The Readability bookmarking service will shut down on September 30, 2016(medium.com)
medium.com
The Readability bookmarking service will shut down on September 30, 2016
https://medium.com/@readability/1641cc18e02b#.usur1230j
25 comments
they had
1) one of the best pool of popular articles in a day - readability.com/topreads 2) best kindle send to 3) best reading mode for a browser
i feel very mildly traumatized losing readability.com/topreads. redef+longform dont quite cover everything topreads did.
for people who dont know what it was - https://web.archive.org/web/20150415110937/https://readabili...
1) one of the best pool of popular articles in a day - readability.com/topreads 2) best kindle send to 3) best reading mode for a browser
i feel very mildly traumatized losing readability.com/topreads. redef+longform dont quite cover everything topreads did.
for people who dont know what it was - https://web.archive.org/web/20150415110937/https://readabili...
> They nailed it for me, especially with design aesthetics.
#1 reason I stopped using Readability was their "designs".
The web app had constant bugs, especially right after their big redesign and the Android mobile version was terrible. It would pop up a notification every 5 minutes to tell you it's checking for articles, and there was no way to turn that off.
Didn't change for a year, so I dumped them and said "guess this is an abandoned product".
#1 reason I stopped using Readability was their "designs".
The web app had constant bugs, especially right after their big redesign and the Android mobile version was terrible. It would pop up a notification every 5 minutes to tell you it's checking for articles, and there was no way to turn that off.
Didn't change for a year, so I dumped them and said "guess this is an abandoned product".
The Android app has been similarly insanely buggy, and seems to want to completely re-download the article database every few uses. That was actually a big part of what pushed me to Pocket.
I worked on Readability for its launch. I remember they had difficulty monetising it. But more importantly, the firm that built it, Arc90 (now Postlight), was acquired by SFX a few years ago who has no interest in that space. I'm surprised it has stayed up this long.
I suspect it coasted purely on momentum -- hosting fees or such.
The parser/converter has actually stood up amazingly well considering it's seen little or no updating.
The parser/converter has actually stood up amazingly well considering it's seen little or no updating.
Sad, but hardly surprising. I would really like to hear the backstory on this.
I'd run across Readability a few years ago and found it useful. There was an update to the application about 2012/2013, which as is typical, offered a few things, but also took away others which had been useful.
And then .... nothing. The Facebook page hasn't been updated since Januarey 23, 2014. The blog is ... offline. Twitter actually seems active, though I'd thought that hadn't been active either.
I really liked the concept, had issues with the execution, loved the bookmarklet (for rendering pages within a browser in "readability view"). But this had obviously been abandoned for a long, long time.
I've been slowly schlepping articles to Pocket. I guess I'll have to speed that up....
Hrm. I find this about the design firm behind Readability joining Facebook, a year ago: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/01/16/design-partners-behind-m...
I'd run across Readability a few years ago and found it useful. There was an update to the application about 2012/2013, which as is typical, offered a few things, but also took away others which had been useful.
And then .... nothing. The Facebook page hasn't been updated since Januarey 23, 2014. The blog is ... offline. Twitter actually seems active, though I'd thought that hadn't been active either.
I really liked the concept, had issues with the execution, loved the bookmarklet (for rendering pages within a browser in "readability view"). But this had obviously been abandoned for a long, long time.
I've been slowly schlepping articles to Pocket. I guess I'll have to speed that up....
Hrm. I find this about the design firm behind Readability joining Facebook, a year ago: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/01/16/design-partners-behind-m...
When readability started it had an innovative business model: collect monthly from each user, and share out 70% to the owners of the pages viewed.
However, a number of bloggers and content owners objected to this, and made bug fuss about it, and pretty much poisoned the "with it" tech croud on the idea of Readability.
Readability then pivoted to a more conventional read-later app and read-now service. But it never seemed to recover from its original bad press.
However, a number of bloggers and content owners objected to this, and made bug fuss about it, and pretty much poisoned the "with it" tech croud on the idea of Readability.
Readability then pivoted to a more conventional read-later app and read-now service. But it never seemed to recover from its original bad press.
