How to Read and Organize Online Articles (Without Driving Yourself Crazy) (2013)(gregoryciotti.com)
gregoryciotti.com
How to Read and Organize Online Articles (Without Driving Yourself Crazy) (2013)
https://www.gregoryciotti.com/reading-organization/
57 comments
> Pocket
That's the one that fascinates me - the Mozilla folks really shouldn't have the bigcorp "let's eat our seed corn today because nothing except this quarter matters" motive or even really a profit motive at all. It was a perfect opportunity to add a neat feature to their browser and maybe make a little money with high-quality promoted articles.
But no, it pretty much immediately turned into a pipeline to shovel the largest possible quantity of garbage into in pursuit of whatever pittance they make from it, and the only downside is that anyone who opens their flagship product is immediately overwhelmed with a page full of internet barrel-scrapings. Which, you know, couldn't possibly be bad for the product, could it?
That's the one that fascinates me - the Mozilla folks really shouldn't have the bigcorp "let's eat our seed corn today because nothing except this quarter matters" motive or even really a profit motive at all. It was a perfect opportunity to add a neat feature to their browser and maybe make a little money with high-quality promoted articles.
But no, it pretty much immediately turned into a pipeline to shovel the largest possible quantity of garbage into in pursuit of whatever pittance they make from it, and the only downside is that anyone who opens their flagship product is immediately overwhelmed with a page full of internet barrel-scrapings. Which, you know, couldn't possibly be bad for the product, could it?
I sort of feel the same way about Microsoft and MSN/Edge Home.
You’re this giant enterprise conglomerate, and the page you first open on people’s computers is ad ridden credit card offers, and weird clickbait where thumbnails don’t match headlines.
The sheer power of being the default home page on millions of business computers, and using that eyeball attention for such shitty purposes and a cheep buck is disappointing.
You’re this giant enterprise conglomerate, and the page you first open on people’s computers is ad ridden credit card offers, and weird clickbait where thumbnails don’t match headlines.
The sheer power of being the default home page on millions of business computers, and using that eyeball attention for such shitty purposes and a cheep buck is disappointing.
I don't blame Mozilla for this, although I do think Pocket doesn't fit in with their ethos so I was surprised when they bought it.
Pocket's changes happened because of paywalls going up everywhere circa 2018. Before that, you could get a great selection of articles from top publications. After the changes, 90% of the material they could legally scrape without getting into trouble were the ad-funded content mill blogs, fluff like Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com and FastCompany.
Pocket's changes happened because of paywalls going up everywhere circa 2018. Before that, you could get a great selection of articles from top publications. After the changes, 90% of the material they could legally scrape without getting into trouble were the ad-funded content mill blogs, fluff like Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com and FastCompany.
Any decent alternatives to Pocket?
Wallabag is the one suggestion that keeps popping up persistently, though I've not used it myself. You can deploy your own instance.
<https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag>
<https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag>
I'm experimenting with Raindrop.io both as a replacement for the (long dead) Delicious and for Pocket, which I use for long-term bookmarking. I'm not happy with Pocket's shortcomings as far as organizing, despite my use of tags, and I really need a way of preserving bookmarks across systems and browsers. I also wish Pocket had a way of exporting my data (though maybe I just haven't found it yet). Raindrop allows me to take notes on websites and gives me a more structured way of organizing things, but moving stuff from Pocket is a royal pain.
I've been looking at Raindrop as well, thankfully I don't have much to move from Pocket at the moment... might give Raindrop a go... big thing for me is that opening a bookmark needs to be as easy and upfront as opening a browser bookmark is
There appears to be a Pocket export function here:
https://help.getpocket.com/article/1015-exporting-your-pocke...
https://help.getpocket.com/article/1015-exporting-your-pocke...
Nice, thanks!
This comment pushed me to pay for and switch to Raindrop from Pocket and I love it. Thank you!
I have replaced Pocket with Omnivore[1], its still in development, but they support all major platforms and are open-source and the app has all the features you could possibly ask for.
[1]: https://omnivore.app
[1]: https://omnivore.app
That's the one that's caught my interest the most I think, cheers will take a look!
> Any decent alternatives to Pocket?
I've been reasonably happy so far with Readwise.
https://readwise.io/
I've been reasonably happy so far with Readwise.
https://readwise.io/
The issue of reading and organizing content is not primarily about what kind of software you should use to store things. The main problem is figuring out how to make sense of it all when seeking out the material and while reading it.
