Read It Later

Update: 2.0.7 beta 2 is now available below : Fixes issue where buttons/styling would disappear.

Version 2.0.7 of Firefox is now available for public testing.

The major change in this version is support for Firefox 4.

A number of other improvements are in this version as well:

• New: Firefox 4 Support
• New: Download support for sites requiring logins
• Fixed: Encoding issues with downloaded web view (for non-English pages)
• Fixed: List sort order could be incorrect in certain cases
• Fixed: Sort by site didn’t ignore ‘www.
• Fixed: List could be refreshed while editing
• Secret New Feature: Something “sweet”

How to Install

1. Download: Read It Later for Firefox 2.0.7 beta 2
2. From the Firefox menu: File -> Open File
3. Select the downloaded file (from step 1)
4. Follow instructions to install

Feedback

Please report any problems that you run into at Read It Later Support.  Be sure to say you are using the beta.

Well that was interesting.

After a strange initial rejection, version 2.2 Read it Later for the iPhone/iPad was just approved.  You should be able to find it in the app store very soon.

I never did hear back from the app review team as to what happened.  I resubmitted the application yesterday under the assumption that the rejection was a mistake.  Seems like that might have been the case.

Thanks a ton to The Next Web for running with the story and everyone else who covered it.  I’ve never had an update to a rejected app get approved this fast before so I’m confident the news everyone posted caught the attention of someone at app review.  Thank you guys for the support.

Now it’s time to get back to work.

If you are looking for the changes in version 2.2, check them out here.

Update: Version 2.2 has since been approved.  See: http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2010/08/version-2-2-approved/

An update to Read It Later (version 2.2) was rejected by Apple yesterday.  Though the update includes a number of enhancements (full changelog here), in the eyes of the reviewers, it should have been a fairly minor update.  The only ‘new’ functionality was replacing RIL’s existing sharing features with my new open source sharing library ShareKit.

The reason for the rejection was one I have not seen before and have not been able to find a single reported instance of after searching around on the web and within the developer forums.  For transparency I’m posting the full response from Apple below (I bolded the major line of importance):

“Hello Nathan,

Thank you for submitting Read It Later Free & Read It Later to the App Store.

We’ve reviewed your apps, but cannot post these versions to the App Store because they require customers to register with personal information without providing account-based features. We have included additional details below to help explain the issue, and hope you’ll consider revising and resubmitting your application.

Applications cannot require user registration prior to allowing access to app features and content; such user registration must be optional and tied to account-based functionality.

If you have any questions about this response, or would like to discuss it further, please feel free to reply to this email. We look forward to reviewing your revised apps.

Best Regards,

App Review Team
iPhone Developer Program”

If that is true, then outside of games, almost every single popular application in the app store would be affected.  The Facebook app, Twitter app, Evernote app, Google Reader apps, and any other application for a web-based service that requires an account would be rejected.

This is what is confusing to me:

1. “cannot post these … because they require customers to register with personal information without providing account-based features”
2. “Applications cannot require user registration prior to allowing access to app features and content”

That seems to be contradictory.

Line 1 seems to say that it is okay to have registration as long as it is for an app that is account-based.  What doesn’t make sense about this line is why RIL would have been rejected.  Read It Later is a simple account-based service.   Read It Later does not collect ‘personal’ information, you just need a username and password to create an account.  The account allows you to sync your reading list between your iPhone, iPad, computers, and browsers.  Was this somehow a simple misunderstanding?

Line 2 is much scarier.  It seems to imply that apps cannot require registration and if they do, they still have to function without an account.  I cannot imagine most companion apps to web services would be very useful without an account.  For example, would you want to use an account-less Facebook app?

I think it would be very unlikely that Apple is going to start preventing apps like Facebook from requiring logins.  That’s why I think something else happened here.  The only slight fear I have over #2 is that this seems like a new rejection reason because I have not been able to find another reported instance.

I emailed Apple yesterday for further clarification but have not had a response.  (I assume I won’t receive one until Monday).

I’m hoping that this is a simple misunderstanding and not a completely new rule for the app store.  If it is, it’s going to affect a LOT of applications and a LOT of users in a very negative way.

Stay tuned.

Version 2.2 has been submitted to the app store.  Here is what’s new:

Performance Updates

The major focus of this update was on improving app performance.  I spent a few weeks measuring each part of the application and finding ways to speed up processes, improve memory use and battery life.  (Note: Most of the benefits only affect users on iOS4.  This means some of the improvements will not affect iPad users until iOS4 makes it to the iPad)

• Downloading full web pages is now blazing.  It’s measurably twice as fast and will take half as much time as before.
• App responsiveness has been improved while downloading.

