Instapaper Blog

What's interesting about Instapaper is that Marco is in a way moving towards embracing both models. With his "3rd-party access only for subscribers" model (see http://blog.instapaper.com/post/3208433429), he can focus on keeping the iOS app polished while letting third-party developers handle writing apps for other platforms. Assuming this actually happens (a big assumption, to be fair), non-iOS platforms will serve as a revenue source by driving subscriptions.

10 years ago (!) Instapaper changed its tune and started requiring emails for new accounts. Before it had not required emails (just usernames) and even didn't require passwords, and after living with that for years Marco decided to switch back to the more traditional form. https://blog.instapaper.com/post/2318776738 It's interesting to think that times may have changed and that people are hesitant to give out their email addresses anymore, but you are giving up some real benefits by leaving it out.

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.

Hey there – we started requiring passwords many years ago, but the service originally launched without requiring a password or email address. You can read more about it here: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/2318776738

Why is this better for Pinterest and/or Instapaper? In the 2016 blog post announcing the acquisition: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/149374303661 > All of these features and developments revolved around the core mission of Instapaper, which is allowing our users to discover, save, and experience interesting web content. In that respect, there is a lot of overlap between Pinterest and Instapaper. Joining Pinterest provides us with the additional resources and experience necessary to achieve that shared mission on a much larger scale. Is that no longer true? Was it ever true?

Funny you should mention a managed relational database service; Instapaper uses one of those and had more than 12 hours of downtime this week: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/157027537441 No database solution is totally reliable. If storing data is my primary job, like it is GitLab's, I'd like to have as much control of it as possible.

They have published a blog post with a short explanation http://blog.instapaper.com/post/157027537441. The post mentiones an uptime of 99 % for 2016 and it's true - I cannot even remember when the service was down last time.

It gets better: "We’re aiming to get the full archives available by next Friday, February 17 at the latest. We appreciate your patience and understanding in the interim." -- http://blog.instapaper.com/post/157045376396

Pinterest acquired Instapaper. http://blog.instapaper.com/post/149374303661

Instapaper (also by Marco Arment) used to do a similar thing. Then this happened: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/2318776738 Interesting to see he is giving it another shot. It looks like the new implementation solves some of the problems brought up in that blog post.

Having read more into the Marco/9-5Mac story and looking on Twitter, seems Marco has concluded the website does not want their content 'scraped' due to content in their articles being 'almost libelous'. Unfortunately he has taken the decision to block his users ability to save from the site as some sort of punishment against them. Can't see any real official explanation, and the error message is unhelpful. Unfortunately I cannot agree with his position, it is repugnant and seems to be a double standard (he has not blocked other sites which heavily criticise Instapaper). Shame, let's hope he sees sense. Edit: he has lifted the block and apologised for putting it in place without the publishers explicit request, guess he saw sense in the end, everyone gets clouded by anger sometimes. http://blog.instapaper.com/post/31303984531

The FBI stole an Instapaper server in an unrelated raid http://blog.instapaper.com/post/6830514157

I'm very impressed by the year over year continued refinements and improvements to Instapaper. Back in 2008[1] Marco mentioned he only spends a few hours a week on it. I wonder how many hours a week he spends on it these days. [1]: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/60070053

Actually multi-page stitching just got added to the browser bookmarklet, relevant blog post: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/18556429689

The icon is a direct copy of the iOS app icon, and the app is in violation of Marco's API rules (http://blog.instapaper.com/post/3208433429). Outright theft? Maybe not. But definitely not kosher. [ Also, the 'developer website' is an inaccessible Chinese social network page. Awesome! ]

Ah, yes, but it is $1 a month rather than $4.99 as the article reported: http://www.instapaper.com/subscription http://blog.instapaper.com/post/1256471940

http://blog.instapaper.com/post/163849131 This allows you to send items to posts in google reader.

I'd like to see larger up/down scrolling buttons. Fitt's Law is working against me when I try to click on those. I think they should be larger because it's the controls that users are most likely to use. Maybe Marco Arment's Instapaper pagination will give you some ideas: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/414438490 Overall, a huge improvement. Good work!

Also, what is this weird back button? Likely an attempt at copying Instapaper's pagination; see "Pagination tap zones" on http://blog.instapaper.com/post/545408126

Wow, after Instapaper went back to indie from Pinterest[1] and Omnivore closing last year this is no longer surprising. This is also proof that read-it-later app as a category is not sustainable as a venture / company backed service. This is also a category of app that I believe could be better served by local-first native apps. As there is no reason why a server has to be requirement to enjoy the full service. Your computer is fully capable of interacting with these webpages directly.... On Apple ecosystem, there are few alternatives one can migrate to. I also created an app that target this category (and more) called DoubleMemory: https://doublememory.com that has a few different takes as well: - no registration needed (icloud sync) - no extension required (just double command + c) - launches from menu bar as a launcher, in a stunning Pinterest-style waterfall grid It's all free to use with no limits, as i'm still working on paid features. I'll work on a pocket importer for these who are interested in migrating. ^[1]: https://blog.instapaper.com/post/175953870856

> Instapaper, AFAIK, syncs as soon as you open the app. That's true, but there's also a feature in Instapaper (et al.) that will allow you to set up a geofence, and when you leave the geofence, it will launch itself in the background and sync. It's useful for users who like to read Instapaper on a subway where there's no cell reception- you can set it to sync when you leave your office or house, and it will have downloaded everything by the time you get underground. It's just an automatic convenience so you don't have to remember to sync it manually. Even though I don't ride a subway I find it useful, sometimes I'll get to a restaurant for lunch and there will be poor cell reception, but I can still read stuff I've just added to Instapaper. It's also kind of a hack to allow periodic background syncing, because iOS doesn't allow apps to launch periodically to update themselves, but it DOES allow apps to launch when a geofence boundary is crossed. Here's a blog post about it: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/24293729146

Update: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/6854208028