Ten Years of Instapaper | Hacker News Reader

Ten Years of Instapaper

blog.instapaper.com

150 pointsriqbal66 comments

I sometimes describe Instapaper as "/dev/null for web content". I reflexively share to Instapaper not to read it later, but to absolve guilt for not reading it at all. It is one of my weirdest web habits, on reflection.

OTOH, back when del.icio.us was good, I used it for roughly the same purpose.

> /dev/null for web content

This is a surprisingly apt comparison, and is probably why I stopped using it a while back.

I saw somebody who had a bookmarklet to pretend to add things to Instapaper just to get the feeling you’re taking about.

This is I think about 60% of the value I get out of Pinboard; most of what it does for me is clear tabs.

But I pay for an archive account and it does full-text search, so the other huge benefit is that when what my tabs are full of is PDF ePrint papers, I can search later for things and get results for research questions faster than I can from Google.

Agreed. I'd love to have an extension that searches my Pinboard prior to going to a search engine.

Text is small. I’d love a browser extension that archives and indexes every single price of text I come across on the internet; and lets me search them.

Falcon sound like what you're looking for: https://github.com/lengstrom/falcon

Neat, is there something like this for FF as well?

Not that I know of sadly. There's an open issue, but no progress as far as I could see. I haven't tried, but technically Firefox should support the WebExtensions APIs that Chrome uses, so it might be worth trying to manually load in the Chrome extension into Firefox.

Theres a few extensions that use the omnibar but i havent found them all that useful.

I wish pinboard had an option like evernote to display your pinned results next to google search results

To me, this effect is only prevented by the fact that I get the articles emailed to my Kindle. If I was just marking something to "read later", and expecting to read it later on my computer's web browser, it would never happen.

But instead it shows up on my Kindle. I'm in a completely different mode when reading my Kindle than I'm in when on the computer. I'm calmer, slower, and I'll actually sit down and read the articles.

i have something like 600+ articles to read in pocket since I started using it 8 years ago. I've tried to go through and delete some of them a few times but i never make a dent since i do sort of want to read most of them.

the only thing that helped the last few years was to uninstall the browser extension. it means i have to log in to the website if I want to add something and I only go through all that hassle if i 'really' want to read it later

im thinking i might set up wallabag soon and jailbreak my kindle because I think I might have a better chance of reading them there

Have you seen p2k.co? It sends Pocket articles to Kindle using Amazon's free email-to-kindle service.

Yeah, the win for me is it goes to my iPad and I catch up with longer articles when I travel in particular.

That said I also use Pinboard.in. I don’t go back to read everything but I find it a useful research tool for when I remember saving something but not exactly what it was.

I have the same use case as well, pinboard is to save mostly obscure websites and blog posts and comments i found interesting but not necessarily useful

I was using delicious for the same reason but there was one aspect of it which I have never able.to found anywhere. I used to go to delicious periodically and check out what the people I follow saving as their bookmarks. I learned so much from doing that. Pinboard has never gave the same taste, it is practically automated archiving tool for me along with Pocket.

That was a killer feature for discovering people with similar interests and it worked best for niche / specialist content, where only a few others had also "saved" it. I've found https://refind.com to be a partial substitute but not entirely. It would be hard to imagine committing the time and attention I did to delicious to any other 3rd party service again

Heh, Douglas Adams wrote in 1987 "The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself..."

It feels odd that the current owners say "we did this, we launched that" in reference to the years Marco ran Instapaper as a sole proprietor, especially given that Marco explicitly uses "I" as the prounoun for Overcast: https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq

Yeah its super odd.

Especially since some of the events are listed with links to Marco Arment’s personal site.

I'm OK with it as it emphasizes that collectively, they all did it, yet the current owners aren't trying to take credit for what they didn't do.

I think you kind of get to do that when you own something. I don't think they were being disrespectful, and how else do you talk about history of a product without continuously saying "before we bought it... blah feature"?

I think it is akin to when you work at a place for five years but it is bought by another company at the three year mark. How do you put that on your resume? I worked at <new company name> for five years? I worked at <old company name> for five years? Or split it up and make it look like you changed jobs?