Decent insight:
- https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-answer-is-not...
- https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/narrative-collaps...
Decent insight:
- https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-answer-is-not...
- https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/narrative-collaps...
I'd agree strongly.
Moreover, if you're using third-party tools, you now have two problems: managing and organising content AND managing those tools and keeping track of their sunsets and shutdowns.
(I've been bitten by that last twice, and still have un-migrated Readability articles. Made all the worse by the fact that Readability at some point employed its own URL-redirecting link-shortener ... which of course also went offline.)
Moreover, if you're using third-party tools, you now have two problems: managing and organising content AND managing those tools and keeping track of their sunsets and shutdowns.
(I've been bitten by that last twice, and still have un-migrated Readability articles. Made all the worse by the fact that Readability at some point employed its own URL-redirecting link-shortener ... which of course also went offline.)
No, I think the author has it right. Problem #1 is managing the firehose of information.
I don't disagree with either you or the author in principle. But I find that the prevailing narrative surrounding dealing with information online covers tooling and not so much "narrative" itself.
It's too easy to just turn someone else's firehose of information into your own firehose of information. When your collecting information with a specific task in mind (eg. work, hobbies) this may not always be the case and the need swings in the direction you and the author are speaking up for. I'm speaking more in respect to current events and news media, or circumstances that aren't immediately defined ("I need to learn this for work.", "I need to find headlights for my Volvo.")
It's too easy to just turn someone else's firehose of information into your own firehose of information. When your collecting information with a specific task in mind (eg. work, hobbies) this may not always be the case and the need swings in the direction you and the author are speaking up for. I'm speaking more in respect to current events and news media, or circumstances that aren't immediately defined ("I need to learn this for work.", "I need to find headlights for my Volvo.")
+1 for Sacasas!
If I come across an article I want to come back to, I add it to my Zotero [1]. You can choose what level of snapshot to capture; I save thorough enough webpages to not have to worry about linkrot.
I already had Zotero set up for academic papers, but it probably is good enough to recommend over pocket or Unroll.me or any other ersatz solution.
It has browser plugins, syncing, both tags and folders, and it's free. You can pay them to sync larger files if you like, or you can use Zotfile.
1) https://www.zotero.org/
I already had Zotero set up for academic papers, but it probably is good enough to recommend over pocket or Unroll.me or any other ersatz solution.
It has browser plugins, syncing, both tags and folders, and it's free. You can pay them to sync larger files if you like, or you can use Zotfile.
1) https://www.zotero.org/
Zotero (and possibly Calibre) seem to be the tools best suited to serious archival, based on what I've seen.
Sadly, no full-featured Android apps.
Sadly, no full-featured Android apps.
The Android app deficiency is probably because Apple & Microsoft totally dominate the tablet market, and academics generally aren't interested in managing references on their phones ;)
Are there iOS apps?
Note that e-ink ereader tablets are often Android-based.
None are iOS based.
And those devices are not "phones".
(Most lack phone capabilities entirely, though there are also a few e-ink smartphones. I'm not talking about those here though.)
Note that e-ink ereader tablets are often Android-based.
None are iOS based.
And those devices are not "phones".
(Most lack phone capabilities entirely, though there are also a few e-ink smartphones. I'm not talking about those here though.)
Zotero shipped their first-party iOS app a little over a year ago.
It looks like people are asking for a better reMarkable solution, and I'd love to see that too! In the mean time, the zotfile plugin has solid tablet-syncing features. It isn't slick like modern cloud sync services, but it's functional and fast when you click the button.
It looks like people are asking for a better reMarkable solution, and I'd love to see that too! In the mean time, the zotfile plugin has solid tablet-syncing features. It isn't slick like modern cloud sync services, but it's functional and fast when you click the button.
Thanks, good to keep in mind.
Though, again, I (and my archive) largely live on my e-ink ebook reader, and that is an Android device.
Though, again, I (and my archive) largely live on my e-ink ebook reader, and that is an Android device.
Around the same time this article was written I created a tool called birdmine which indexed every link tweeted by you or someone you follow on Twitter using a solr search engine then allowed you to search it. It we just a personal search engine based on your Twitter feed. I’m not sure how many people used it, but I used it quite a bit and it was really useful.
