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Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by AdmiralAsshat on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @03:36PM (#20813636)
Pocket already does about 85% of what I want (5% missing features I do want, and the other 10% being removing features I don't want, like the Sponsored content showing up in my feed), so I'm mostly happy with it.

But as long as we're talking pie-in-the-sky:

- Grabs only content, none of the crap

- Should be able to grab images that are core content to the article

- Completely FLOSS, with option for self-hosting. Member pricing would basically pay for cloud hosting and support.

- Robust platform support. Win/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android support or support for major browser extensions. Client support for popular e-readers also a huge plus--Pocket integration was a major influence on my getting a Kobo instead of a Kindle

- Bi-directional article management within the client. I should be able to Archive/Favorite/Delete an article within the RIL client and have those changes pushed back to the server.

- An option to read aloud an article using the OS's native Text-to-Speech engine so that it does not require a wifi connection (again, existing quibble with Pocket)

- Privacy-focused. Don't share my lists with marketers, don't put "popular" content into my feed if I didn't ask for it. I don't care what other people are reading, much as I don't care what other people choose to Bookmark. My Reading List is for me and me alone.

- Ability to crawl older, multi-page articles and consolidate into a single view.

- Ability to cache the article itself so that it would still be readable if the content at the URL itself vanishes between the time I add it to RIL and the time I actually get around to reading it.

EDIT: RSS support would be cool, too.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by mtmail on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @04:07PM (#20813921)
I'm happy with instapaper. Even more now that it's independently owned and GPDR compatible. Gladly pay knowing they don't have to sell my data or add advertising to make a living.

bthdonohue.com/2018/11/17/ycombinator-operating-instapaper-through-an-acquisition.html

https://blog.instapaper.com/post/170231611161

Saving youtube (or any other) videos would be nice for offline viewing (train, airplane). I can understand it's not a core feature, would use too much bandwidth and storage on mobile devices.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by LeonB on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @07:59PM (#20815591)
Features I rely upon in existing services:

- Able to use a favelet (bookmarklet) or a plugin to save any website with 1 click.

- Can synchronize to my ereader (thanks to Pocket integration with Kobo)

Features I don't have that I really need:

- ability to apply tags to articles, including on ereader, and sort/filter by tags.

- ability to highlight snippets and put them into some kind of log (particularly from ereader) including tagging the snippets (this would be awesome... for me)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by justhw on Wednesday August 28, 2019 @01:55AM (#20817174)
Something I want is a periodical (weekly or monthly) digest of my bookmarks (read it later) links, preferably as a browser extension. I'm currently doing that manually to help me decide if the bookmark it worth keeping.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by mersing on Wednesday August 28, 2019 @04:26PM (#20823666)
Thanks for asking.

- Automatically filter incoming content by multiple media types, particularly audio. Pocket has "articles" and "videos" but I get a lot of random stuff in "videos." If my link is coming from soundcloud.com, podcastnotes.org, listennotes.com etc., there's a 99% chance it's audio.

- More filtering options without requiring search, particularly by my most-saved content sources.

- This is personal preference, but NO (or at least the ability to disable) "discover" feed of suggested articles. I consider Pocket a productivity tool, allowing me to access my own idea of high quality, relevant content whenever I have a few minutes of downtime. I've already removed all the mainstream news/social network/scrolly-feed apps from my phone to resist the temptation to scroll mindlessly through whatever's new. Pocket's prominently featured feed of popular but lowest common denominator articles presents a problematic distraction. I understand that Pocket injects ads and paid or partner content in this feed, but I'd rather pay to have this feature removed than to remove the ads.

- No social networking aspect or associated user profiles. Don't care. Actually this just makes me wary that one day Pocket will decide it wants to be a social network and suddenly all my presumed-privately saved articles become "social" meaning visible to everyone on my profile, requiring manual privacy resetting to hide them, a la Facebook.

- The option to see which articles were the most-saved by other users in a given subject area could be interesting. This could have feature overlap with Nuzzel (app that shows you the articles that were shared by Twitter users you follow).

- Seconding another suggestion for the option to read the article aloud, presuming it's high quality humanish narration.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by latexr on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @04:20PM (#20814037)
I like Safari’s Reading List, except for the fact it’s chained to Safari. What it does right is that it gets the whole page (i.e. it’s not just a reader view) and auto-downloads on the phone so it’s available offline.

I’d like something that is browser-agnostic, has the option to download videos for offline viewing (for the websites supported by youtube-dl[1], let’s say), and can be controlled via the command-line.

I wouldn’t pay a subscription for it because I dislike subscription pricing and my current system is good enough (a mix of Pinboard’s reading list and Alfred[2] Workflows). Take my points as “pie in the sky” ideas you may wish to implement if you like them, but I’m unlikely to be a customer.

[1]: https://youtube-dl.org/

[2]: https://www.alfredapp.com

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by gcatalfamo on Wednesday August 28, 2019 @05:36PM (#20824233)
One thing, most of all: a dark pattern or a habit creating way to help me avoid saving links (because they might be useful) and never ever read/open them
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by billconan on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @03:16PM (#20813429)
able to remove ads and stuff unrelated to content.

great typography

able to relayout the content based on screen size, (mobile friendly), especially when the original content is a pdf.

able to synchronize to kindle, iphone

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look... by runjake on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @06:03PM (#20814882)
Like Instapaper.
[ Parent | on HN ]