Metafilter on Flipboard iPad app? August 3, 2010 8:29 AM Subscribe
Any other mefites using Flipboard?
I love this app, and reading Metafilter works pretty well on it. I was wondering if anyone had figured out a way to get it to dig a little deeper into the stories to get any associated artwork?
I love this app, and reading Metafilter works pretty well on it. I was wondering if anyone had figured out a way to get it to dig a little deeper into the stories to get any associated artwork?
Finally got approved to use my feeds on it a few days ago, so just digging in. Love it so far, though.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:18 AM on August 3, 2010
posted by LooseFilter at 9:18 AM on August 3, 2010
Flipboard is great, but I haven't used it for metafilter. And I don't know what you mean by dig a little deeper into the stories?
posted by dfriedman at 9:46 AM on August 3, 2010
posted by dfriedman at 9:46 AM on August 3, 2010
I'm completely underwhelmed by it at the moment. I see the potential. I guess I just don't know where/how to find the cool parts.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:25 AM on August 3, 2010
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:25 AM on August 3, 2010
Flipboard basically uses Twitter as the glue to pull content together and format it in a print-like experience. If you follow makemagazine for instance you'll see what I mean.
By "dig a little deeper" I just mean that when it composes the print-like presentation, it follows any bit.ly links (for example) inncluded in the tweet and uses the images it finds in them to accompany the story.
I mean, it kinda makes sense that it wouldn't drill into the links in a post, but it also seems kind of a shame.
Metafilter might be a special case that doesn't really work well... I asked about a devkit but they said there wasn't one. LooseFilter, can you shed any light on the content submission process?
posted by butterstick at 10:40 AM on August 3, 2010
By "dig a little deeper" I just mean that when it composes the print-like presentation, it follows any bit.ly links (for example) inncluded in the tweet and uses the images it finds in them to accompany the story.
I mean, it kinda makes sense that it wouldn't drill into the links in a post, but it also seems kind of a shame.
Metafilter might be a special case that doesn't really work well... I asked about a devkit but they said there wasn't one. LooseFilter, can you shed any light on the content submission process?
posted by butterstick at 10:40 AM on August 3, 2010
Wait, how do I get my MetaFilters on my Flipboards?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:43 AM on August 3, 2010
posted by Rock Steady at 10:43 AM on August 3, 2010
Is there an iPhone, Windows or OSX equivalent to this?
posted by empath at 11:53 AM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by empath at 11:53 AM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]
Rock Steady - I'm doing it thru mefiblue on twitter. Once you login thru Flipboard, you can edit the main screen. I just went to add new content, and searched for "mefiblue" and added that.
It's cool because I don't have to actually follow mefiblue so it doesn't noisify my main twitter stream.
posted by butterstick at 11:57 AM on August 3, 2010
It's cool because I don't have to actually follow mefiblue so it doesn't noisify my main twitter stream.
posted by butterstick at 11:57 AM on August 3, 2010
Wow, great suggestion; I just got Flipboard going and am enjoying the experience.
posted by mikepop at 1:09 PM on August 3, 2010
posted by mikepop at 1:09 PM on August 3, 2010
Flipboard, for anybody wondering what this thread is about. It's an iPad app.
I was pretty skeptical about it until last week when somebody showed me how he'd set it up for himself. Checking it out now - could be an interesting, if kinda strange, toy.
posted by ardgedee at 6:39 PM on August 3, 2010
I was pretty skeptical about it until last week when somebody showed me how he'd set it up for himself. Checking it out now - could be an interesting, if kinda strange, toy.
posted by ardgedee at 6:39 PM on August 3, 2010
I'm doing it thru mefiblue on twitter.
Great idea!
LooseFilter, how do you ask to use feeds? And do you mean any RSS feed you want? Because I was so impressed by Flipboard that I bought Pulse, but Pulse limits you to 20 feeds and the layout is nowhere near as great as Flipboard's.
posted by ignignokt at 7:08 PM on August 3, 2010
Great idea!
LooseFilter, how do you ask to use feeds? And do you mean any RSS feed you want? Because I was so impressed by Flipboard that I bought Pulse, but Pulse limits you to 20 feeds and the layout is nowhere near as great as Flipboard's.
posted by ignignokt at 7:08 PM on August 3, 2010
Flipboard, for anybody wondering what this thread is about. It's an iPad app.
Thanks. I'm getting increasingly impatient with Metatalk posts that make references like 'hey how about that awesome AskMe question about toothbrushes that everyone knows about!', without bothering to give us a link whatever it is the poster wants to talk about.
It's the internet, friends. Link that shit up, please. Or at least take a second to make a token gesture at explaining what you're talking about.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:02 PM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]
Thanks. I'm getting increasingly impatient with Metatalk posts that make references like 'hey how about that awesome AskMe question about toothbrushes that everyone knows about!', without bothering to give us a link whatever it is the poster wants to talk about.
It's the internet, friends. Link that shit up, please. Or at least take a second to make a token gesture at explaining what you're talking about.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:02 PM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]
Yeah it'd be great to not have a blank spot in my otherwise pretty flipboard...
posted by danny the boy at 1:34 AM on August 4, 2010
posted by danny the boy at 1:34 AM on August 4, 2010
I set this up last night using the mefiblue twitter account but am finding it is not as useful as I'd hoped.
