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The relationship between Readability and Instapaper

marco.org

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Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper

#51
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Reader" button appears to be a fork of Readability ( http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/06/08/think-safari-re... ) Also of note, the original Readability was actually "partly inspired by" instapaper ( http://lab.arc90.com/2009/03/02/readability/ )

So I looked into all of these some time ago for an app that I use myself. The Safari fork of Readability is the best client implementation, while the best server-side implementation (by a mile) is Diffbot. Out of the 50 sources I had (regular RSS updates, etc.) InstaPaper failed on far too many, either stripping important content or pictures and captions. Readability was only a bit better I glued together an app that…

Thanks for introducing me to Diffbot.

From your comment I expected it to be an open source implementation, but a high-quality SaaS with 50,000 API calls/mo on the free plan is still pretty damn good.

Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper

#52

I'm totally confused by the apparent consensus sentiment going around on this. I adore Instapaper. I think it's unbelievably well done, I use it, and I don't have plans to look elsewhere.. that said, I can't say I worry or get sad about people who develop competing products. Seriously? It's ridiculous to react that way. First of all, I find it patronizing. Marco's really fucking good at what he does. If it turns out…

i down voted you because your comment was a little rambunctious and didn't really make a whole lot of sense.

Oh, well that's very fair. I'm kind of a handful.

Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper

#53
post #9

The reason I don't develop my ViewText any further is that the barrier to entry for this is just to low. Marco already has an excellent app, now reability will enter his market, along with Apple. Here's an example: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marco.org%2...

I'm using Viewtext mainly to get the full posts from RSS-feeds into my reader, and it is excellent for that! It does not work on all the feeds I want to follow, but the majority is covered. Maybe this is something you could focus more on if you feel that the Instapaper/readability-functionality is already too crowded?

how do you do that?

do you wrap the feed's url in viewtext's api url, and provide that to the reader?

Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Viewtext mainly to get the full posts from RSS-feeds into my reader, and it is excellent for that! It does not work on all the feeds I want to follow, but the majority is covered. Maybe this is something you could focus more on if you feel that the Instapaper/readability-functionality is already too crowded?

how do you do that? do you wrap the feed's url in viewtext's api url, and provide that to the reader?

ViewText accepts RSS feeds

Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper

#55
post #48
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always ashamed of my code.

You're clearly not ashamed of what your code can do , since you showed us the above with no hesitation. (And you shouldn't be, of course.) So why be ashamed of the code that accomplishes it?

Yep, function over form. And the function part is fantastic in this case
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