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The next generation of Instapaper

marco.org

81–90 of 122 posts

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of Pocket, I'm baffled by their lack of (recently upgraded to simply lacking) sharing functionality and full-text search. Passing a Pocket link to someone without a Pocket account leads to a sign-up page. If the recipient already has an account or goes to the trouble to sign up, they're redirected to their own queue, not the linked article. If the recipient goes to the trouble to sign up and pocket the same…

>Passing a Pocket link to someone without a Pocket account leads to a sign-up page. uhh… No it doesn't

>uhh… No it doesn't

Please read the whole post.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#82
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instapaper is nice because I felt like I was paying a reasonable amount for an app that I use regularly. Pocket, although having its own benefits, is free. Any service with ongoing costs (parsing servers) that charges nothing for their app has me questioning their longevity.

I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app. Who cares if it dies in 2 years? You might be switching through 3 other alternatives by then anyway. And you can still save your week worth of data if they announce the shut down anyway. It's not like say an e-mail service, where you might actu…

>I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app.

I have thousands of items in Pocket going back a year and a half.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#83
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app. Who cares if it dies in 2 years? You might be switching through 3 other alternatives by then anyway. And you can still save your week worth of data if they announce the shut down anyway. It's not like say an e-mail service, where you might actu…

>I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app. I have thousands of items in Pocket going back a year and a half.

And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again.

Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now. But even then you might forget all about it, with all the news coming it.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#84
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app. I have thousands of items in Pocket going back a year and a half.

And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again. Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now. But even then you might forget all about it, with all the news coming it.

>And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again.

That's a pretty terrible analogy.

What I have in Pocket is more than a bunch of bookmarks, it's a local archive of everything I've added. I can read it in a nice flowing text format and benefit from limited search functionality. I can reference anything in there anytime whether I have connectivity or not, whether the source page still exists or not.

>Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now.

Stop projecting your habits and use case onto everyone else.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#85
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one simple thing that prevents me from using Pocket: pagination. It does’t work, it’s fiddly, it’s unclear how to turn it on, when you manage to activate it it switches off with the tiniest gesture. Pagination is the big Instapaper feature for me.

i could be wrong, but isn't pagination just swiping to the right to activate it? and then to deactivate it, you would just scroll the content normally. that work for you?

Not well enough.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#87
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app. I have thousands of items in Pocket going back a year and a half.

And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again. Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now. But even then you might forget all about it, with all the news coming it.

I only read when I'm on holidays. I also keep warm clothes around even though I won't need them for another 6 months :) There are many ways to enjoy "slow IT".

That said, moving away from Instapaper was some grunt work but not too hard - I've opened every link in a tab and used hotkeys to add them to my new weapon of choice (Reading List).

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it had grown bigger than one person could manage, why not hire somebody?

He's stated before he likes the employee-free lifestyle. And there is a huge gap to bridge between "I can do this myself" and "There's enough work to hire a full-time employee".

The amount of work is, I suspect, not a factor. Im not sure that having an employee wouldn't be a move I'd ever want. Yes, that means I'll never pass a certain level of success by the measure the majority use (money). However if that's the price, so be it.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#89

I'm hoping that when Marco says "I've sold a majority stake" he doesn't mean "I've sold everything". I'm a big Instapaper fan, and I'd hate to see someone else take over deciding the direction the service should move in. A big part of Instapaper's success comes from the fact that Marco's done a great job at steering the ship. He really is a world-class product guy who knows what to say no to. Congratulations to Marco…

> Announcement: betaworks has acquired Instapaper.

I don't think it can be any clearer than this.

http://betaworks.com

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#90
post #18
post #4

I enjoyed the podcast that Marco had on the 5by5 network because he seemed like such a regular guy who happens to work hard and put out a popular product. A lot of times it also motivated me to get to work on my own things. Congrats to him and Im looking forward to what he does next

Unrelated to the article, but Marco & a couple others now run a different podcast: http://atp.fm/

Has there been some sort of falling out between Arment, Siracusa and Gruber - they all left 5by5 within a short time of the Gruber move, and in my opinion their shows are now worse.
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