Read It Later

Last night during some planned server maintenance, I pushed through two updates that have been pending for a while:

20 Character Usernames

Previously, usernames were limited to 12 characters.  You can now make your username up to 20 characters long.  If you’d like to change yours go to http://readitlaterlist.com/pass.  While you are there, if you haven’t already, you should add a password reset email so if you ever forget your login you can retrieve it without contacting me

Tag Editing

Before the update, tags could only be added to items, not removed or edited.  This limit is no longer in affect.  You can edit and delete tags and the changes will sync as well.

Digest is Read It Later with a brain. It analyzes all of the articles in your list and automatically groups them into topics. Simply put, it is like having folders in your list, but RIL takes care of sorting them for you.

This is all about reinventing the reading list.  RIL makes it very easy to save a link with just one click, in any browser and on most mobile devices.  It’s almost too easy.  So naturally your reading list can fill up fast.

There is a fundamental problem with displaying your items in a list.  It’s hard to know where to start.  Do you start from the top?  From the bottom?  Randomly?  None of these make a whole lot of sense because the order in which you saved things is not necessarily the order you want to read them.

Looking at your list, you may have an article about technology you wanted to read, a video about kittens you wanted to watch, a link to shoes you wanted to buy or a website for a band your friend told you to check out.  And when you finally get around to reading, you may only be interested in one of those topics.  It’d be a LOT easier if it were better organized.

Normally organization is accomplished with folders and tagging.  But both of those take time to manually add to each item, time that you do not have, which is the whole reason why you are using Read It Later in the first place!

This is why Digest works.  It’s smart enough to know the difference between an article on iPhones and an article about sports.  It takes each article and filters it into the topics you care about automatically.

Landing on the front page is like coming to a news site where all of the articles were hand picked by you, where there is nothing to filter through, it is all content you already know you want to read.

Topics are automatically created for you based on what you’ve already saved but you can fully customize your digest by adding topics, removing them, rearranging them and even defining your own custom topics that articles will be sorted into.

Digest finds and highlights certain content from your list. If you save a lot of videos, Digest will present them together for you. If you save a lot of links from a certain site, Digest will group them for you.

You can even share your digest by making it public and sending the URL to all of your friends.

How to Get It

Today, Digest is available as a free invite only beta.  To request an invite, go to http://readitlaterlist.com/digest

The Future

Digest is starting on the web but will very soon be making a native appearance within the iPhone app, Firefox extension and the upcoming iPad app.

The current way you use Read It Later and all that it offers will not change and it will absolutely still be free.  Digest will be the premium upgrade to the Read It Later service and pricing will be announced in a few weeks.

I’m unbelievably excited about where Digest will go in the future.  I already have a million ideas for paths to explore, so grab an invite, give it a spin and enjoy a new way to use Read It Later!

For the past few months, I’ve been consumed, working on a new product.  It is a completely new approach to how you use Read It Later.  After overwhelmingly positive feedback from my initial test group, I’ve decided to release it into a wider beta.

This happens tomorrow.

Calibre, a free and open source e-book library management application now supports Read It Later.

Calibre allows you to download website content and sync it to your reader.  Read It Later has been added as a custom source in the last update.  Using Calibre, you can now sync the text content from your reading list to your Kindle or other eBook reader.

Learn More:
Calibre’s Website
Calibre in the Read It Later App Directory

How to Set it Up:

Any questions about Calibre are best directed towards the developers, however, here is a quick overview on how to add RIL as a source:

1. Click the dropdown arrow under ‘Fetch News’
2. Select ‘Add a custom source’
3. Click ‘Customize builtin recipe’
4. Select ‘Read It Later’ from the list
5. Close the window
6. Click ‘Fetch News’
7. Under Custom, Click ‘Read It Later’
8. Add your username/password and set a schedule if perferred
9. Click ‘Download Now’

I just submitted version 2.0.3 to Apple.  This update to the iPhone app fixes a sync issue affecting some URLs when marked as read.  If you had a page that you marked as read on the iPhone and the change was not synced to your other computers, this should resolve it.

Thanks to everyone for sending this in.  Keep up the good work

In case you missed them, here are the latest applications with Read It Later support.

For a full list of all supported apps see the Read It Later App Directory.

Browser Apps

Postponer - Chrome Extension
Simple Read It Later extension for Google Chrome.

Mobile Apps

AddToReadingList - Blackberry App
Addtoreadinglist is a Blackberry browser integrated client for the ReadItLater service.

Bulletin - Android App
Google Reader and news client for your Android phone.

iPhone Apps

ReadWriteWeb
Official app from ReadWriteWeb

Tweetings
Twitter app

Push News
Breaking news updates delivered via push

RSS-Flash-G
Fully featured Google Reader client

Thank you everyone for all of the feedback since the 2.0 release.

Firefox Extension Version 2.0.2

I just pushed out version 2.0.2 of the Firefox extension. This new version brings back a few old features from 0.9 in addition to important bug fixes:

• ‘X days ago’ is available as an option in the list view again.
• Right click to save a page for later is back.
• Users with master passwords can now opt to save their password differently so they can skip the prompt at startup.
• Fixed text-view encoding issues with non-english character sets.
• Fixed url not appearing in status bar on compact list view

iPhone Version 2.0.1

I submitted this version shortly after 2.0.0 was approved and it contains a number minor bug and crash fixes.  I expect it to be available soon.