It's awkward. But ya just gotta let it slide as long as it's not disrespectful.

Agreed. I think it would have been better to split the timeline into "Marco added..." or "Marco launched..." for anything he did as an individual prior to the acquisition.

Brian from Instapaper here, we originally wrote it that way, but it felt really weird and disjointed, especially if you weren't familiar with the entire history. Just wanted to keep it consistent, not really take credit for Marco's accomplishments.

Interesting typo on the name of the dyslexic-friendly font they use. They mashed up OpenDyslexic (which they offer) with Dyslexie (which they do not offer).

Fun fact: The latter sued the former unsuccessfully several years back.

Perhaps they were using a font in which the lower case e and lower case c were pretty similar.

Just an FYI, Marco Arment, the original author of Instapaper was also the first employee and architect at Tumblr- where this article is hosted.

Phew, that's a lot of work! I have to wonder, will Instapaper ever be "finished"? If all the engineers went home, would it just run by itself? It's hard to see how a competitor could execute better and steal any customers. It seems just fine the way it is.

Maybe many of the engineers have moved on to different projects at Pinterest, but even then, what's left to do at Pinterest? I just looked up "new features in Pinterest", and they're working on AI to identify different things in photos [1]. "Lens can recommend outfits for you if you snap a photo of clothes that are already in your closet" - That's actually a really cool idea. But it kind of feels like a different startup tacked on to the Pinterest brand. I guess there are a lot of directions they can branch out into. Maybe they'll eventually become like Google, working on a lot of unrelated projects. If Google can do it, it's hard to see why other companies can't build up a large portfolio of disparate apps and services.

Anyway, I hope they keep Instapaper running instead of shutting it down. I don't use it myself, but I just like the idea of "finished software" that runs for the next hundred years. Everyone's always trying to change things and increase growth, but they usually end up shooting themselves in the foot.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-lens-updates-new-fe...

Instapaper with my first iPad was the best thing ever the year it came out. It was just so convenient (and still is, we just got used to it). When people asked me why I got an iPad, an odd device for its time, I said: e-mail and Instapaper.

Back then, people were not accustomed to build tablet-friendly websites and even though Safari was very good, Instapaper was in league of its own when it came to plain old reading, especially when offline.

I actually enjoyed reading the different attempts at finding the right pricing. I was a happy premium subscriber and an even happier free user.

I found it the best service to be able to just click a button and have long articles delivered to my kindle. I do a weekly batching and it just works.

For those who've used Instapaper and Pocket, do you have a clear preference for one?

I think Pocket is better, by the style, fluency, and because it transforms websites to text better than Ip. But, one of the best features of Instapaper (which doesn't have Pocket) is that you can change the title names. I really like that feature.

That's a feature I've definitely wanted!

Instapaper has a dark-themed web version which I like and use a lot. Also Instapaper Premium, which I happily paid for a while, is now available for free for all Instapaper users, which should be consider an advantage.

However, I'm using Instapaper for a long while which is the primary reason keep using it.

Night mode is nice, and Pocket has it also. Interestingly, they also have advanced font/formatting features as part of their Pro offering. I don’t know if any other apps where advanced formatting options are part of a premium package.

I just use Evernote.

Do you save a copy of the page, or just a link. Curious also what people who use Evernote typically do?

I only save full page with Evernote (which is the default when you save using their clipper). Means I have it offline and available if the page changes. If it's something where I want it to update I'll bookmark instead in my browser.

Sorry for late reply. I use the web clipper extension in Firefox and I usually clip "Article" or "Simplified Article", but sometimes the full page.

I pay for Evernote so I have no storage limitations, not sure if the free version has limits.

I use Bookmark OS. Though not strictly a read it later bookmark manager, I find it easier to organize things

Instapaper has highlighting, which I can later export to Evernote etc

For me it's Pocket because it's built into my Kobo.

Definitely Instapaper. I like the design better, pagination mode in the Pocket iOS app ist just plain buggy, and I already used Instapaper back before Pocket (formerly ReadItLater) even existed..

