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...
The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
31–40 of 55 posts
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it doesn't. http://www.marco.org/2011/07/19/siracusa-multipage
so it does. holy shit. i wonder how many articles I've only read a piece of because I thought Instapaper was stitching!
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#33I'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…
What you didn't address though is Marco's past relationship with the founders. Specifically he says that he advised the founders, promoted Readability on his website and even created a white-labeled Instapaper version of Readability. Now they've created a direct competitor to Marco's app. This is generating the sentiment.
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#34They are certainly a direct competitor to Instapaper now. But it didn’t catch me by surprise, and I hope to still remain friendly with them. This is a very big and increasingly crowded market, and there’s no reason why we can’t respectfully share it. Those are inspiring words, which I will keep in mind. It is a very healthy approach toward competition and competitors, and I would rather adapt this one instead of "we…
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Readability's code is a little bit old (2009), but seems no other better (opensource) alternatives... And thanks for suggesting Diffbot, will try later.
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#36The 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...
Maybe this is something you could focus more on if you feel that the Instapaper/readability-functionality is already too crowded?
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#37The 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...
Thank you.
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
so it does. holy shit. i wonder how many articles I've only read a piece of because I thought Instapaper was stitching!
Exactly. It is a problem - I respect that Marco doesn't want to stich articles together, but I sometimes reach the end of an article to find myself unsure as to whether that really was the end, or just the end of page one. Would be useful to get some indication in Instapaper when this is the case. I am flirting with Readability for this reason.
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#39>In February of this year, the app was finished and ready to launch, but it was rejected by Apple for the in-app-purchase subscription-matching rule, which had just gone into effect. Readability decided that they didn’t want to give Apple the 30%, so the app was put on hold and soon cancelled once it was obvious that nobody was budging. Readability didn't decide they didn't want to give 30%, they just couldn't becaus…
Back in February they could have easily revised their own plan, to take 70% of net rather than gross, say.
Re: The relationship between Readability and Instapaper
#40The 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...
Slightly off-topic: Thanks for ViewText. Seriously. The barrier to entry may be low, but you are the one who developed it. It works flawlessly, it's fast, it's a delight to use on a mobile device and on the iPad, it doesn't attempt to distract me with ads or premium offers and it's free. If you don't me asking, how much does it cost to run ViewText?