[HN Gopher] Alternative: A community software search engine
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Alternative: A community software search engine
Author : D2man
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-06-14 07:23 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alternative-a.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (alternative-a.com)
| karsinkk wrote:
| Is it just me or is anyone else having a tough time trying to
| wade through all the jargon to figure out what this is actually
| about?
| D2man wrote:
| Sorry for that, I tried to be as clear as possible. May I help
| you ?
|
| Can you precise which jargon ?
| gk1 wrote:
| I think the issue is grammar, not jargon. There are many
| grammar mistakes which make it difficult to understand. I
| recommend you check the text through Grammarly, or ask
| someone for help reviewing the text.
| D2man wrote:
| Sorry for my poor english ! I'll ckeck grammarly
| gk1 wrote:
| At the very least I recommend fixing the headline to
| avoid confusion:
|
| Introducing Alternative, the community-powered search
| engine for software
| cutemonster wrote:
| Agreed, I was confused too
| laurent123456 wrote:
| It's alternativeto.com but with a few differences.
| xanth wrote:
| My first thought was there are now 15 competing standards, I
| hope at least this is semantic web or at least scrape
| friendly.
| D2man wrote:
| That's true, we build Alternative knowing the advantages
| and drawbacks of the market. Besides data, we tried to
| build tools that help you to make your choices. We relied
| on scraped data and reviews.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" at least scrape friendly"_
|
| Decidedly not. If you disable javascript for a search, you
| get a mostly empty page back.
|
| The results themselves do come from an api at
| benchmarker.fr, but it wants a bearer token.
| D2man wrote:
| We provide an open search route API :
|
| https://benchmarker.fr/opensearch?q={searchTerms}
|
| You can then configure a redirection folowing these
| guidelines: <Url type="text/html"
| template="https://alternative-a.com/en/search">
| <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/> <!--
| other Params if you need them... --> <Param
| name="view" value="list"/> <Param name="sort"
| value='["reduction","DESC"]'/> </Url>
|
| Can you precise, why would you scrape Alternative? Your
| answer will help us define the next priorities.
| btbuildem wrote:
| No idea what this service? product? vaporvare? does..
| D2man wrote:
| You can use Alternative now. It's an online service. More we
| are to share our knowledge on Alternative faster you will
| find your software.
|
| Have you tried it?
| btbuildem wrote:
| Not to be flippant, but I _still_ don't know what it does.
| Am I just ignorant of current trends? Does the name provide
| enough information that folks will immediately know what it
| is?
|
| Honestly, a short paragraph describing what it does would
| be really helpful.
|
| Some of your target audience may be the "poke around spend
| time finding out what it does" type. But another swathe
| could be of the "tell me what this is before I spend any
| time looking at it" sort.
| tyingq wrote:
| Search for software and alternatives to named software.
|
| Here's the results of a search for "Trello":
|
| https://alternative-a.com/en/search?q=trello&view=list&sort=...
| andyxor wrote:
| what is "community software"?
| dgan wrote:
| searching for "dns" gives a blank page
| https://alternative-a.com/en/search?q=dns&view=list&sort=[%2...
|
| While searching for "bind9" gives me "Your research isn't
| recorded!"
|
| hmmm
| D2man wrote:
| Thanks for the report. "bind9" is not recorded in the database
| yet. "dns" is recorded as a category but without software liked
| to it that's why the page is blank.
| [deleted]
| vhanda wrote:
| Hey. I tried to signup, and it redirected me to the login page in
| the french language. My locale is English. After manually
| changing the url to use English, and trying to Sign In, it
| redirected me to the French Signup Page.
|
| Something strange is going on.
| D2man wrote:
| Thanks for reporting this bug. The problem has been corrected
| in a new version. It's in production.
|
| Tell me if it persists :)
| pimterry wrote:
| I signed up and was presented with a French dashboard page.
| Everything was in English before. I manually changed the 'fr'
| in the URL to 'en' and then everything seemed to work fine
| :-).
| mdaniel wrote:
| I had this same experience, and between this experience and
| the GP comment -- how in the world is asking users to do
| URL surgery considered a valid UX? To say nothing of the
| hubris of ignoring the `accept-language:` header sent from
| every browser since I can remember
| yboris wrote:
| I tried using alternative-a but couldn't find anything (just
| search for "photo" for example). And there is no obvious way to
| add what's missing.
|
| Also, when I hear "software" I expect software for the computer,
| not websites that provide a service.
|
| I recommend https://alternativeto.net/ -- very easy to recommend
| alternatives and add new ones.
| foxbee wrote:
| When I seen the title, I thought, 'a search engine that allows me
| to search for communities that fit an inputted search criteria,
| cool!' Sadly, it doesn't seem to be the case and it is more of a
| tool for searching alternatives to popular software.
| D2man wrote:
| Indeed, this is not the problem we are answering, but your
| first though seems a great idea.
| stanislavb wrote:
| I'm wondering whether this is better/different than AlternativeTo
| or SaaSHub.com?
| D2man wrote:
| You are right! Alternative is similar to AlternativeTo and
| SaaSHub. We are mainly if you are not connected to the
| Alternative dashboard. In the offline version, the search
| results are presented as a list. Moreover, softwares are added
| by the community.
|
| Nevertheless there are differences!
|
| When using Alternative without sign in, we differ by :
|
| - search filters that allow you to build your requirements
|
| - a display of search results by similarity index
|
| When using Alternative with sign in, we differ by :
|
| - more advanced comparison tools
|
| - more data in the software file
|
| - a space to share your stacks and argue about about its
|
| - a semi-automated filling of the form to add a software
|
| These differences are the result of a vision oriented search
| engine more than data directory. We hope that with the craze
| that could be around this project we will build indexing robots
| specialized in the discovery and revalidation of data.
|
| It seems ambitious but, we target to be more exhaustive than
| AlternativeTo and SaaSHub. That's why we combined crowdsourcing
| and robots.
|
| Did I answer your question ?
| laurent123456 wrote:
| You explain what the website does not but so much what
| problem is being solved. I use alternativeto a lot, and never
| had an issue finding what I need. I usually type the name of
| an app related to what I need and browse the alternatives.
| Usually I'd also select a few filters, for example the
| operating system or open source.
|
| At not point did I think "I can't do x or y, and if only
| there was a similarity index or robots I could". So you might
| have more features than alternativeto but why would anyone
| need them is the part that's missing.
| D2man wrote:
| 1. There's no alternativeto in french.
|
| 2. With those tools, we think you'll make your choice
| faster even with a very long results list. I think you
| deserve these tools as a counterpart for your work on
| Alternative. We build it thinking to corporate needs.
|
| If you are ok with Alternativeto that's fine. :)
| Kikkhal wrote:
| Great design, I found great results concerning Airtable.
| Interesting site.
| D2man wrote:
| Thanks
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(page generated 2021-06-14 23:03 UTC)