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Mozilla Acquires Pocket

blog.mozilla.org

161–170 of 456 posts

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#161
post #100
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only problem with Pocket was that it was proprietary and it was integrated with Firefox. If it's released under and open source license, then I'll be glad to have it integrated. Pocket makes Mozilla competitive on mobile because Firefox's market share on mobile is very low.

"If it's released under and open source license, then I'll be glad to have it integrated." Not me. I don't want a bloated Firefox; even if the bloat is well intentioned and fully open sourced.

One person's bloat is another person's critical feature. Are you thinking of install size, runtime cost, all of the above?

Firefox is open-source and (fairly) easy to build - if you really want the utmost control then I'd suggest this is the best way to do it. You can easily do a build that has no Pocket integration.

There's a cost to the level of configuration that I assume you're advocating here. Not saying we can't get better here, but there's definitely an impact on code complexity, QA test combinations, and stability.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#163
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the resistance to having it in at this point? Every browser has a cloud-backed page snapshot feature.

My own reason for disliking it was that it's a closed-source piece of an otherwise-FOSS browser. Hopefully this acquisition means a change for the better on that front.

So FOSS should be pure?

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair Thunderbird is awful. Every single time I try to find a better client I see someone suggesting "oh Thunderbird has gotten way better; give it a shot! I love it!" and every time I fall for it and it's the same slow, horrible application that I've tried again and again. I'm all for them killing it.

I was recently looking for desktop email clients and there is literally not a single free alternative? Cant be that awful if it's the only one.

Mailbird is pretty awesome. Been using for a year now.

If you like thunderbird theres postbox developed from thunderbird

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently looking for desktop email clients and there is literally not a single free alternative? Cant be that awful if it's the only one.

I use opera mail client. It's quite decent. I switched from thunderbird.

Ddbdh

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair Thunderbird is awful. Every single time I try to find a better client I see someone suggesting "oh Thunderbird has gotten way better; give it a shot! I love it!" and every time I fall for it and it's the same slow, horrible application that I've tried again and again. I'm all for them killing it.

The problem is that there aren't exactly a lot of other great FOSS standalone email applications these days. Everything's been neglected because of webmail, and corporations' dogged insistence on Outlook. So if you think Thunderbird should be killed, what do you suggest as a replacement? It needs to be free, and run on Windows for my company to use it.

Not free, but Postbox is pretty great. It is a continuation of Thunderbird. By former Thunderbird engineers if I am not mistaken.

https://www.postbox-inc.com/

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#167
post #57

Oh, what a twist! In a story that began two years ago with Pocket's integration by Mozilla [1] in Firefox [2], large segments of the userbase spoke out with scathing criticism. This, at first blush, appears unrelated: Mozilla previously announced its Context Graph initiative, which was a bold undertaking to be built partially upon a new and emerging set of W3C standards to take back some of the control over linkage,…

"large segments of the userbase spoke out with scathing criticism"

Actually .. no. It was a very vocal minority.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#168

After this, why should I donate to Mozilla? I really don't get what's the difference between donating to Mozilla and donating to Facebook. Facebook open-sources some of their stuff. Facebook buys companies to generate revenues... I guess Mozilla doesn't need help anymore.

Donations to "Mozilla" go to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, which does exceptional, meaningful work. Firefox is developed by the Foundation's self-funding, for-profit subsidary, the Mozilla Corporation (MoCo). MoCo acquired Pocket, using its own funds.

For legal / tax reasons, MoCo can only push a tiny fraction of its revenue up into the Foundation. This means that donations are necessary to sustain the Foundation's initiatives.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#169

Pocket, for me, is a weird product/feature. I've tried to use it, but it ends up just being like a clumsy bookmarking feature. Allegedly, you can read things offline, but that feature never works for me. It seems the feature for offline reading doesn't exist at all in Firefox (which I'd assumed was the point of its integration, but my assumption was wrong), and I've tried the Chrome desktop app and the Android mobile…

It isn't all that obvious how the offline function works - which is a shame. I've been caught without offline availability for some articles I saved. The main thing with the work-around is that you need to start Pocket on your phone while you have a data connection so that the articles are on the phone. There may be an option to automatically download the articles, but I've never found it. After the one-time data con…

Turn on "Instant Sync" and new additions will be added to your app asap.

Also check your download settings. If set to "download only on wifi" then the app won't download if you're on mobile networks. You can also set the "refresh when opened" option to sync everything when the app is first loaded.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#170
post #127

I have been working on a prototype for a competitor to Pocket and other save-for-later services with an emphasis on minimalism, privacy and ease of use. https://slushi.es Very early app, features are rolling out daily. My end goal is to build a recommendation engine out of user data, while keeping things anonymous. Although social bookmarking has been done plenty times before, I think execution has been sub-par in pr…

I signed up and tried to use it but I don't even understand how to add links. The search bar hangs itself (chrome 56) and there seems no way to manually add a link? Am i missing something?
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