Embedly is a Gem: How Kalimba was Built | Hacker News Reader

Embedly is a Gem: How Kalimba was Built

blog.embed.ly

18 pointsdoki_pen4 comments

Not trying to troll, but whenever I read the embed.ly home page, I can never figure out what I think the company actually does, when I should want to use it, or how I should use it?

Is it a set of widgets for showing things like people's twitter/rss/whatever feeds?

Or, if I'm building a website, I can give embed.ly a URL and it will give me back a nicely formatted (sans-ads) version for my website?

Someone help me understand?

I've been evaluating using Embedly for a new project of mine and think that I've sorted out their offering.

From their FAQ: What is Embedly?

"It is a solution that automatically converts posted links into embedded media on the fly. With its set of APIs, tools and libraries you are able to create unique visual experiences by embedding videos, images, rich media, RSS entries and article previews."

They have 2 confusingly named tiers: "API" and "Pro".

API: Allows you to embed stuff from a limited (albeit widely used) set of websites, stuff like: YouTube, Twitter, Digg, etc.

PRO: Allows you to embed stuff and get metadata back about ANY url (the big selling point).

It was the launch of Pro that prompted them to create the Kalimba website which showcases their ability to create the embeds from any random website.

Pricing for Kalimba Pro is at: https://pro.embed.ly/pricing - there is no Free plan.

If you're looking for an open source / roll your own option you might consider the Ruby Readability gem - https://github.com/sspinc/readability and regex out images+videos from the pages yourself.

  Pricing for Kalimba Pro is at: https://pro.embed.ly/pricing - there is no Free plan.

Kalimba is just the name of hn.embed.ly. I think you mean pricing for _Embedly Pro_.

Doh, you are correct.

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