Have an awesome holiday weekend!

I just pushed out an update to the text view that fixes a number of encoding issues.  Any content with Cyrillic, Hebrew, Farsi, Japanese, Chinese, or European characters that previously appeared garbled should be fixed.

For future content, you do not need to do anything, it will just work.  For already downloaded articles, you can redownload the content and it will replace it with the corrected encoding.

Note: A fix for the Firefox extension requires a new update, which I’m working on getting out soon.  In the meantime, you can access the fixed text view through the website at http://readitlaterlist.com/unread/.

Thank you to everyone who have sent in text view reports, they’ve been incredibly helpful.

Read It Later 2.0 is now available: everywhere.

Every aspect of RIL has been updated.  This includes the web version, iPhone app, and Firefox extension.

New Look

The first thing you’ll notice is that Read It Later has been redesigned.  2.0 packs a lot more features than it’s predecessor, yet it’s interface is cleaner and less cluttered.  The redesign had 3 main goals:

1. Be smarter. Do more automatically for the user.  Don’t ask a user to click a button, click it for them.
2. Focus on readability. Each function or button should always be just under your finger when you need it, but until then, keep it out of the way.
3. Consistency.  Every part of the service should have the same unified look and feel.

Position Sync

Read It Later now syncs your position in every article between all of your devices.  This means you can start reading an article on your computer, get up, grab your phone, and pick up exactly where you left off.

Tagging

Tagging has been supported in the Firefox version of RIL for over a year.  In 2.0, tagging has not only been made easier and more useful in Firefox, but it is now supported directly in the iPhone app too.

This makes categorizing your items into groups and folders a snap.

iPhone Updates

Downloading and Syncing

Read It Later is a lot smarter about how it manages your reading.  Whenever you open an article from your list, you will always be presented with the article itself, not options to choose how you want to view it.  If RIL has an offline copy, it will display that, if not, you’ll get the live version directly from the web.

The new offline downloading engine runs smoothly in the background and it’s progress is represented clearly by a progress bar in the top status bar.  Each item in your list is shaded to indicate if an item is ready to be viewed offline.  White means it’s been downloaded, dark means it hasn’t.

Text Mode

While reading you can now turn the text view on or off with a single tap.

This when combined with the new ‘Read It Now’ link option, means you can browse through any number of pages, all in text view, without ever having to download/view the web view first.

Faster

You’ll notice that every interaction with the app is faster, smoother, and more responsive.  2.0 shares zero code with it’s 1.3 predecessor.  It packs way more features into the app, yet the 2.0 codebase is actually smaller than 1.3.

Editing and Tagging

You can now manage your list directly on your phone.  You can edit titles and organize your list using tags.

You can access a tag directory to easily find all of your pages on a specific topic.

Swipe Menu

Tweetie (a Twitter iPhone app), popularized this and ever since I used it the first time, I keep trying the same action in every app I use, it’s just that intuitive.

You can now swipe any item in your list to get a quick action menu.  Without opening the article, you can edit, manually download, remove, or even share your item.

Read Archive

The read archive is now completely searchable and sortable.

Additionally you can now permanently delete items from your archive directly from the app.

Firefox Updates

Faster, More Compatible

The entire app was rebuilt from scratch and is a lean machine compared to the old version.  Clicking through even long reading lists is now faster and more responsive.

Your items are no longer stored in Firefox’s bookmarks.  This solves almost all major bugs with the app alone.  As a result, other add-ons are now less likely to interfere with RIL.  (Issues with Weave and Foxmarks most notably)

Text View

With a single click you can convert any article to an optimized text only view.  This extracts the articles contents, removing images and extraneous layout content and presents it in a clean, consistent way that’s incredibly easy to read.

Downloading

The offline downloading engine has been rewritten.  It now runs faster and more importantly, is more accurate at capturing a website in it’s entirety.

Read It Later also manages your offline cache in a more intelligent way.  You no longer have to enable Firefox to ‘Work Offline’.  If you try to access a page from your list and have no connection (or the connection dies mid way), RIL will step in and serve you the offline version.

Editing & Tags

You can now directly edit your items inline.  While browsing your list, simply click the edit icon and you can instantly modify an item’s title and add tags to help categorize your list.

If you use tags, you can now browse your tags in the tag directory.  This helps manage your tags and items like folders, making it easy to find your items on a specific topic.

The 2.0 Launch

In all honesty, I had expected Apple’s review process to take longer.  2.0 was approved in record time, 2 days before even my earliest expectations.  As a result, you’ll see continued improvements and updates over the coming week.

The Next Step

After I tie off the remaining 2.0 todos, I will begin work on something I’ve been sketching out and planning for many months.  It’s a new extension to the entire Read It Later platform and if I can pull it off, it’s going to rock.  Really hard.

Stay tuned.

It has been a long time coming, but 2.0 is finally in sight.

The new iPhone app was submitted to Apple early this week, the 4th public beta of the Firefox extension (get it here) went out last night, and I am spending the rest of the week applying the new styles to the Firefox extension and website in preparation for the launch.

Once the iPhone app goes live, the rest will follow.

If you are a Firefox user and use a custom theme, Personas, or Linux, I could use some beta testers for the theme refresh, email me at RIL@ideashower.com, thanks!