Another News Reading App, with a twist!
For the last few weeks, I’ve been building a small news reading application for personal use called Well-Read. Simply put, Well-Read serves up the news just like any other application, however, it dynamically changes how many articles of each category are available to you based on your reading habits. It is an app that will help widen your daily knowledge and allow you to read new articles quickly and on the go.
Being a developer, I’ve always had a good pulse of what was going on in the tech world. I routinely get my news from a variety of sources such as HackerNews, Lobsters, and a selection of subreddits. Well-Read was created to help me get a better understanding of what was going on in different areas of interest without having to scour the internet looking for various news sources. Now, all of my daily reading material is in one place.
Features
Well-Read has a few other neat features which help you read content faster and provides some insights into your reading habits. First, a speed reading (see. rapid serial visual presentation) mode will allow you to quickly read an article using a customizable wpm setting. This is pretty neat and I’ve personally been using this mode as my primary viewing preference. Furthermore, if you’d like to dive into your reading habits, you can check out your statistics with a click of a button. By tracking the number of words read per category, Well-Read will let you know which news category is your most and least favorite.
But wait! There’s more. If you’ve found an article which you’d love to read but can’t right away, you can simply email it to yourself and view it on any device you’d like.
This is one of the few projects that I’d like to maintain for a considerable amount of time. With OSX Catalina out, the next major step is getting Well-Read up to speed with the new OS version. There are a few more features that I’d like to build out, so stay tuned for updates!
Update - January 2020
Version 1.4.0 is now available for download. Along with a few bug fixes and visual updates, this version also includes a new stock ticker feature.
Changelog:
- Added support for OSX Catalina
- Updated Electron to ^7.1.10
- Fixed rendering issues with scroll bars
- Minor changes to news category algo
- Added stock ticker
Technology
Well-Read was built in NodeJS, using ElectronJS, VueJS, and GraphQL. Although closed source right now, I do plan on making it open source in the coming months.