I no longer read long articles on my computer

http://articles.marco.org/299

by garret • 16 years ago

58 22 16 years ago

articles.marco.org

PStamatiou• 16 years ago

Unfortunately the result of such actions is less user engagement on those articles/sites. As a blogger this means less comments on my blog posts because Instapaper users on their phone don't want to take the effort to type a comment on their iPhone or swap to their computer.

garret• 16 years ago

True, it's better for long articles and for users who wouldn't comment on blogs anyway.

GFischer• 16 years ago

When the author refers to "long articles" I thought that it referred to articles as long as itself!

I absolutely agree that reading long material (as in, more than 2-3 text pages long) on a computer is uncomfortable and it's very tempting to become distracted. That's why I want an e-book reader :)

Something I suspect is that it might depend on the way your computer is set up, and/or your mindset - I have very different behaviour on my work and home computers, even browsing very different stuff - I don't browse sports, facebook, or my non-programming hobbies at work for instance, even though there are no restrictions set up, while I have my home browser set up to open said pages at startup.

jonasvp• 16 years ago

I used to have to exact same problem until I found Instapaper. Simple idea, brilliantly executed. Works even better in conjunction with Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) and an ebook reader.

I bought myself the Pocketbook 360 for christmas and it works like a charm: hooking it up to my computer has Calibre download all new articles from Instapaper, convert to ePub and transfer to the reader.

Even better, when I read on my Pocketbook I don't get distracted because it doesn't do Internet. Thank god.

teeja• 16 years ago

This site will -quickly- convert web pages to PDF's you then save. Easy, fast, pro results. (http://www.pdfmyurl.com/)

holograham• 16 years ago

My technique for this is to split up my feeds into 2 folders (in Google Reader): Blogs and News/Misc.

Blogs are pretty self explanatory currently the list is at 15 but I actively add and remove. List has never been above 20 and never below 10.

New/Misc are my high volume ones. WSJ, CNN, Hacker News, Lifehacker, are just a taste. I keep this list hovering around 10 feeds.

I keep my blogs read and skim my high volume ones when I have breaks like lunch at the desk for 30 mins. I skim headlines and read probably 5 "long" articles a day. This system works well enough for me.

jimfl• 16 years ago

Using Google reader, when I happen upon items which are tl;dr for right now, I just hit 't' then type either "to-read" or "to-watch" which tags them. When I have a little more time, I hit 'g-t' and select one of those two tags. When I'm done, I un-tag it. This way I don't have to "note" it (which other people can see) or star it, and I can un-tag it when I'm done with it.

Also, Readability is a great boon.

dirtbox• 16 years ago

I used to have Opera read articles aloud to me while I worked. Sadly it's a bugged feature now, but it was good while it lasted.

dustingetz• 16 years ago

google reader starred items feed.

dabeeeenster2• 16 years ago

I wrote a (poor cousin) version of Instapaper for Android. Search the marketplace for BenPaper.

I wanted to dump the iPhone for Android, but the thought of having a phone without Instapaper (or similar) was too much to bear! I wasn't sure whether to open-source the code or not, it's pretty poor quality at the moment, but gets the job done.

At the moment it pushes the content through the Google mobile web rendered to strip the unnecessary content. Does anyone know if the Instapaper parser has a public API? I assumed it didn't...

It needs lots of work but if you have any comments/suggestions please let me know. Thanks.

dabeeeenster2• 16 years ago

Also, is it just me or is it crazy that there's no public URL to a specific Android app? What's that all about? The only way I can currently view feedback to the app is by borrowing a colleague's G1!

Tichy• 16 years ago

I agree, that sucks. Hopefully they'll change that soon.

iPhone App store didn't have web sites for the longest time, but I think they changed it recently. Although it is still hard to find - I have seen web links to apps, but have been unable to create them myself.

Btw another silly trap with the Android Marketplace: apparently they only show you the comments in the language of your phone settings. A friend of mine has created a German language app, but his phone is set to English. It was only a couple of weeks later that he discovered there already were several comments for his app.

u48998• 16 years ago

I have my bookmarks on the cloud (delicious firefox extension). I have delicious show up as a bookmark toolbar instead of the Firefox toolbar. I choose Favorite Tag view and then I have three tags as favorite: 1-frequently used bookmarks, 2-less-frequently used bookmarks and 3-Read later articles. I tag lengthy articles with the third tag and they stay there in front until I'm done reading I would simply remove the tag.

The only thing missing is the reminder or stay fresh alert. Sometime it takes some effort to go back to old and lengthy articles.

davidedicillo• 16 years ago

recently hacker news simply replaced my rss reader. if there is something new that i may be interested in, i'm sure it will front-page here, so I let other people do the skimming for me.

jayair• 16 years ago

On a related note that is my approach on Twitter as well. I try to follow interesting people and if they are talking about a common topic or link it is probably worth reading.

Sorry for the plug but that is what we try to do with Cadmus (http://thecadmus.com). You give us your Twitter, RSS Feeds, FriendFeed and we will find the top articles your friends are talking about.

pringle• 16 years ago

This i exactly why my Kindle has become a godsend. The primary way I use it is to load long articles on it that I find on the web for reading later.

This is also why I consider the Kindle's lack of any usable web/Internet to be a feature rather than a drawback.

ggruschow• 16 years ago

Maybe we should stop writing long articles on our computer also.

(Disclaimer: Instapaper rules... except at hacker news comments.)

aw3c2• 16 years ago

I print long texts to read from real paper as I find that much more enjoyable. I also have a much better understanding then.

Part of this is often getting really annoyed by either non-existing print stylesheets or those filled with ads or unnecessary whitespace. Thankfully Opera makes it easy to rewrite those if you know a bit HTML (view source -> apply).

I keep track of articles to read simply with a bookmark folder.

MikeCapone• 16 years ago

Looks good. I just registered for Instapaper. Thanks Marco!

corysama• 16 years ago

I'm upset that Opera's text-to-speech feature has been busted in their recent releases. Instead of reading long articles on my computer, I prefer to have my computer read them to me. I find it to be much easier to get through wall-of-text articles that way because it requires so much less effort. However, it still requires more focus than reading because you can't skim and it's harder to backtrack.

SkipHeadJr• 16 years ago

tl;dr

Pistos2• 16 years ago

The suggestion to print [a lot] doesn't seem well-justified. Compared to reading on a portable device, consider all the paper usage (waste?) and ink cartridge expense. For folks like me with tight budgets, there's no way I would feel comfortable printing out the same volume of articles that I currently read on the computer. With ink cartridges priced like they are, I am very frugal when deciding what is or is not worth printing.

I no longer read long articles on my computer

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