Alternatives
Products that do what Midnight.pub – Virtual Speakeasy does
Midnight is a side-project I've been working on for the past year, but only released in alpha a month ago. It aims to be the web equivalent of your local pub: a place you can go to and talk about your day with strangers or friends. It's heavily inspired by write.as (for simplicy) and Roam (for bi-directional linking). My hope is that it fosters creative writing as well as typical pub discussions. You can read more about it and the concept on https://midnight.pub Here are some example of interesting stories written: https://midnight.pub/e/269435632215917061…
- 1
- 2PC
Hey Everyone, So this was a weekend project that I did basically as a favor to a friend of mine who is a writer. This friend wanted a simple way to publish his short stories on the web that gave him a short url for tweeting and had no associated branding with the published work. Essentially this is what I have done here with publ.ca . My question is that I want to know where I should take this project in terms of features. Possible extensions to this project are: - automatic tweeting when publishing - custom layouts and designs - markdown rendering - user accounts ( FB connect or Google…
2011
- 3NP
I created a pet project to see if it is of use and interesting to people. The idea is on-demand real-time chat rooms for trending topics and for personal use. You can go to the main page at www.urshoutbox.com to create your own room then share it across your social networks/email, etc. I created a hacker news specific "shoutbox" at http://www.urshoutbox.com/bLmYAL/hacker-news . If nobody is in there, please be patient and (I hope) people will join soon to start talking. The idea is to have trending topics on facebook/twitter/etc and have chat rooms to get…
2014 · urshoutbox.com
- 4AW
Create a chat, copy the URL, paste it wherever you want. Perfect for those that would like to continue a discussion on a social network without having to sign up for anything. http://beta.mss.gs/#!/page/home
2012 · beta.mss.gs
- 5IM
This is our entry in the "spontaneous event creation" ring. I'd love to hear what HN readers think!
2011 · shoutfast.com
- 6MM
Inspired by the following post by photon_off... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1683309 I made karmurl last night. It's a simple app where you submit a URL for feedback, then for every piece of feedback you give to someone else's, you get to read one piece of feedback for yours. http://karmurl.com
2011
- 7M2
This weekend a well-known comedian was live-tweeting sardonic commentary for a new Lifetime movie. It got me thinking that it would be cool to be able to replay his tweets later so that someone who missed the live show would be able to sync them up with the movie. That, along with the fact that I've had lots of fun on Twitter during big events (like the elections), made me think that it'd be a fun hack to put together a Twitter playback site. So last night and tonight I threw together http://www.twitterplayback.com. Check it out an let me know what you think!
2012
- 8FI
This is something fun I’ve been hacking on recently: ridiculously simple group chat. Go to http://faces.io and then get your friends to do the same. That’s it! :-D Currently works best in Chrome. It’s definitely beta status at best. Audio can get weird—be ready to mute. ;-) Let me know what you think!
2014
- 9HN
I'm Seth, creator of discourse.fm, a browser-based tool/platform to create live audio chat rooms. I just launched an extension of the site - https://hackernews.discourse.fm/ - which pulls stories in real-time from the HN site using the public API, and enables anyone to join a live audio discussion about the story (think Clubhouse rooms autogenerated for HN stories). Once you enter a room, you can grab the link generated for a room and paste it back to the comments on the HN story to invite more participants. hackernews.discourse.fm is both a full-fledged product and a…
2021
- 10IM
Hi HN! Writing has been a big part of my life for the last few years. It's helped me make sense of the world around me through journaling, and my blog and technical books have made wonders for my career as an engineer. Something I've always been missing is an online community where I can practice my skills and learn from other aspiring writers. I built Tavern, hoping to solve my own problem. Its main concept is that every Monday everyone in the app gets asked the same writing prompt and you have seven days to submit your answer. You can look at what others have posted, but only after you've…
2023 · writerstavern.io
- 11SO
Hey HN, My co-founders and I have been working on a project for the last month or so, and we'd like to get your input on it. We wanted to hear your thoughts on what we're doing - so check out our landing page, and let us know what you think/understand. Does it sounds like something you guys would want to use? http://www.thesharedweb.com/alpha/intro We'll tell you guys more about exactly what we're doing as the conversation evolves, but we just wanted to see what the initial reaction is, and what you understand (i.e. are we describing it in a way that makes sense). Really excited to hear your…
2010 · thesharedweb.com
- 12AD
Hi all, I threw together a small prototype I am calling “Notepad.ai”. A new take on UIs for interacting with LLMs. While I enjoy using LLM’s in the chat format I wanted to see what it would be like to do it in a more long form style. It let’s you write in a pretty free form, much like Window’s Notepad, but you can choose to hit ctrl+[ to analyze the text with a preset prompt of your choosing. It has a few other small features. It’s WIP and very experimental. I would appreciate any feedback or thoughts. Video: https://youtu.be/ntdlgFmSxQY Live Demo:…
2024 · github.com
- 13TI
Hello HN, I built Teamates.io[0] - a place for professionals to have small coffee chats with a random partner right now. Think of it like a virtual coffeeshop where you can chat with strangers while you're taking a little break. It's in open beta and you can try using it right now. Please be nice and professional to each other :) I noticed over the course of pandemic I missed random coffee chats with my coworkers and random chats with strangers. I think it's important to have these unplanned conversations. I would really appreciate the feedback from you all, since I believe it's a pretty…