I still love the app after years of use.

But anybody else experiencing lots of bug with the paging view and automatic night mode on iOS? (Page in night mode, but menu buttons and status bars still in day mode, offset of the page incorrect...)

Reporting bugs always met with silence.

Anyone wish Instapaper/Pocket had better Text-to-Speech functionality on mobile?

I recently tried Pocket's TTS on my iPhone and found it to be pretty good. The person who recommended it suggested downloading the high-quality "Alex" voice, which is around 900MB. I have plenty of room on my phone right now so it wasn't a big deal—but I could see how others would not want to download this voice.

What do you find lacking about it? I've heard (first-hand) it sounds even better on Android. There are offline voices and also live-streamed voices, and it all sounded pretty decent to me.

https://www.narro.co/

Thanks for the suggestion, i'll check it out right away.

It's a service that converts text or websites to audio. It's voices seem pretty good (I've just tested a couple, both with text in english and in spanish).

I love that it haves the ability to integrate the articles I send to Narro into a podcast feed, that I can suscribe to see in Overcast next to my "real" podcast.

Definitely. I use it from time to time, but rarely I can get through more than a short article without being too frustrated with something of how it works.

Things like pronouncing in an inintelligible way any english words in the middle of an article in spanish, or reading A.P.I. as "A, period. P, period. I, period." make it so that it works great for some articles, and terribly for others.

I had never heard about this app before. Reading comments here it seemed like a good reading list app. Unfortunately the android app[0] seems abandoned, last update was in August 2017. Anybody know of a good alternative on android?

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instapaper...

It's a bit strange to call an app "Abandoned" because the last update was 6 months ago. When an app is mature and stable, it doesn't require a steady flow of updates to be good and useful (except as a way for developers to show that they are still active and "please" their users).

I'd call it abandoned if it didn't fit the platform standards, if it was buggy, if it didn't run on some new devices…

If you go to the istore version history for the same app, there have been regular feature updates and bug fixes in the same time frame. Are you implying that the android version simply doesn't have any bugs to fix?

This update in September is enlightening:

Added support for iOS 11 password autofill.

You know which other OS introduced system-wide autofill suppport? Android Oreo.

I think it's safe to say that Instapaper is abandoned on Android.

There is a difference between being abandoned and having the latest shiny new features. Not that I don't understand your feeling.

Oreo is for the 1.1%.

http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

Please take all my upvotes

Software updated less than six months ago is "abandoned"?

Yes, because the iphone OS version has had regular bug fixes and new features in the same time frame. Unless the Android version is fully free of bugs and supports any new Android OS features already, I's say that it is abandoned.

It may have less priority, 6 months between updates is not a problem unless the app has some serious bugs.

Shameless plug: I started creating an alternative client for Android, you can download it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.olivierpay...

I'm a heavy Instapaper user myself and was always disappointed with the quality of the official Android app: it runs terribly slow, some articles don't even show up, no image thumbnail, etc.

My app doesn't have all the feature from the official app yet (I'm starting simple), but I'm very open to feedback.

Can we as a community agree to be really careful and in no way vague or clickbaity when it comes to posting things about Instapaper?

Ever since Pinterest bought them I've been waiting for the sunset message

They are lucky to still be in the App Store. Instagram's lawyers have been sending cease and desist letters to anyone using their trademark "Insta". Even apps with words that start with "Insta", like Instant.

Instapaper predates Instagram. Pretty sure that cease and desist won't work in their case.

Instapaper exists since 2007 and has a trademark on the name filed in August 2010: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:v4h...

Instagram has their trademark since September 2011 (http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:v4h...).

So no, Instapaper is not "lucky" to still be in the App Store.

Don't assume that because Instagram is well-known that they have more seniority and the rights and abilities to do whatever they want.

> Don't assume that because Instagram is well-known that they have more seniority and the rights and abilities to do whatever they want.

Though it's easy to assume in this day and age.

I believe this only applies to applications that use Instagram's API, which we do not. https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/19/instagram-cracks-down-on-c...

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