When I want to preserve online content, the first step is to take it offline by storing a local copy. Usually by using something like Reader Viewer and exporting it to PDF. That sometimes doesn't look as good as the website, but content is more important. The directory is indexed by `recoil`, so I can later access this and similar content.
As I've noted, the Einkbro web browser (optimised for e-ink, though usable on emissive-display devices as well, Android only) has a "save to ePub" feature.
This does, of course, strip all site styling. Images / artwork may be preserved, depending on how they are presented in the original HTML. (If using <img> tags, yes, if served through JS ... not so much.)
What's genius, though, is that multiple articles can be saved to a single document, which can be appended over time.
I use this to group items by similar topic, project, or interest, or to create a "BOTI" archive, where "BOTI" stands for "best of the interval". The idea here is to select the best items over a given period of time (week, month, year, etc., though I seem to be settling on six to twelve months), and organise those in a single place. You've Still Got to Read It[tm], but at least you've organised the material.
Reading this on an e-book reader, using the bookreader software, is also virtually always preferable to reading the same content online in a Web browser.
This does, of course, strip all site styling. Images / artwork may be preserved, depending on how they are presented in the original HTML. (If using <img> tags, yes, if served through JS ... not so much.)
What's genius, though, is that multiple articles can be saved to a single document, which can be appended over time.
I use this to group items by similar topic, project, or interest, or to create a "BOTI" archive, where "BOTI" stands for "best of the interval". The idea here is to select the best items over a given period of time (week, month, year, etc., though I seem to be settling on six to twelve months), and organise those in a single place. You've Still Got to Read It[tm], but at least you've organised the material.
Reading this on an e-book reader, using the bookreader software, is also virtually always preferable to reading the same content online in a Web browser.
I just use ArchiveBox, really. It has replaced all my “read later” tools and I can extract the PDFs for annotations.
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I do this as well, but I don't like setting it to Reader Mode because the site design disappears. Unfortunately it's necessary because "print to PDF" will obscure text due to including the stupid sticky nav bars and cookie notices in the PDF.
Onenote can be good for this (if you're OK with Microsoft) - the Clip to Onenote browser extension is pretty decent, and it save the page content, link, and time of capture.
My favorite is the "Save as MHTML" Chrome extension (the one with a check box).
I think it must be the case that the extent to which a person finds high levels of organization useful is due to individualized brain chemistry / personality. I've put in the effort to organize things in the past and just found that it wasn't very helpful to me. No matter how good my organization was — and I'm sure there was room for improvement — it just didn't end up being worth the effort; the benefits were marginal at best. And I would usually just end up searching through what I'd saved and that seemed faster than navigating some hierarchical organized thing. I also suspect that for some people, the act of organizing itself is really the primary pay off, less so the resulting organization. For others still, the act of organizing is vaguely therapeutic, something akin to tending to one's perfect little garden.
https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox is also an option for organizing articles.
I created a tool called Playtext.app, a Pocket-like app that saves articles and converts into audiobooks.
e.g. Try listening to this article here (8-min): https://playtext.app/doc/clj1b548r0000md0f4s62n8t7
e.g. Try listening to this article here (8-min): https://playtext.app/doc/clj1b548r0000md0f4s62n8t7
“Use“ or “am the creator of”?
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Edited! Although I am a user too (I read ~60 articles/mo with it), it's better to be safe than sorry! (:
How many users does your app have? Do you make any revenue?
I really miss delicious, especially it's tagging system. The ability to bookmark and use the hive mind to suggest tags was really a killer feature.
I noticed the article was from 2013 when it started raving about Evernote. Which is not a bad thing per se because Evernote is still great for a lot of things it did ten years ago, but I'd be curious to know whether the author is still using Evernote.
Evernote was really great for a little while. In 2015, when I purchased my first mobile device, I realized I needed to get up into the cloud, and one of my local-only apps was note taking in Ubuntu Linux. So I auditioned a few apps and decided that Evernote was really nice, and cross-platform, and had plenty of offline functionality. It was good, it had good features that I appreciated, and in fact I used it so heavily for notetaking that it became my de facto password manager. I found that I was recording lots of notes about every account I had (many real-world-related accounts, such as utilities and benefits) and so it was totally logical to just put credentials in there too. Yep, unencrypted!
