did one for Digg and HN now as first tests. Digg was total failure, not one person besides myself even clicked the link.

I've missed similar functionality since I switched from Chrome to Firefox (although for Firefox it was actually looking up user-scripts, which I guess is largely the same as Chrome extensions).

Good job. Checking it out.

I created a fork of the Hacker News Chrome extension back in October to add Instapaper support for the articles (https://github.com/johnmichel/hacker-news-for-chrome).

I'm not trying to steal any thunder from the original extension. Adam (the developer of the original version) accepted my pull request almost immediately after I sent it. I'm only posting this because it looks like the one in the Chrome Web Store isn't the most up-to-date version with Instapaper support.

This list forgot my favorite: http://ihackernews.com

For Windows Phone 7 there's "News for Hackers" my OSS app http://hackernews.codeplex.com/

I use this for my iPhone (4):

http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/

I enjoy the UI. There's no way to see your settings in it (at least, that I have found)- like to check the threads on which you are commenting and what-not, but for a reader it's nice- and you can comment and vote also.

I use HNdroid from time to time, it's very slow on big comment threads and doesn't format everything properly. I think I read it's because there's no HN API so it just parses the HTML. Are there any plans to provide such an API? It would make it much easier to... hack on top of the website.

I don't kno HNdroid but there are other three android apps. http://market.android.com/search?q=hackernews

I love how if you click on one the Android links from within Chrome (or, indeed, simply browse to: https://market.android.com/ with Chrome) You will get a giant red SSL warning saying that the site is misrepresenting itself and is really .google.com! hilarious.

<quote> This is probably not the site you are looking for! You attempted to reach market.android.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as .google.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of market.android.com. You should not proceed. </quote>

Inevitably, hackers visit a site aimed at hackers and want to start building their own stuff to tweak it to their needs. How many of these tools/apps/sites really add any value, though? For the most part the site is already good enough. SearchYC is arguably the only truly necessary addition.

It's not that there's anything egregiously wrong about that "HN for Honeycomb" app you're writing, but all the time you spend on that is time you're not spending on something that solves a real customer's needs. More time spent on that means: more money for you, more interesting posts on HN about your startup, and fewer meta-threads on the front page.

I'm not seeing HN HideIt on there: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dibillbafbngeiloeh...

That's an extension I just installed, and I quite like it. Amongst other things, it lets me hide articles on the front page that I've already seen or don't want to revisit, so I am more efficient at finding new articles later (and don't keep re-scanning old ones).

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jazzychad.hn

This Hacker News app for Android is my favorite and recently ousted the one listed in this article on my device. Especially useful is the "text-only on viewtext.org." feature.

I find the inability to check on my own threads and comments a big enough lacking to keep me from actually using it.

It's http://ihackernews.com for me, even though I have to manually bookmark my profile page to lookup my own threads.

I made a chrome extension to sort posts by points. Updated it recently to allow for automatic sorting. Hope anyone finds it as useful as I do.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/anmdmfcnlenkjbif...

I made an HN extension for Chrome a while back called Hacker News OnePage. I also have a version of it that runs on Greasemonkey for Firefox. https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/plldnnbdlbgbiknj...

Although my app doesn't support logging in, commenting, voting, it is still nice for reading, no?: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.ifdefined.hackernew...

What is the difference between each of the Chrome extensions?

Currently you have to click over to the chrome store to read more about the apps. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to put some descriptions here too.

Haha, awesome! I installed two extensions to Chrome immediately :). It is sad that collapsible comments doesn't work on HN sidebar :(.

$title ~= s/7 u/U/

similar list: http://hnresources.com/apps/

Some (constructive) criticism of the db so far. I do realize that it's (at the moment) manually curated, but I still think it applies:

* Twitter. One of the biggest websites out there right now, that also includes number of extensions only have 2 listed.

* Facebook has 5. Disconnect or Facebook cleaner is however not among them.

* Gmail. Lots of extensions. Most fall within 2 categories and fullfill mostly the same purposes. If these are manually curated, why not do some editorialization? Makes it easier for me as an end-user to chose, and ultimately find value in your extension.

* Reddit. It shows one extension and that is a general extension for blocking social link stuff from external pages. How about all the other extensions? Votes, Inbox-checker, etc? I found them via a quick google.

I guess if this extension takes of (and you make it obvious how to submit recommendations), you will need to automate more of the process, or you will be drowned in extensions people feel are missing. That and SPAM.

Not exactly an app for Hacker News, but Printful (iPhone and iPad) includes support for multiple news aggregators, and HN is included. This is how I've been reading HN for some weeks:

http://imgur.com/a/OeAwD

Disclaimer: I'm the developer

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