Show HN: hubski; I built my first web app using news.arc
The long version (I can be verbose): Recently, I was in a startup that sputtered out. It was my seed idea, but my contribution was on the design/UI end. We applied to YC fall 2010, and were rejected (rightfully so, in retrospect). My previous coding experience entails a bit of Fortran from undergrad research, and building a couple of simple websites (Frontpage even. o-O). Anyway, I had tons of energy for the project, but lamented not being able to contribute to coding, where it was badly needed. After that experience, I resolved to teach myself something, so I could at least build a MVP, and not depend on anyone else to launch it.
I’ve been a redditor since near the beginning, and I’ve been on HN for about a year now. I have many ideas for these types of community sites, and (unlike many who lament the clones) think there remains a lot of potential in this space. As a result, about three months ago, I got news.arc, put it on Linode, and started to try to figure things out. The results of my efforts to date are Hubski, a general site for thoughtful sharing and discussion.
A number of my ideas are for Hubski have been implemented, some are not. Here are some that are:
Tags: each submission can have a hashtag. These are organic, the submitters choose. You can click a tag, and it will sort out submissions with that tag.
Following: You can follow users. The submissions of these users go into your ‘hubfeed’, your personalized version of the site. You can also follow hashtags. Submissions with those tags are put into your hubfeed, regardless of the author.
Scoring and voting: Karma is a currency. When you vote up or down, it costs karma, which gets converted to clout. Clout cannot be spent. Everyday you get a small bit of karma. This daily portion increases as your clout and number of followers does.
Hubs: The stream of someone’s submissions looks kind of like a blog. It may even more so over time if it seems to make sense from usage. I even imagine Hubski could be used as a blog eventually. I have more thoughts along those lines. I’ve enabled image embedding, to see how it works. I’m going to do the same for video.
There are a number of smaller changes as well, such as tabs (opens 2 tabs, the url and the comment page), hovertext (hover over a title while logged in), and some others.
I have much more planned, but from here on out I want to implement further changes to be a bit more informed by usage. Also, I am learning, so it takes extra time.
I know that this won’t be my last app, (I have designs for a completely original one) but it’s my plan to maintain and evolve Hubski going forward. I’ve been using it with my wife and some good friends, and it is serving a need that I have.
BTW, I want to thank the folks in the Arc forum who have been really friendly and helpful to someone as green as myself.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated, especially if you can take the time to bounce around the site. Who knows, maybe pg will find it worthwhile to try a hubski function or two on HN. :)