Tag: open source

Technological Overthinking #5 | Finding a new read-it-later app

10 December 2024 /

This is a follow-up from my previous post about the read-it-later app Omnivore, and why its existence and shutdown shows off the good and bad of open-source projects. Diving into the world of self-hosting software isn’t for me yet, which means it’s time to search for a replacement hosted service. After reading a variety of lists and reviews of recommended read-it-later apps, and learning from what others in the Discord found to be useful, I decided that writing down a checklist of what I was looking for in a replacement service would probably be the best way to test the options.

What I needed a replacement read-it-later app to have/ not have.

  • A priority on web browser features/settings (i.e. that its not using the “app-first with a limited web version” approach)
  • A Firefox extension that would let me easily save links/pages.
  • An Android app that reliably saves links from web browsing and other apps e.g. Discord messages.
  • A paid hosted syncing service.
  • A focus on reading text, not on audio.
  • No sponsored content or advertising mixed in with my saved links.

What I would prefer the replacement to have/not have:

  • No AI features (or at least the ability to fully disable and ignore any AI features)
  • Preference for a yearly subscription over a monthly subscription.
  • Payment with money rather than data.
  • Preference for developers using open source software and/or a nonprofit structure.

With the checklist in place, I started trying out some of the recommended alternatives to see which might be the best fit.

Apps/services I tried:

Readwise Reader (free trial)

Reader was already in the “probably not” pile as it aims to be a much larger program than I need. It aspires to be a read-it-later app, a note-taking app, and a full productivity system that integrates with other systems. For me, that would probably lead me to turn leisure reading into work, which would not be a good idea.

While I was impressed at Reader’s polished and coherent design, I did find that its everything-app nature felt like “too much” as a replacement; for me it felt intended to be a system that needed active maintenance rather than a tool. I have nothing against systems (case in point: this blog series!), but I didn’t want to replace something that had been simple with something much more complex.

The dealbreaker for me was that Reader automatically summarised imported articles with their AI “ghostreader”. This meant that when looking at my list of articles/feed items, I wasn’t actually seeing the start of the article as written by the author, but the AI summary instead. Worse, there doesn’t seem to be a way to disable it. The fact I couldn’t turn the AI off instantly sent Reader to the “hell, no” pile. A read-it-later app that wants to “ghostread” things for me is not where I want to be!

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One of my favourite apps has shut down….

3 December 2024 /

It’s probably not surprising that I’m often particular about which apps and programs I use. While most of the time apps can be relatively interchangeable, I have three favourite programs/apps. For me, that’s defined as programs/apps that a) I have chosen as the sole way for me to do a specific task after a lot of research, and b) I would be genuinely upset about not being able to use any more.

The apps/services are MusicBee (where I manage and back up my music and podcast library and sync it to my phone and mp3 players), Omnivore (where I save articles from my phone, laptop, or desktop to read later and archive), and Listenbrainz (an open-source listen tracker).

Of the three, MusicBee would be the biggest loss. It’s also the main reason I still own a Windows PC. Finding anything that could equal MusicBee would require intensive research, but its local-first nature means that I could continue to use my installed copy even if the program was no longer actively maintained, making it hard to truly lose access to.

Omnivore, on the other hand, is a service rather than a program. It is also now a dead service: on November 30th, the hosted service was shut off and all user data was deleted.

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Technological Overthinking #3 | Retiring Last.FM

24 December 2023 /

This installment of overthinking yet again revolves around music, but this time it’s about keeping a long-term record of what I choose to listen to over time. (This was partially inspired by wanting to have my own version of a Spotify Wrapped that didn’t require Spotify!)

A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to keep a consistent play count and record of what I’d listened to over time, that wasn’t solely dependent on my PC. I’ve reinstalled Windows, corrupted things in Windows, and changed hard drives out frequently enough in the past that I’ve had to recreate my music library data quite a few times before. Also, I don’t only listen to music on my PC, so using an external source that could collate data from my PC, my phone, and any manual additions, seemed to be the best approach.

Last.FM was the main tracking service I’d heard of, and it seemed trustworthy because of having been around for such a long time, so it felt like a good choice. I signed up for Last.FM in December 2021 and, at first, I really liked using it. My media software of choice, MusicBee, has a built-in Last.FM feature, so automatic scrobbling (the Last.FM term for ‘keeping track of a song being listened to’) from my PC was easy. I enjoyed the recommendation mix and radio, as they gave me a way of discovering new music that wasn’t attached to a streaming service.

The listening statistics were also fun to use, as they covered both global and personal stats. Being able to look up an artist or album and see which of their albums and tracks had the most listeners was interesting. But being able to click on an album and view my play-count of each song from that album, and to click on a song and see each time that I had scrobbled it, was a whole new level of data to enjoy.

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