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Instapaper is joining Pinterest

blog.instapaper.com

71–80 of 217 posts

Re: Instapaper is joining Pinterest

#72
post #28
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on macOS / iOS, you can use the reading list. When you add items to your reading list from Safari, they get synced to your iOS device so you can read them offline from any of your devices. It does require iCloud but nothing beyond that.

I use Mobile Safari on iOS but Chrome on macOS. This means that, as much as I love Safari's Reading List, it's basically "unavailable" to me on the desktop. To put something in the Reading List from Chrome, I have to focus the URL bar, copy the URL, open Safari, paste and go to the URL, and then ⌘⇧D to put it in the list. (I can also right-click on the URL bar in Chrome and use the "Add to Reading List" OS Service, b…

> Why has nobody reverse-engineered the iCloud API and made a Chrome extension to talk to it?

If you can reverse engineer iCloud and bypass its security there are a lot more lucrative pursuits than making a Chrome extension for your reading list.

Re: Instapaper is joining Pinterest

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and I think that's part of the joke for Pinboard.

It's even better because in a bit of a dick move, they tried to buy pinboard.com back in 2009 or 2010. I say "dick move" because Pinboard predates Pinterest and they were aware of me.

Does this mean they're now guilty of trademark infringement (Apple Computers vs Apple Records style) and you can take all their VC money? "Instapaper By Pinterest™" seems pretty similar to Pinboard.

Re: Instapaper is joining Pinterest

#75
post #27
post #15

Bummer. I love and use instapaper, gathering articles for a few weeks to read at altitude. It's a great product, and I paid for a subscription these last years in the hopes that I could therefore continue to enjoy it. Now it's sold to Pinterest, one of the two sites I don't bother with links to—because I know Pinterest and Quora will require me to sign in rather than show me what they showed a search engine. What els…

Pinboard has a read-it-later feature. It works for me, and I know it won't change suddenly out from under me (unless idlewords gets hit by a bus, but eh). "It works, it's nice and fast, and will continue to work the same way for the foreseeable future" is pretty much the highest praise I can give a service like this, and Pinboard nails that aspect.

Do you have a mobile client you like? I remember being frustrated by what I could find for Pinboard, as far as replacing Instapaper.

Re: Instapaper is joining Pinterest

#76
post #34

So what kind of value does Instapaper adds/will add to Pinterest? Will there be a pin it later functionality? I fail to see how Pinterest gains from such an acquisition.

They probably wanted the founder.

It's say they wanted https://getpocket.com/, but with $14.5m funding it was too expensive.

Re: Instapaper is joining Pinterest

#78
post #15

Bummer. I love and use instapaper, gathering articles for a few weeks to read at altitude. It's a great product, and I paid for a subscription these last years in the hopes that I could therefore continue to enjoy it. Now it's sold to Pinterest, one of the two sites I don't bother with links to—because I know Pinterest and Quora will require me to sign in rather than show me what they showed a search engine. What els…

It's fairly early stage but I've been actively building an alternative to Instapaper called Filltray ( https://filltray.com/guest ). Please feel free to follow @filltray to keep up to date with my progress.

What would this offer to differentiate itself from Wallabag?

Re: Instapaper is joining Pinterest

#79
post #41

Worth re-reading Marco Arment's blog post about selling Instapaper 3 years ago: https://marco.org/2013/04/25/instapaper-next-generation "Instapaper needs a new home where it can be staffed and grown, but I didn’t want to give it to a big company that would probably just shut it down in six months." Oof.

He "sold a majority stake", which means he still owned part of Instapaper. I assume Pinterest bought the whole thing and therefore gave Marco a large chunk of money? Nice for him.

Re: Instapaper is joining Pinterest

#80
post #72
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Mobile Safari on iOS but Chrome on macOS. This means that, as much as I love Safari's Reading List, it's basically "unavailable" to me on the desktop. To put something in the Reading List from Chrome, I have to focus the URL bar, copy the URL, open Safari, paste and go to the URL, and then ⌘⇧D to put it in the list. (I can also right-click on the URL bar in Chrome and use the "Add to Reading List" OS Service, b…

> Why has nobody reverse-engineered the iCloud API and made a Chrome extension to talk to it? If you can reverse engineer iCloud and bypass its security there are a lot more lucrative pursuits than making a Chrome extension for your reading list.

Who said anything about bypassing security? I was presuming the extension would just "walk in the front door" by getting the user to log into it with their iCloud credentials, and then passing those to the server. Or are you saying that the iCloud protocols are obfuscated/DRMed above-and-beyond just having regular AAA constraints applied to them?
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