For anyone not playing along, let's say you point Flipboard at your Twitter stream of friends. It then sucks out any links it finds and presents the content on the other end as if you are reading a custom magazine. So page one might be an interesting tech article that guy from work linked up, some pictures from your sister's trip to New Mexico, and a funny cat video from that guy who always posts funny cat videos.
If you want, you can instead post Flibboard to a single Twitter user (that ideally posts a lot of links you like) - then you would have screens of pictures, articles, etc. just from this one user.
The advantage of doing this (especially on an iPad) is that you don't have to go through a Twitter stream, keep clicking links to see what they are, if they look interesting, etc.
But when you point to mefiblue, you have a twitter account that is posting links to articles that are basically more links - but Flipboard doesn't expand the second level of links where all the interesting content is. In fact, when it scrapes the MeFi posts it often makes them less useful as not everything is linked up properly or formatted nicely.
At this point I'd say you are better off reading MeFi the old fashioned way or through an RSS reader.
posted by mikepop at 5:34 AM on August 4, 2010
For anyone not playing along, let's say you point Flipboard at your Twitter stream of friends. It then sucks out any links it finds and presents the content on the other end as if you are reading a custom magazine. So page one might be an interesting tech article that guy from work linked up, some pictures from your sister's trip to New Mexico, and a funny cat video from that guy who always posts funny cat videos.
If you want, you can instead post Flibboard to a single Twitter user (that ideally posts a lot of links you like) - then you would have screens of pictures, articles, etc. just from this one user.
The advantage of doing this (especially on an iPad) is that you don't have to go through a Twitter stream, keep clicking links to see what they are, if they look interesting, etc.
But when you point to mefiblue, you have a twitter account that is posting links to articles that are basically more links - but Flipboard doesn't expand the second level of links where all the interesting content is. In fact, when it scrapes the MeFi posts it often makes them less useful as not everything is linked up properly or formatted nicely.
At this point I'd say you are better off reading MeFi the old fashioned way or through an RSS reader.
posted by mikepop at 5:34 AM on August 4, 2010
To answer the actual question posted by butterstick, I think to get Flipboard to do what we want here either Matt's going to have to work with the Flipboard people directly to work up some custom content sucking algorithm, or (more likely) if someone here could create a Twitter user that looks at the MeFi blue posts and sucks out each link within the post and translates that to a small url and posts that. So instead of
In case of posts with multiple links, I'd think you'd want to pull out each link and make it its own Twitter post (but again probably some experimentation is called for).
posted by mikepop at 5:49 AM on August 4, 2010
Me and Bobby McGee This is worth watching if only to observe Jerry's keyboarding starting at 2:26. http://bit.ly/at7oYWwhere the bit.ly url goes to the post on MetaFilter, you would have something like
makes my fingers hurt just to watch! [url direct to youtube video]Or maybe you wouldn't even have the title in there, just the URL. I'd have to experiment to see what the difference is. But the idea is that when you open that Flipbook area, you now have screens of nicely presented articles, videos, pictures, etc.
In case of posts with multiple links, I'd think you'd want to pull out each link and make it its own Twitter post (but again probably some experimentation is called for).
posted by mikepop at 5:49 AM on August 4, 2010
ugh, using Twitter to share links is like listening to music over the telephone. Sure you can do it, but we have so many other, better ways to do it. We have feeds! They work beautifully for taking content from a site and using it in other programs. Feeds have been working well for years and years.
I'm guessing Flipboard is using Twitter and Facebook as its primary source of content because they feel like links recommended by real people you know are preferred to links recommended by websites. But that leads to the need for rube-goldberg style hacks like turning each link posted on MeFi into it's own tweet. (?!) No human would want to read that.
So I think the answer is to lobby Flipbook to support feeds. I hope they do add feeds eventually, or create a spinoff app for people who want to manage things more closely. It's a neat way to browse.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:08 AM on August 4, 2010
I'm guessing Flipboard is using Twitter and Facebook as its primary source of content because they feel like links recommended by real people you know are preferred to links recommended by websites. But that leads to the need for rube-goldberg style hacks like turning each link posted on MeFi into it's own tweet. (?!) No human would want to read that.
So I think the answer is to lobby Flipbook to support feeds. I hope they do add feeds eventually, or create a spinoff app for people who want to manage things more closely. It's a neat way to browse.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:08 AM on August 4, 2010
I'm giving up on Flipboard (again; when I first tried it out, i never really got to TRY it, because i couldn't get it connected to anything). It's a neat idea - though not unique - and it's layout pages are attractive, but they do a half-ass job of molding the content to the layout templates and without connecting to the sources I use (hint: sources != twitter), it's pointless. I had hoped this "mefiblue" referenced above would help, but its only made it worse...
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 11:10 AM on August 4, 2010
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 11:10 AM on August 4, 2010
Flipboard blows. Crashes over and over again.
Anyone tried Flud yet? It's great, but I can't figure out how to get MeFi fees on it.
posted by dobbs at 10:31 PM on August 4, 2010
Anyone tried Flud yet? It's great, but I can't figure out how to get MeFi fees on it.
posted by dobbs at 10:31 PM on August 4, 2010
Feeds, I meant. And it works with just metafilter punched in the search box rather than entering the feed urls.
posted by dobbs at 10:45 PM on August 4, 2010
posted by dobbs at 10:45 PM on August 4, 2010
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posted by matty at 8:54 AM on August 3, 2010