2021
- 14OI
I'm trying to get the motivation up to actually finish building out a "real" product, and I found myself needing a "win" to keep my momentum up. So, I hacked out a little one sentence journal app last night. I experimented with a few UI things (e.g.., the autosaving of the sentence for today and so on), so it was a good learning experience also. You can check it out at: http://osod.im
2012
- 15CP
Hi hackers, long time reader, first time "real" submitter. This is by no means a revolutionary idea, or even execution, but rather something I've always wanted to do, just to see if I could write a good implementation of it. So without further adieu: http://ca.pitali.st/ Yes, it's just an URL shortener. Please check out the API and if there anything you like about it, please share, so I can take this feedback with me to my future projects. If there's something you REALLY hate, that's feedback too. Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings; this was put together in less than 4 hours to see if I…
2011
- 16SA
Hello HN, My name is Deepak. I've created this platform (https://stackcrunch.io) where developers can share their experiences in form of short stories linked to real-world practical solutions on Q&A platforms. This project is currently in early access mode, where you can check out the platform & start writing your stories. Also, please do check out the launch article and how to create a story at https://stackcrunch.io/posts I'd love to hear back from the community. Warm Regards, Deepak
2018
- 17IL
Hello HN, I want to share something that I worked on for quite a while as my side project - www.heahy.com an IRC like chat where you can share various media and even record yourself (using web MediaRecorder api). Here is a thread with short explanation on how it works: https://www.heahy.com/channel/homepage/thread/3900adb9e441a09abc757461 I am looking for any feedback and if you have any ideas, advice or questions I am eager to hear it here or on heahy!
2020
- 18MW
I always find myself frustrated by how many steps I have to take to video chat with someone online. There's always too much software to download and install, and too many accounts to remember. The high-end, high-price Cisco conferencing systems I've used are especially fragile. So I built Vidless in a weekend for myself, and I hope you find it useful too. Just create a room and share the link, and you'll be chatting in seconds. You can invite several people (I haven't really tested a max yet), and chats on Vidless are always private. Enjoy!
2012 · vidless.com
- 19AS
(it's naked and will stay naked for at least a week or two) There are stuff like Discord or Scribophile, which can provide good opportunites, but it's such a mess and sometimes it can be frustrating - for both parties. So, r/betareading is meant to become a platform for both parties to meet and exchange freely. I'll have more free time soon to work on the subreddit and promote it. Probably will add guidelines for both writers and beta-readers. Because a writer can name the genre of his text and his length, but beta-readers skills should be categorized and made public: from grammar to…
2019
- 20TA
Hi HN, For years I’ve missed the feeling of an always-on chatroom without the silos and social overhead of Discord. So I built Together: a single-room, no-signup group chat that you join with one click. No channels, no rules (yet), no onboarding flow. Everyone lands in the same place and can start talking in under a second. Why I made it - Forums and blog comments are great but slow; Discord/Slack feel heavy for casual drop-ins if you aren’t already a member of a community. - I wanted the simplest possible space where ~100 people could idle, share shower thoughts, and keep the…
Oct 2025 · together.lol
- 21IB
Hey folks, After a long workday, I'd automatically switch on Netflix and let reruns play in the background—almost mindlessly. I spend all day on screens, so the extra screen time before bed felt draining. I love Lenny's Podcast, but it often felt too intense right before sleep. I've tried reading books as a nighttime ritual, but as a mom of a young kid and a startup founder, it's tough to stay committed to one book over two weeks with so many interruptions and shifting contexts. So I built Tales.so—a platform that converts books into fun, conversational podcasts. It covers everything from…
2025 · tales.so
- 22WI
I've been wondering how I could use LLMs to help me write, without taking my own voice away. I arrived at a workflow where the AI has strict instructions not to give me any text, just to give me tips, but it was clunky to see which parts of the text the critique referred to. To solve it, I made Lucid. I made it mostly for myself, but I added a "bring your own key" system for others to use it. I hope you like it!
May 2026 · writelucid.cc
- 23BA
Hey HN, This is a small project I made for a meetup (Creative Coding Amsterdam's poetry afternoon). With all the hype around LLMs these days, I wanted to create something silly and fun. I ended up with Glitchy BARD, which generates crappy poetry. It uses source text transformed into n-grams, while rhymes rely on the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary[0]. For the voice, I used the native SpeechSynthesis API instead of a fancy AI one. Everything runs on the client, but you can share a song via URL, which includes the random number generator seed. It's open source[1], though the code is a bit chaotic…
2025 · muffinman.io
- 24IC
Hi HN! I've been tinkering on a programmatically controlled typewriter. I've got a working prototype and it's been a lot of fun to play with. Of course I connected it to ChatGPT so I can chat with it, and I also have it acting as a clock, but it doesn't just type out the time. It writes a poem about the time. I'm posting this to gauge interest in purchasing one. It's all handmade, so I can't scale it up, but if enough people are into it, I might make a small batch. Or maybe sell it as a kit for the DIY crowd. Anyway, just wanted to put it out there and see what you all think. Thanks for…
2024 · notes.bayesup.date
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