Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

Re:Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction by burtonator on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @06:31PM (#19148808)

I'm actually working on an app specifically to address this problem.

It builds on the idea of 'bookmarks' and we have a new take on them called 'pagemarks' which is basically a box that spans multiple pages.

This way you can keep track of the parts of the book you've read and jump around.

I like reading multiple textbooks, articles, etc and go back and forth often.

This allows me to easily suspend and resume.

I worked on a proof of concept about 6 months ago and I've been expanding it in my spare time.

You can read about it here:

https://getpolarized.io/incremental-reading.html

Polar is free and Open Source btw.

It blew up on HN a few months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960

I'm about to re-announce as we're just in the process of porting it to the web to make it more accessible to people (mobile, tablets, chrome OS, etc.).

It goes FAR behind this though and supports document management, offline, and supports capturing web pages for offline usage and archival.

Additionally it supports annotation so you can take any page and add highlights, comments and flashcards.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction by gnicholas on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @03:07AM (#19151322)

Another tool to help increase focus while reading on-screen: http://www.beelinereader.com. Testing by CNET showed that people are 35% more likely to finish an article when reading with this turned on. Would be interested to talk about collaboration, if you’re also looking to help folks focus! [username] at email-service-starting-with-the-same-letter.com

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction by eigenvalue on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @06:59PM (#19148994)

Very cool! At least for me, so much of my reading is done on my mobile devices (e.g, iPhone, iPad) that not supporting those via an app is pretty much a deal killer for me. But if I could have one place to read PDF files, saved websites (e.g., like Pocket; btw, Pocket integration would seem to make a lot of sense for Polarized) where annotations/highlights are also stored in the cloud (say, in Dropbox), and I could access this on the go on a mobile device, I would certainly use your service.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction by burtonator on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @07:29PM (#19149190)

Mobile + web is coming... I'm also working on different ways to read while mobile which I think will be amazingly valuable.

I'm going to keep these a surprise though.

I like to read on my laptop and not mobile though... but maybe that will change.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction by davidtsong on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @06:06PM (#19158043)

Awesome, thanks for the share! Would be great to integrate functionality from Zotero

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction by SmellyGeekBoy on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @10:57AM (#19153967)

> ...a new take on them called 'pagemarks' which is basically a box that spans multiple pages.

Not wanting to belittle what you've done as it sounds like a really useful product, but this sounds like exactly the same way I use "highlights" on the Kindle.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction by alphagrep12345 on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @10:32PM (#19150134)

I wanted to make something like this for a long time. Thanks.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction by barabba on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @06:19AM (#19152209)

Am I mistaken or there is no support for bookmarks / table of contents in the pdf reader? This makes reading a lot more difficult.

[ Parent | on HN ]