Show HN: Feathers, blogless writing for everybody | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Feathers, blogless writing for everybody

feathe.rs

22 pointsnickbalestra33 comments

Looks great! The design and typography are quite nice! I hate to be "that guy," but have you seen pen.io? Your site seems very similar. Also, what is the reasoning behind eventually removing articles. Is there an option to disable this feature?

Hey rob, thanks. Yup I've seen pen.io but it doesn't offer drafting, the writing experience is not that nice and the posts are not optimized for reading nor on pc or mobile devices, and we will also suport markdown syntax for writing.). The removing of article is an idea we have in mind, as we thought unreaden and unshared articles are just dead articles so why not just remove them? But this idea is not implemented atm so articles wont be removed. What you think on this? Would love ot ehar your thoughts on this direction.

I would prefer if articles remain.

You don't want to burn a book just because it's old.

Something like ESR's how to become a hacker[0] is several years old, but it's still valuable and people still link to it.

[0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

Agree! Looks like you are not the only one giving us this feedback so don't worry, feathers post will keep floating on the clout :)

Good to know. Thanks for answering my comment! I went ahead and signed up for the beta as you struck my curiosity with the writing environment teaser! As for my thoughts on removing old content, I get a kick out of going back through the websites I used to frequent and reading things I wrote. The pack-rat in me would prefer to always have access to my past work. But, I do understand the logic in wanting to keep all of the content fresh. Maybe you could remove it but provide an option to have an old piece salvaged for a small fee?

Yup i see your points and they make sense to me, really thank you for sharing and explaining them further ;-)

Maybe you could still leave it up to the author? i.e. just list inactive blog entries, for how long they've been inactive, and a quick way to delete some/all of them.

Yup that could be a way to go, although I think that when you leave it so, people will just forget to get back and change such settings hover again. For quick deleting you can already do this right now, straight form the public page of the article if you are logged in(as well as per editing)

Looks great!

This reminds me of the 'Show HN' posted here two or three days ago. Who inspired who?

It strikes me that such a service could be almost completely cacheable (static)... which raises the question of why you're restricting usage.

Hi, We did post already few weeks ago, and while maybe it was inspirational (who knows) it differs from the other project as the other project was about making github gists as article, while our allow to write directly online, no need to write gist on github, people can share them, you have some reading stats of what you post, and you can keep saving drafts and just publish article. we are more focusing on the writing experience, think of it as an Iawriter for the web :) that's why is not static and we are testing during some private before opening up for everybody.

Thanks, nick. Good luck to you :)

This is a hot "sector": 4 days ago we had a service that described itself as "blogless writing for hackers" (gist.io):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4263437

Yup and we posted before that as well already on HN. pinged the gist guy on twitter but haven't yet received any answer. Look cook the gistio solution as well, although we are doing something less hackerish and more simple to use without any need of github, for the normal user :)

Don't forget Twitlonger ("Blogless writing for tweeters"?). I stumbled across an article written by Jason Alexander on there today.

Good to see I'm not the only person who plans on using .rs domains! The application looks great!

I was planning on using .rs too, small world!

cool! We also have the short version of it: fth.rs :)

Looks awesome, can't wait to see it. Will personally wait until after beta though.

Thanks Killswitch, if you signup we can keep you in the loop for when this will happen :) The more good beta-testers we have the better it will get for the public release .

This app has its place for the web, it will fit nicely, give it some time

Thanks ojr! At least we are building something we wanna use ourself to write with, and from the feedbacks look like others will most likely be happy to use it as well.

It's just lovely to see something done because it's a good idea, because it's "something you want to see", and not because it's cool or might make you rich... I think that's cool, and I hope it makes you rich :P

Thanks :) being the richest guys of the graveyard is no our goal in life :-P

Is this limited to Apple PCs and the iPhone? The image makes me think that's the case, but I don't see any mention of platform.

Nope, it's a web app so as long as you have a browser you will be able to use it. And on mobile devices article are optimized to offer a nice reading experience on every one, not just ios. We didn't want to overcroud the page putting there images of anykinf of device, but as soon as we go out of the beta we will add more featurelist and explanation on it. Thanks for pointing it out, appreciated.

The image implies that it only runs on Apple devices, and that will keep a lot of people from signing up to be notified. The page also doesn't say much about the product. Is this hosted, or do you still need your own web space? If it's hosted, is self-hosting an option? Can it export to something like WordPress' XML?

The copy uses a lot of words to say very little.

it's a free and hosted solution. NO selfhosting planned atm, and we are thinking of exporting capability, but not amain goal atm.

If that's the case, what distinguishes it from Tumblr? It's easy to use, has sensible and appealing defaults, costs nothing, and has plenty of room for customization if you need more.

read the manifesto and you'll see why: http://feathe.rs/manifesto , its all about the writing experience. and in about being able to have posts not linked among them as normal blogs do by listing them. Its more ment for the social web, that's why we called feathers as each post for us is like a feather traveling on the web via social sharing... think of it like the iAwriter for the web :) Of course tumblr still rocks and for its purpose is ok, we just wanted somethign faster, simpler, more minimal..read the manifesto there you'll find why we hacked this project together.

Must not be for me. I don't see the point of it. But don't let me stop you if you think you've got a market for it.

There are no solutions for everything and everybody, so don't worry, you are welcome and thanks for having shared your points, always nice to hear from others:)

It's not for me either (simply because I'm hacking about with my own CMS and if I want fullscreen posts I'll just add that :), but I like the idea of making it simpler a lot.

Can you please come up with a business model, maybe premium accounts, and then refuse to be aquired, ever? :)

No business model, we just did it for our self as we wanted and envision such a distraction-free writing experience for the web, so we just opening it up for free for others feeling the same way and looking for something like feathers.

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