NewsSwipe

Launch the App

Inspiration

In today’s fast-paced world, staying informed shouldn't be a hassle.

Traditional news platforms are often riddled with obstacles

1. Cookie Consent Pop-ups,
2. Incessant newsletter sign-ups
3. Intrusive ads

These distractions chip away at your time and patience.

Imagine a news experience where the top stories are not only easily accessible but also presented in a concise, engaging format that respects your time and enhances your understanding. That's the vision we're striving for—a streamlined news service that delivers quality over quantity.

What it does

NewsSwipe: Get straight to the point with top news stories, trimmed down to just the essentials and enjoy a smooth, scroll-through experience like TikTok, without any annoying ads or headlines getting in your way.

We curate and condense news from a variety of sources, employing advanced scrapers and the summarization prowess of GPT to ensure you're informed, not overwhelmed.

How we built it

• Swift for iOS development
• Gravitee.io as the API gatekeeper
• Amazon EC2 instances running Docker containers for our application server
• Brains of the operation—GPT-3.5 Turbo via OpenAI, orchestrated with Flask and CRON jobs for scheduled tasks, which scrapes top articles provided by Google News API
• Amazon DynamoDB keeps our data structured and accessible.

Exploring API Management with Gravitee.io

HTTPS endpoints secured with API Keys

Entrypoints

• GET: news/get_top_news
• POST: news/create
• POST: news/viewed

Endpoint

• Amazon EC2 instance running flask server.

Shows the 3 entrypoints configured on Gravitee API Management platform

Challenges we ran into

• Tackling the steep learning curve of iOS app development for the first time.
• Navigating the intricacies of publishing our app for beta testing through TestFlight.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Successfully launching our first version of the app.
• Implementing robust security measures for our endpoints with API keys and HTTPS through Gravitee.io.

What we learned

• iOS app creation and the intricacies of Swift.
• Server management and API security.
• Content curation and summarization techniques using AI.

What's next for NewsSwipe

We're not stopping here. Our roadmap includes:

• Integrating Ads for monetization in way which is not intruisive (separate list item, occurring once between 10-15 articles).
• Personalization features allowing users to select and follow their favorite topics.
• Sharing capabilities with deep links to articles to foster app engagement and broaden our user base.
• A bookmarking option for readers to save articles for later, ensuring they never miss a story that matters to them.
• Notifications - for keeping up with the latest.

Checkout the APP here on Appetize: App Link

Built With

• amazon-dynamodb
• amazon-ec2
• docker
• flask
• gpt
• gravitee.io
• ios
• python
• swift