Pocket Released (Formerly Read It Later)

I think the name Pocket is absolutely perfect. It lends itself to a really clear and understandable marketing slogan ("Don't have time to read it now? Just put it in your Pocket!") but also leaves room for how the company might grow and expand in the coming years. "What else can you put in your Pocket?" I'm sure they have that written on a whiteboard in their office with 30 bulleted items below it detailing what they can build next.

OK, I think the bookmarklet/text scraper needs a little tweeking. I just tried Pocket's bookmarklet vs. Instapapers's on the "How Microsoft Fought True Open Standards" article that is also on the Hacker News front page. Pocket mis-identified the headline, instead getting the name of the blog. In fact the title of the article/blog post is not anywhere in Pocket's scrape.

Link to the article: http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/how...

Edit: It also didn't do well with Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram Newsletter at http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1204.html

In both of these instances the simply needed to get the content of the <title> tag in the HTML. I would think (careful, here be dragons!) more often than not that the <title> tag should be a reliable way of getting the title of the story.

As a long-time ReadItLater user, I'm not too impressed with the "Pocket" rebranding ("Read It Later" made it obvious what it did) but the new iOS app solves most of the issues I had with it (it auto-resolve bit.ly links, pulls in titles even if the client app didn't add them, etc). And it looks much better.

Readability still has a more readable text-only view but I assume Pocket could just tweak the CSS (slightly larger font, larger line height).

I am worried that everything is free now. I preferred to live under the impression/illusion that my money had gone to fund the infinite existence of the service. Now it's totally at the mercy of investors / potential buyers.

I am an avid RIL user and have the apps on all of my various mobile devices. With the launch/rebranding of pocket though I am most surprised by the layout of the site when logged in. It looks visually like a tablet app, but I couldn't see myself ever using this on a mobile device because the apps are so good and actually save all your articles for offline reading. Designing a site to look this much like a mobile app on a desktop takes a lot of effort, and IMHO feels a bit clunky when using a full mouse & keyboard.

From a usability standpoint I would have expected the redesigned logged-in site to be primarily designed for desktop reading (e.g. smaller buttons, less chrome), and perhaps use responsive design to accomodate more mobile-friendly layouts when using other devices.

Overall I like the rebranding, new aesthetic and am excited to explore the new android app.

Most importantly though I'm SO happy my credentials/history just worked on the new site.

The key part here is that it is tailored for any kind of content as opposed to just text, everything you'd like to "view later".

Spool (http://getspool.com/) did this as well, with the twist that they actually scrape content (videos and all) to save to your devices to view offline. For some reason it doesn't seem like Spool ever took off.

I can't remember now why I chose ReadItLaterPro over Instapaper - it was a few years ago, and I think I just preferred the look of RIL, but the name was always less than brilliant, since it was quite generic. Both are supported well by the iPad and iPhone apps I use, although the newcomer that's been getting all the press recently is Readability.

The ReadItLater app has just magically renamed itself and re-iconed itself on my iPad, so well done developers - so far - for making the transfer smooth.

Seems to be an intersting idea. I wish there was a way to achieve the same effect with your own "personal cloud" server, instead of relying on a startup's infrastructure.

I always wonder, if Facebook says (as per their SEC filings) mobile is a threat because they haven't figured out how to monetize that platform without destroying the user experience. How will Pocket be able to sustain itself in the future?

Especially when one of the implied objectives of the service is to get rid of ads in the first place. Place a limit on space? Bandwidth? Then Instapaper's one time fee seems cheaper than a recurring cost. Even if it's a pay-only-once for X more articles per time you'll have to buy more when that limit is hit.

This looks great. I just signed up.

However, I immediately noticed it seems anyone can add any content to anyone’s queue if they know or guess their username — since everyone sends mail to the same address (add@getpocket.com), you only have to forge the From: email header (which is, of course, trivially easy).

Just tried it. Criticism #1: authentication management borderline sucks:

I have to create an account name, not just use an email adderess. Why? Does this get displayed to other people? Not that I can see.

Similarly, why no distributed authentication options? I'd have been happy to log in via Facebook or Google for this app. There's no reason they'd be told what I was looking at, just that I was reading stuff on pocket. That's hardly a privacy issue at all.

So I pick my password on the web site (random, of course) and type it in. And then download the app on my phone, and authenticate again. And then install the chrome extension, and authenticate again. This isn't necessarily easy, but you guys have to streamline this, it's a huge barrier to getting started. Email/SMS a "click on this to get started" link to the phone. Have the chrome extension pick up the existing cookie without asking for a password.

But now I'm saving stuff, and it seems pretty clean. Once annoyance is the lack of pinch zoom on the Android app. I have to click on a text settings button and then hit up/down to play with the text size.

Hmm, seems like Read It Later is becoming a Flipboard competitor rather than an Instapaper competitor. I'd assume that there's more business sense behind the Flipboard use case (Kindles are terrible ad-serving devices).

Android app design is first rate. Taking advantage of the new ICS widgets/design language. Very good.

FYI: Using your RSS feeds from Readability and/or Instapaper, you can use IFTTT.com to copy these over to your Pocket account. (Note this won’t copy your current queues, just those added in the future. To migrate the current items from Instapaper, see http://getpocket.com/import/instapaper/ — however it does not seem Readability provides an export function, which is pretty weak IMO!)

For textual stuff I use instapaper and let calibre fetch an epub and drop it on my eReader. I may have to sign up for pocket for the non text stuff, especially once I upgrade phones in August.

Edit: Actually I just noticed I can "Pocket" something from feedreader on my current (but aging) WebOS phone.

Edit2: OK so I also see that Calibre can create an ePub from Pocket as well.

I have thousands of RIL bookmarks in my account, but the one thing that kills me is that I can't see when I saved the bookmark. When I go in to look for something and I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for, I really wish I could see when I saved it. My time association is much better than recalling an exact headline or site name.

I had bought Read It Later on Android as part of 10cent deals. Might be a good time to try it.

On a completely unrelated note, Nate Weiner forked my code https://github.com/ideashower/Export-Wordpress-posts-to-Tumb...

I use Opera Mobile's site saving a lot. Not sure if it is too similar, but it's all I need.

This is less descriptive to me than read it later, but then again in some respects read it later may be the wrong call to action.

I hope these guys get a better uptake, but I've been with Instapaper Pro for so long I'm entrenched.

Bookmarklets are great and all, but I hope they make a Chrome extension. It took me a moment to remember how to turn the bookmark bar on.

Edit: Especially since the bookmarklet doesn't appear to work in Chrome.

Very cool that you can save videos, and the Android app looks great, too.

If the bookmarklet works as well as the Instapaper one in Google Reader, and if it works well on WebOS, consider myself a convert.

What really made me sick is that the apps were charging (and silly me I paid for it) and now it turns into a completely free product. So, I am no longer a customer.

Being Pedantic: Who built this site??? All of overuse of the "<section/>" tags, and the XHTML Transitional doctype. Yeesh!

Who did they get to do their re-brand? The strategy is sick, video is slick and design language is killin it.

I use instapaper for this; it emails to my kindle and I am extremely satisified.

Wonder if there will be any changes made to the Firefox extension?

thought I had an account, turns out I dont. too many connections when I register. woe :(

It sucks, the old version was much better.