node.js ko
StreamBurst
StreamBurst
by Hi Capacity #2
Real-time high-fidelity feed reader meant for quick perusal through Twitter and potentially other types of data in the future (RSS, etc.). It provides the user a quick glance at a lot of data and allows them to quickly view things that catch their eye.
Users can click on any image to see it at its full-size via a lightbox. The user interface also detects when a user is idle (there is no mouse activity). If the user is not interacting with the application it will continue to update in real-time. If the application senses that the user is not idling it will pause updates so the user will be able to finish what seeing what they are viewing.
Judging Instructions
We’ve tested this application in Chrome, FireFox, and Safari. It has not been tested on IE.
You will need to use a login in via your Twitter account. From there you will be presented with the main page of the application.
Note: The page will be blank at first! When the Tweets start coming in the action will begin! Unfortunately, the Twitter stream does go down from time to time so tweets will not display during those times.
At this time the feed reader will combine Tweets from the people who the authenticated user is following with a demo account. At this time this is so enough data can be seen to show off the full potential of the application.
Who
How
Our application is built on Node.js with Express and Socket.IO. The user interface uses JQuery to enhance the user experience.
Votes
Your Vote
Voting is now closed.
Other Votes
(313)
AnkurBulsarajudge
mattcshorejudge
ragavanjudgeInteresting concept, but the app ultimately ended up feeling a bit confusing. I only saw 3 or 4 of the same tweets circulating back and forth on the screen. Also, I’d see different images associated with the same tweet, but I wasn’t sure what the connection was between the images and the tweets (profile pics of the tweeter?) Also, it was kinda distracting to have the images move behind the lightbox when I was viewing the image in the lightbox. I like the potential and I can see glimpses of good design as well, but overall it left me a bit confused.
SuttojudgeIn the period I had the app open, it appears to have only come through with the test lorem ipsum data – possibly related to the issues mentioned in reply to other judges.
I think the use of jquery masonry is a very nice touch but from the general content I got to play with, it feels like it may not be a great fit without a lot of data / a very active stream – initially, the layout was very rough and things didn’t really feel like they fit together well.
Likewise, the lightbox effect was a nice touch but slightly intrusive – Unless I missed it, a google image search style enlarge-on-hover would potentially be a more usable approach which would also work well with the way it detects if the page is inactive.
With a bit more work, this could potentially be a very useful application – especially for things like conferences (if it could be hooked up to specific hash tags) so I wish you guys the best of luck with it.
lquixada
contestantNot clear what it supposed to do :( I entered my login and some minutes after got someone elses tweets. It got a sexy appeal but… what I’m supposed to expect?
Maybe the app is very useful but it not clear because of lack of huge amount of data (or I’m too dumb).
dGoligorskyjudgeReally clean visual design. I like the idea of having the twitter stream and RSS feed reading coexisting in one place. Wish the RSS capability was built into this embodiment. Maybe the lightbox could be a preview window for tweets that have links in them? Could be especially helpful for YouTube/Vimeo links in tweets.
The stream is nice. It would be fantastic if a future version could filter the stream into several mini-streams, like one for Art, one for Business, one for Fashion or whatever. Could be like a visually dynamic RSS folder. Splitting up the Twitter stream into content-specific areas of interest would be great as well. I’m not exactly a Twitter-achiever, but haven’t seen an app that chunks Twitter updates by content. I have Twittelator and I get tweets from David Lynch next to tweets from my work buddies next to tweets from Barack Obama. Wouldn’t hurt to split that up somehow.
I can see this application really taking off if you folks put some more elbow grease in. Seeing a lot of good thinking and principles (and skills and talent) behind what I’m looking at right now. Interested to see where this goes.
mapejudgeSlick frontpage and easy to get going.
Once logged in I only got two items (dummy ones) after 10min of usage, might be that my feed isn’t that active but it was kind of a let down.
Perhaps allow people to enter arbitrary searches through the UI, that way I could keep it up during sport events or put it on a projector screen at a conference.
chrismatthieujudgesounds interesting but the site did not load for me.
burntojudgeThe marketing pages look complete, and the login seemed to work, but I left the StreamBurst window open for 10 minutes and I never saw any content. I am on Chrome14/Mac…
The visual design is not bad, from the parts I saw.