New Sharing Interface

I’ve revamped the entire process for sharing.  The work I’ve done on this has been released as an open source library called ShareKit.

• Native sharing with Delicious, Facebook, Google Reader, Pinboard, Tumblr, and Twitter
• Offline sharing
• New services: Pinboard and Tumblr
• Highlight and select text to share within any article

New Features

• Retina Display support for iPhone 4 users
• iPhone users: New option to close article when marked as read

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a crash on startup
• Fixed a crash while downloading
• Fixed text documents not saving correctly for offline viewing
• Fixed images and files not being display correctly in some cases
• Fixed failed items that continually tried to redownload
• Improved fast app switching support

Read It Later celebrates its third birthday today.  I released the first version on August 6th, 2007.  (To see the history from 2007-2009, check out this post from last year).

This past year has been incredible.  Last November I quit doing all contract development and begun focusing solely on trying to make Read It Later a full-time job.

Since then:

• RIL’s userbase has doubled to over 3 million users.
• Users saved an additional 40 million articles to their reading lists.
• iPhone users spent a combined 100 years reading content within Read It Later.

Going full-time allowed me to focus on three major products that I have released within the past year:

• Read It Later 2.0, released in December, was a redesign of the entire service.
• Digest, released into beta this past spring, reinvented the reading list, making it easier than ever to organize your list and (ahem) digest it.
• RIL for iPad, released this past June, was an entirely new way to interact with your reading list.

The next year is going to be entirely focused on taking the existing product lineup and supercharging it.  I’m working on making everything you do within Read It Later easier, faster, and more streamlined.  The mindset I took when I created Digest was to eliminate the one extra step it took to organize your list.  I’m still in the same frame of mind and I plan to keep whittling away at all the barriers that separate you from reading your list.

Thank you for your amazing and continued support over the past 3 years.  Your notes, emails, reviews, tweets, and comments have made the work I’ve put in completely worth it.

The next version of Read It Later Pro will include a major update to the app’s sharing features.  Sharing will now use each service’s native APIs instead of the tedious process of sharing through the web view.  It also will add the ability to share offline.

The work I’ve done for this update I’ve released as an open source project called ShareKit.  If you’d like to see a preview of what is coming, check out the demo shown on ShareKit’s announcement blog post.

For developers, ShareKit means you can add full sharing features to your app with just 3 lines of code.  The initial release supports 4 types of content (urls, images, text, and files) and support for Delicious, Email, Facebook, Google Reader, Pinboard, Read It Later and Twitter.

I just rolled out a major bug fix to Digest on the web.  There was an issue that caused some topics to appear incomplete, missing many stories that should have appeared.

If you are using the web version, you might have not noticed this even happening, but now you should find the topics are doing a much better job.  This is especially true of custom topics.

This bug did not affect users on the iPad.

I’d like to also take this moment to say if you are a Digest user and are finding certain items or topics not performing as you expected, please reach out to me.  While Digest is in beta, the best way I have to improve the algorithm is working one on one with cases where you find room for improvement.

Thanks everyone!

Version 2.1.1 of Read It Later for iPhone/iPad is now available in the app store.

This update is critical or anyone planning to upgrade their iPhone or iPod Touch to iOS4 next week.  Any earlier version of RIL will not work in iOS4.

The full changelog:

Fixes (Universal):
- Compatibility with iOS4, support for fast app switching
- Incorrect download progress counts
- Missing some YouTube video embeds in text view

Fixes (iPad):
- Rotation causing splash screen to appear

Thanks to the app review team for granting a one-time prioritized review.

If you are using the iPad app and wanted to try out Digest before upgrading, you can request a free trial.

I send out a number of invites every day.  Once you receive an invite, you’ll be able to access Digest on the iPad, iPhone, and web for up to 7 days.

Request a free trial invite

It has been great seeing users posting screens of their Digests on Twitter.  They look incredible!  It’s awesome to see how different users’ Digest can look.  Even better, I’m glad to see users already creating their own custom topics.

If you’d care to share, I’d love to see how your Digest looks!  Thanks to all of those who have shared theirs already.

How to Share Even Further

Beyond just posting a screenshot, if you are interested in sharing your Digest with your friends, you can make it public and send out a permanent link.  Even if you bought Digest on the iPad, you can access it on the web at http://readitlaterlist.com/d/.  Once you are there, click the ‘Share’ link in the top for further instructions.

Posted Screenshots

Here is a random sampling of Digest screenshots I’ve seen posted on Twitter:

via @tokerud

via @Lightbring3r

via @othylmann

via @fotomaf

via @stevestreza