HNdigest: The top Hacker News stories in your inbox, on your own terms | Hacker News Reader

HNdigest: The top Hacker News stories in your inbox, on your own terms

hndigest.com

54 pointshgezim37 comments

Hi everyone, OP here. This is the story of HNdigest.

You see, I've gotten so much good content from Hacker News. Some days, I'd have to keep up with the top stories and happen on a great JavaScript library, or a really educational blog post. Then I started to think, what was I missing on those days where I was too busy to check what's making top news? I really started to worry about missing all the good content. So, I set out to create HNdigest for myself so I could sleep better at night.

Now, what I'm planning on adding soon _may_ excite some of you. I'm planning to add the ability for you to choose the topics that you want to subscribe to. So, if you never cared about politics too much, you won't be bothered with it....more Python links coming your way, good sir (if you're into that type of stuff).

Anyway, it's been and I'd love to hear what you think about it.

If I may suggest something, add an exclusion filter too. Removing things like NSA, Hiring might be extremely useful.

The "We're hiring" posts are excluded by default. And yeah, a exclude filter in general would be pretty useful.

Thanks for the tip!

How does it compare with HN Summaries and the HN newsletter? Have you investigated the other attempts to do something similar in the past? What exactly do you do that's different?

Great question!

Well, two things:

1.) You get to refine exactly when you want the emails to be sent to you and how many of them you want.

2.) You'll be able to subscribe to selected topics (sooon).

My humble opinion: When I cannot keep pace with HN, I cannot keep pace with it through email also. I do not prefer to have a backlog of things to read (which is one of the characters of my inbox) since I cannot possibly read everything of interest to me. I find it better to search HN at times of need than maintain a heavy cache of it in my mind to avoid what would be like a premature optimization.

You've got a point. I did find that 30 emails per day was a bit too much for me. That's why having the ability to pick off the top 10 is great.

Thanks for your feedback!

I would be definitely interested in filtering HN stories, but how are you going to implement that on your side? How will the tags be attributed?

Sounds a lot like HNWatcher (http://hnwatcher.com)

Nice work!

Another shameless plug: if you need a curated, hand-picked, carefully designed, paper version of Hacker News (that delivered to your doorstep), there's always the good ol' Hacker Monthly (http://hackermonthly.com).

No internet connection required :)

Hey Cheng!

Just wanted to say we are subscribed here at the office and it's a great way to catch up with HN on bus commutes -- the quality of curated articles as well as the "packaging" is top notch; keep up the great work

Shameless plug. I made a similar service this weekend during Clojure Cup:

http://hs.clojurecup.com/

It's quite rough around the edges, but the idea is that you follow individuals rather than topics. Any feedback is appreciated (but I won't be able to incorporate it until the competition freeze is over, in a couple of days).

Another shameless plug: http://www.tophnnews.com

Collects posts that reaches top 3. RSS is at http://www.tophnnews.com/rss

To the mod that changed the title: Is Get top Hacker News posts in your inbox more informative than the original HNdigest: The top Hacker News stories in your inbox, on your own terms?

I feel like the new title doesn't reflect that HNdigest gives you control over the emails you receive and it's not just a dump.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, I'm kind of wondering your take.

Titles are often changed to the page title or H1 title of the linked page.

The best way to get the HN title you want is to post a blog entry with that title, and then link to that.

http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/

alternative : http://www.hackernewsletter.com/

example Issue #158 : http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=faa8eb4ef3a111cef92c4f3d...

I have to say the number of 'shameless' plugs on this thread is really quite shameful. It really reinforces the reason that I don't read HN much anymore; it's become a self-promotion pit instead of a venue for actual discussion.

I for one, find those alternatives helpful and the hint honorable. What are you reading instead?

Why would I want this in my inbox, what's wrong with a web app like it already is?

Well, for starters, if you're not constantly checking what's making front page, you could miss great content.

Also, if you got to the link, you'll find that I'm planning on adding filter where you could filter out specific types of posts.

Cool! Would it be possible to get e.g. 50 or even more stories per day?

Haha, are you sure you want that?!

Yeah, it's definitely possible. To launch, I was trying to keep the number of combination to a minimum.

are you sure you want that?!

Yes, because sometimes it's the lower-ranked articles that are interesting. Also: Is Ask HN included? It would be nice to see those as well.

Yes, Ask HN, Show HN, are also included. The only thing that's not are job postings.

I use an IFFT action to get this listing (via RSS) in my inbox every day:

http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/

Why isn't "1" an option for amount of top links? I would like to receive the best story on Hacker News on a given day.

Hmmm... I didn't think of that. I was trying to keep number of combinations low.

What I want is to have each story that reaches 500 points to be emailed to me instantly, without waiting to be grouped in a digest.

http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overlo...

Well, this is very interesting. It's a way to filter unwanted posts.

This is cool. I can finally get rid of all the posts about politics.

What is the privacy policy?

Let's start with, I won't sell your email or share it with other people without your permission?!

What else would you be concerned about?

Sounds good to me. It doesn't say it anywhere on the site, so I was just asking. Also, it would be nice to be assured that I'll get only emails that I'm signing up for. Just an idea for your site to put some people at ease. I'm signing up though.

awesome! one suggestion: anyway to make this a RSS feed as well?

i can smell a django app :P

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