Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
171–180 of 259 posts
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#172Shameless plug: I build a tool to forward RSS feeds and newsletters to Kindle automatically[0]. While it could not replace the official periodicals, it works pretty well for my personal reading workflow. Consider giving it a try if you’re looking for an alternative. [0]: https://ktool.io
When Kindle first came out my kids were just starting to get into reading more, so I wrote a perl script to poll various RSS feed that emailed their own personalized "newsletter" to the Kindle for each of them. It was a fun project, but I don't think they paid it much attention. Eventually the feeds I was using all went defunct or threw so many errors I abandoned it.
I’m sure it was fun working on that project. Parsing web content and packaging into epub is so much fun.
But handling Amazon bugs is not :(
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope your calling The Guardian and especially the CIA... I mean the NYT "independent journalism" is an elaborate joke.
Why do you think so?
Not the original commentor.
As a longer time and now former NYT reader, it has definitely fallen off. It's abandoned balance and objectivity for trite left-leaning talking points. The breakup came when I realized I could not longer trust it to inform me to the depth and breadth I needed.
At this point, it's an average news publication - notice I didn't say journalism - riding on the fumes of its history. It's not bad. But every since the internet its become more and more generic.
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#174I recently went to the AWP Conference (https://www.awpwriter.org/). It was very interesting to walk around the exhibition hall and talk with all these small independent book publishers and presses. I bought a couple of books, one is a poetry book, which I confess, I have never bought a book of poetry before, but the author was there and signed it and I sort of fell in love with her and her poems.
I asked a number of the people from these independent publishers what they thought about Amazon. I was surprised at their answers, it varied of course but they agreed it was somewhat of a love hate relationship. On the one hand, Amazon gave them a marketplace, but on the other hand, they could be a bit of a malevolent master. There were also a number of literary magazines there and they had similar feelings.
I wish Amazon could find a way to do more to support the literary world, seeing all these brilliant little presses often who specialize in various genres that give new authors opportunities.
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#175FWIW the Apple News app has an incredible number of Magazines and Newspapers. News+ $10 monthly subscription is a solid deal.
A couple months ago I cancelled my Apple News+ subscription because they take too long to fix it when it breaks.
Several months ago all of the newspapers I was reading through it stopped updating, or slowed down to one or two stories a day. Over the next week or two they slowly improved and got back to normal.
But then it happened again. And this time they haven't fixed it. The Seattle Times newest stories are 15 weeks old now.
The San Jose Mercury News "Top Stories" section at the moment has stories with ages 1x1d, 2x1w, 1x2w, 1x3w, 1x4w, 1x6w, 2x8w, 2x9w, 1x12w, 1x14w, and so on.
It was similar for the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal when I cancelled. I don't know if they have been fixed or not since they are only in News+. The Seattle Times and the Mercury News are in regular News so I'm able to check them to see if they are fixed.
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#176There's something to be said for today's business model that much of big tech uses: "First we build it, then we get customers who love it, then we try to figure out how to monetize it- and kill it if we don't". Google is, of course, the king of this model, but it feels as though the entire industry fully embraces it. I'm waiting for the day my Alexa shuts itself off forever because I still don't see how it makes a di…
Amazon is definitely making money on these subscriptions. IMHO, they simply want to make even more money by pushing everyone onto "Unlimited". Maybe more like "how to super-monetize it".
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Around 2013 our university digitized their newspaper displays. Prior to the renovation, newspapers were posted daily in large vertical glass-covered display cases in the student lounge of the library (the library would buy and post two copies so all pages were face up). Tens of students at a time would slowly walk down the row of newspapers reading during their study breaks and quietly chatting while sipping on coffe…
That glass display sounds extremely cool. Due to bus scheduling I would always have 20 minutes to kill before some classes and I would definitely have visited that. I appreciate the reason for the kiosks (decently private, better access for those who need it) but they are competing with my personal laptop.
Newseum closed at the end of 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newseum
>The Today's Front Pages Gallery presented daily front pages from more than 80 international newspapers. The Today's Front Pages Gallery is still available on the Newseum's website [https://www.freedomforum.org/todaysfrontpages/#1], along with a few other galleries.
When I went to Washington, D.C. (a couple times) I'd lose myself in front of this gallery: absolutely fascinating to see how the world was viewed each day from so many different perspectives.
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#178Damn. This was a really useful tool for me to manage all my magazine subscriptions without dealing with shady auto-renewal practices by publishers.
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#179I actually canceled my WaPo subscription because I couldn’t figure out how to remove it from my Kindle.
Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems there is a psychological effect at play. I imagine a social ritual of standing and reading something that is always in-focus requiring no scrolling is far more appealing.
Scanning in that fashion is also far faster, more comfortable and efficient. I used to flip through newspapers rather quickly scanning the headlines and first paragraph and reading more interesting articles in depth. Scanning this way is almost impossible digitally. Also headlines were more useful and articles actually had informative first paragraph instead of just "scroll some more" hooks.
I find that many of the magazines on Apple News+ have innovative navigation techniques that allow me to scan quickly. The throughput is high enough not to be laggy.