I vaguely recall that. Pity, all 'round.
the weird thing is, readability.com/topreads recently had a makeover to make it more responsive.
it really really sucks losing instapaper daily and readability top reads in the same year. imho, readability.com/topreads was one of the best surveys of what was popular in the longformish world on a given day.
it really really sucks losing instapaper daily and readability top reads in the same year. imho, readability.com/topreads was one of the best surveys of what was popular in the longformish world on a given day.
I'm working on a bookmarking service right now (literally, open in the other window).
Instant search, highlighting, a UI that encourages 'rediscovery' of articles that are saved but not read ("hey you, here's what you bookmarked 7 days ago") and a reading feature similar to readability. There's space here to build a product that people love and that sticks around.
Parsing web pages is proving tricky in some cases, if anybody has any library suggestions, shout.
Instant search, highlighting, a UI that encourages 'rediscovery' of articles that are saved but not read ("hey you, here's what you bookmarked 7 days ago") and a reading feature similar to readability. There's space here to build a product that people love and that sticks around.
Parsing web pages is proving tricky in some cases, if anybody has any library suggestions, shout.
Tweet me (@pinboard) when it's ready and I'll be happy to tell people there's a new bookmarking game in town. I like to advertise new arrivals because it makes me look confident.
will it be self hostable?
Launching as a service to begin with, however considering people's justified concerns with bookmark services folding I'll look at that.
Key feature will be easy import from every other popular bookmark service. Pull in your data in seconds, see if you like how we treat it, and make a call on switching.
Key feature will be easy import from every other popular bookmark service. Pull in your data in seconds, see if you like how we treat it, and make a call on switching.
Will they just trash their code? It is hardly going to be an asset for them and probably is unmaintained for the last couple of years.
It would be great to see them opening the code to the community.
It would be great to see them opening the code to the community.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm using Pocket (https://getpocket.com), which has worked out pretty well.
Pocket do not have a Readability import tool, but there's a third-party tool their support desk just provided a URL for, caveat emptor, etc., etc.
http://hsablonniere.github.io/readability2pocket/
Among other alternatives, I'll suggest giving https://pinboard.in from @idlewords (Maciej Czeglowski) a look as well. I actually think that might have a few other features I'd want, but am parking for now at Pocket (inertia, too many damned articles, the simplified reader view is really appreciated).
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Edit: Corrected "in" for "io" as Pinboard's TLD.
Pocket do not have a Readability import tool, but there's a third-party tool their support desk just provided a URL for, caveat emptor, etc., etc.
http://hsablonniere.github.io/readability2pocket/
Among other alternatives, I'll suggest giving https://pinboard.in from @idlewords (Maciej Czeglowski) a look as well. I actually think that might have a few other features I'd want, but am parking for now at Pocket (inertia, too many damned articles, the simplified reader view is really appreciated).
________________________________
Edit: Corrected "in" for "io" as Pinboard's TLD.
If you're looking for a bookmarking alternative BookmarkOS has been awesome so far (https://bookmarkos.com). Also, Instapaper (https://www.instapaper.com/) recently got acquired by pinterest, so it looks like it has a future.
Being acqui-hired doesn't spell well for its future.
This was the main service I've used for the past 2+ years to deliver individual articles to my Kindle. It worked great and I would've paid good money to keep it. Instapaper has a similar feature, however it was never quite as good as Readability's.
What are you using to send & read web articles on your Kindle?
What are you using to send & read web articles on your Kindle?
For just the readability aspect, Stylish is an excellent alternative (with custom CSS).
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish/fjnbnpbmke...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish/fjnbnpbmke...
Advice as a URL: https://getpocket.com/
Figured this was coming after Readlists closed down a few months ago. Damn I miss them.
how sad, I loved readability. I tried to port their javascript code to c++.
Other than wanting a highlighting feature, I've been completely satisfied with this abandoned product (last update at least 2 years ago?). They nailed it for me, especially with design aesthetics.
And it had the absolute best send-to-Kindle parser: It sent an actual personal document, not a Kindle magazine, and they even managed to include article images most of the time (which other services struggle with).
:'(