Also, full page reloads seem kind of old school.
I’ll check back tomorrow to see if there’s content. If so, I may raise the scores depending on what I see.
jianshi
contestantTwitter randomly bans us if we have too many visitors for the streaming API. Thanks for coming to check again!
pthurlow
contestantApp did not work. Unclear what it was supposed to do. Sorry
- contestant
Try again at a later time. Twitter randomly bans us if we have too many visitors for the streaming API. Please re-evaluate.
joaomilho
contestantYeah, same here. After 30min just 3 lorem ipsum messages.
martinciu
contestantncb000gt
contestantInteresting take on a twitter stream however it didn’t seem to be grabbing everything.
It is hard to maintain timelines when the items move all around.
- contestant
So if you wave your mouse over the page, it’ll stop moving so you can use the site. The site detects for idleness.
Also, I feel that our design should have a higher mark. What is your reason for only 3 stars? sadface
ncb000gt
contestantUltimately I was not a fan of how the items in the timelines re-orged themselves. I was expecting the content to flow to the right from the left (where it entered). Instead there were blocks that went down, some further than others, based on the sizes of the items above. I actually thought it was confusing. It looked great, but part of a good design is the UI as well and that is why the lower score.
ericbiellerjudgeA lack of guidance and logical errors/messages made it hard to use and understand. It took too long for the feed to start populating. Fonts in the stream are way too small. Can’t hardly read them. Design looks sharp though! But overall I couldn’t find much use for it :/
pfinettejudgeBeautiful design. Crappy first run experience – showing me an empty page is not cool. Even when you tell me you do so… ;) Also – it seems to pull some rather random pictures which don’t seem to be associated to the tweets. Bug or feature?
- contestant
Try leaving the mouse idle and give it another shot. Twitter’s live feed sometimes dies because it simply kicks us off after a while. Right now everyone’s friends (people that you’re following) gets aggregated into the feed. So you might see some random stuff.
mikealjudgenothing loads after login.
- contestant
Try leaving the mouse idle and give it another shot. Twitter’s live feed sometimes dies because it simply kicks us off after a while.
codepo8judgeBroken. Firefox 6
- contestant
Try leaving the mouse idle and give it another shot. Twitter’s live feed sometimes dies because it simply kicks us off after a while.
ricardrobin
contestantOhhhhh ! It’s beautiful !
sonnyg95
contestantReally cool and fun app with a great design. Love that when you resize your window, the app detects that and adjusts the feeds to fit the new screen size.
therazorbladejudgeThis is beautifully designed and while I didn’t get an experience similar to the home page image, it looks really great. I have a pretty active Twitter feed but didn’t really see much realtime activity.
aashay
contestantHmm. Didn’t work for me on initial load. I had to refresh a couple times before I saw anything. I’m not entirely sure what it is I’m seeing though. It doesn’t look like my twitter stream, but a bunch of tweets to people I follow. I guess that’s one way of finding interesting content to read but most of it ends up being noise.
I like the design and I especially like how things animate. Good idea on pausing it to let people finish reading things (although it doesn’t seem to always pause for me, it’s continuing to update as I’m writing this vote entry).
austenito
contestantI love leaving the app in the background then stopping it when I see something important. Great job :)
eirikurn
contestantThe visual design is really pretty. Especially the intro page. Unfortunately the footer bounces around annoyingly for me and the layout and animations seem weird. The app should do something about mass-retweets and image selection/sizing is sometimes confusing. A promising concept though and would like to see it when it’s smoothed up. :)
fredyatesivjudgeThe stream kind of spazzed out on me. I wanted to read the tweets that were coming in but everything constantly shifts all over the screen.
I think it would be a lot more useful if you could control the speed at which content is shown or at least delay the stuff being shown.
Besides that main issue, I think it would be a fun app, I’d have liked to see it with my twitter feed but understand your reasoning for doing it the way you did
I loved the design but it seemed more flashy and hip than useful. But perhaps, that was the point.
The same couple of tweets kept on repeating for me. I did not understand the use of photos. Weird, random photos were being assigned to unrelated tweets and repeated tweets.
Despite its flaws, I think there’s opportunity to build something compelling especially with the focus on media and making the twitter stream less text-heavy.