Evernote really helped during an intensive job search. I could clip the entire job listing to an article on Evernote, and I could refer to the full text later on. I could also add notes to it in any form! Nice!
At the time, I was also using Dropbox for cloud storage. I exited both Dropbox and Evernote eventually. Now I just use Google Workspaces for everything; no complaints.
Evernote really helped during an intensive job search. I could clip the entire job listing to an article on Evernote, and I could refer to the full text later on. I could also add notes to it in any form! Nice!
At the time, I was also using Dropbox for cloud storage. I exited both Dropbox and Evernote eventually. Now I just use Google Workspaces for everything; no complaints.
I'd noticed mention of the Readability extension, which no longer exists.
I'm reminded of that every other year or so, nobody made an alternative since then?
Pocket, built in to Firefox, provides (and generally exceeds) Readability's capabilities:
- It renders a "clean" view of most Web articles, using the Readability JS library itself.
- It provides tags (and far more than Readability did, accounts topped out at 500).
- It has an Android app.
That said, Pocket still has a whole mess of failings, lacking features, and sheer bone-headedness. Of the list I'd written of in 2017, most remain:
<https://web.archive.org/web/20190512092903/https://old.reddi...>
Pocket now has in-page search (within the Pocket Android app). It does not have full-text search of your articles. The rest of the issues remain, and a few others have cropped up.
Pocket remains very much an Article Roach Motel: articles check in, they don't check out.
- It renders a "clean" view of most Web articles, using the Readability JS library itself.
- It provides tags (and far more than Readability did, accounts topped out at 500).
- It has an Android app.
That said, Pocket still has a whole mess of failings, lacking features, and sheer bone-headedness. Of the list I'd written of in 2017, most remain:
<https://web.archive.org/web/20190512092903/https://old.reddi...>
Pocket now has in-page search (within the Pocket Android app). It does not have full-text search of your articles. The rest of the issues remain, and a few others have cropped up.
Pocket remains very much an Article Roach Motel: articles check in, they don't check out.
There is something like that in Firefox. In the URL bar, to the right, a "paper hamburger" shows up that presents a Readability-like experience. The Mode is preserved during refresh, so you can often refresh a Javascript popup out of existence.
It is occasionally intermittent, however.
It is occasionally intermittent, however.
Firefox's Reader View uses the Readability JS library AFAIU.
Most browsers have a version of this built in, and there are extensions (mine is BeeLine Reader) that have a Readability function included as well.
Kinda tangential but plugging this because I was so happy to find it a couple months ago (collates articles in kindle/ereader format)
https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/reintroducing-readlists/
https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/reintroducing-readlists/
I'm using instapaper to forward articles to my mostly offline iPad Mini. Pocket failed miserably at saving articles offline, no matter what I did. It just didn't save them.
I just wrote a bookmark manager for myself, because I couldn't find one which utilizes the concept of exclusive tagging. It's a web app and does NOT have a "read it later" feature (it just links the live website).
You can test it at sharkbookmark.com
It's free. No ads, no BS.
Use feedly? Duh. Following a feed functionality which is a pretty basic feature is a bug for weeks now in the mobile app. It's not the best reader to go!
lately i am using omnivore with obsidian plugin. Since it does save it also localy i can read it without internet. I am saving low priority ones with pocket and better & important stuff to obsidian through omnivore.
I wish I could find an easy way to manage my workflow. I want to save article text to a iCloud-synced folder and have the articles work with text-to-speech tools to listen to them while I do chores. I’ve been using GoodLinks to archive pages but the text doesn’t get extracted and saved in my iCloud storage, so I can’t guarantee that my articles will be available to read years later. I’ve been using Ad Auris to read my articles to me, but it doesn’t work with paywalls.
Personally I stick to historio.us
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> Unroll.me
The same Unroll.me that was found to be selling customer purchase data (because users gave it access to all emails) [0]
> Pocket
Used to pull full-text articles from interesting sites for offline reading, now defaults to content mill sites and sends you to the live web page unless you have airplane mode on.
> Quora
Genuinely a wonderful site to be on circa 2012, it had the "old internet" feel where knowledgeable people would write detailed answers. Now it's been completely gamed and become an SEO channel for SaaS companies, lazy answers from content writers trying to get visibility.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21027159/unroll-me-email...