Alternatives
Products that do what Trott.in, Twitter style character limit for beautiful travel blogs does
Hey Hacker News, Myself and another nomad have been working on this for a few years. It's a travel blog that aims to make it easier to write (and read) by limiting you to one photo and 350 characters per day. The first part was easy (making it work for us), the second part took a lot longer (adding all the polish to make it usable). Mostly it's a passion project borne out of lack of alternatives. If we were going to monetise it would probably be by adding a feature to turn posts (trots) into postcards, and make a small markup over a printing API like lob.com. Probably not a huge market, but…
- 1IB
With social media and now AI, its important to keep the indie web alive. There are many people who write frequently. Blogosphere tries to highlight them by fetching the recent posts from personal blogs across many categories. There are two versions: Minimal (HN-inspired, fast, static): https://text.blogosphere.app/ Non-minimal: https://blogosphere.app/ If you don't find your blog (or your favorite ones), please add them. I will review and approve it.
Apr 2026 · text.blogosphere.app
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- 4BA
2014 · blot.im
- 5
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- 7P2
I wrote this over the last couple of weeks using Rails 3, Twilio and a variety of Gems, putting in about 2 hours per day. I'd love any feedback from the HN community on any aspects of the site (design, API construction, documentation, marketing, pricing which is TBD). On a related note: I have to say that I'm really flying with Rails 3. Typically I roll with Django, but have been super impressed with the Rails 3. Feels really clean, and there are some Gems that make the more mundane parts of the webapp construction fun and agile: Haml/Sass, blueprint, Fancy-buttons, Devise. I'll probably…
2011 · phoneify.com
- 8SB
2020 · github.com
- 9TS
I built Trott out of frustration with my own “Saved” folders on Instagram and YouTube. I’d save reels and shorts—workout tips, recipes, travel spots—thinking I’d find them again later. But, like most people, I ended up with a black hole of unsorted videos: no search, no filters, and if I ever did find the right video again, I’d have to dig through the whole thing just to get that one detail I needed. When I tried looking for solutions, I found only genre-specific apps or tools that demanded manual uploads or new workflows. None felt like they understood how real users behave or save content.…
Oct 2025 · trott.hattimatimlabs.in
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- 11HC
A year and a half after I published https://HackYourNews.com, I've rewritten it to be neater and added support for more news sources. HackYourNews.com v1 had a great response on HN [1] and consistently sees ~2k weekly unique visitors. There were many long-standing requests that I wanted to fulfill (thanks for your patience!): a proper dark mode, correct rendering on mobile devices, and more cogent summaries. This rewrite is the result. gpt-4o-mini reduces the cost of summarization to an absurd degree, so it's now sustainable to keep this free service going! Someday, I hope to use…
2025
- 12AB
https://rxjourney.com.ng I realize SvelteKit is overkill, but I originally had bigger plans for the blog, before deciding to just keep it simple. Yeah, I had Medium open on a different tab while building. It's going to be a personal blog where I write about my experiences, if you're interested you can subscribe to the newsletter.
2024
- 13
My wife and I have blogged about every trip since our honeymoon 10 years ago. We took turns writing, but both of us had photos and videos on our phones, and every day they had to be sent back and forth and sorted into the entry. The blog ran on WordPress, and WordPress never got it: not the mobile editing experience, not the video support, not the gallery, and definitely not the together part. You are limited to one author per entry (but you get a bunch of plugins nobody maintains and constant bot attacks on your wp-admin), and every video had to go to YouTube because WordPress does not…
9d ago · texttile.blog
- 14TC
2017 · travelmap.net
- 15MF
Hey everyone, Common advice for inexperienced hackers suggests "scratching an itch." Like many others here, I spent too much time on HN, Google Reader and Twitter searching for interesting stuff, so I decided to write an app that brings interesting links to you with no other distractions. HighFive uses Twitter and bit.ly's APIs to find interesting links in your timeline. When you log in, you'll see a group of five links with voting arrows. No HN comments or RSS feeds with hundreds of links--just a few interesting articles that you can read, then get back to work. HighFive was built using…
2011
- 16IB
PG has posted about improving social networks using something like an "intellectual CAPTCHA" many times [1][2][3][4] - "Make users pass a test on basic concepts like the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions before they can tweet." I felt the same way. So I built one using a mix of simple math, logic, and Twitter/X Community Noted posts. Try sample questions here - https://mentwire.com/sample - without signing up. - Invites are temporarily open to HN users. - Onboarding test + one daily question before accessing feed, post or reply. - Posts authors are…
Apr 2026 · mentwire.com
- 17MF
I recently finished the Front-End Web Development program at General Assembly in San Francisco. My final project turned out being a quick, easy, and free way to convert a Tweet into various properly formatted citations. Inspired by a Hacker News post a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3751295
2013 · tweet2cite.com
- 18PM
2013 · postagon.com
- 19AS
Hello Hacker News! In the past few weeks I've been working on a side project that allows you to post anonymously a short message and a photo that is tied to your location. Other people can see posts around them in a radius of 1 kilometer. Posts are ephemeral and disappear after one day. That's all. It started as an exercise to try to write a geohash index and to try nodejs and Redis. I'm not sure if/how it could be useful. Maybe it could be used as a quick way of sharing something with someone next to you, or to leave a reminder for someone at a specific location. Or it could be abused…
2015
- 20SI
Hey guys! About 6 months ago we launched the first version of Scribble on Hacker News & Product Hunt. Scribble (https://hiscribble.com) is a simple, no BS blog-writing subscription for startups, small businesses, and indie makers. Since launching our 1.0 we’ve learned a lot about how to run a service like this, and today we’re launching a huge revamp: We’ve about doubled the amount of writers on the team (all native English-speaking, all based in the USA) We’ve optimized our pricing & ops models to make us the most affordable premium writing service available (without outsourcing…
2019
- 21PC
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
- 22TA
hi folks, i'm the founder of TRMNL. we launched a KS over the summer, and now ship devices same-day. open source firmware, no subscriptions, no ads, 50+ native plugins already, and a simple API to build your own for private or public use. happy to answer any questions! Ryan
2024 · usetrmnl.com
- 23PA
Hi Everyone, Today I'm proud to announce the upcoming launch of Postcard. You can visit the launch page here - http://www.postcardsocial.net However, since this is Hacker News, I thought the community might be more interested in my blog entry which explains in detail why the project should be of interest to developers including information about the open API Protocol it will adhere to. You can read the blog entry here - http://blog.postcardsocial.net/introducing-postcard/ Feedback is welcome and appreciated. I'm actively looking for beta testers and you can sign…
2013
- 24DL
DailyPings (https://dailypings.com) is a HN-inspired platform where makers share their daily progress. Key features: - Three posts per day limit to encourage quality updates - HN-style upvote system - No comments, just pure progress sharing - Email verification Tech stack: - Next.js 15 App Router - TypeScript - Prisma ORM - PostgreSQL - NextAuth.js - Tailwind CSS - Geist Mono font - Deployed on Coolify The idea came from wanting a distraction-free space for makers to share their daily progress, similar to how HN works for tech news. The three posts per day limit is intentional - it…
2024 · dailypings.com
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