Basically I'd like to eventually have a stand-alone app. No point in making a web app if people can just like on another tab. So I've picked what I'm most comfortable with in stand-alone apps: Microsoft stack with F#. I'm using Webkit as a browser and doing some persistence in a MS Access database for now, although that will probably change.
I think I'm pretty far along for just a solo effort. It pulls all the main articles from HackerNews, Digg, Reddit, and a couple more places. You can view the target article and vote them up or down, all without leaving the app. Of course, like any project, still a long ways to go.
In my case I'm configuring canto(http://codezen.org/canto/) to use crm114. It's not working properly yet, but you have my repo here: http://gitorious.org/foobarnews