After Michael Schneider, creator of Read Later, joined the Pocket team to release the official Pocket app for Mac, I wondered if there was a real need for a “read later” (lowercase) application for the desktop:

I’m still not completely sold on the overall concept of a desktop read-later app. I’ve got used to thinking of “read later” as a inherently mobile state of mind. I “catch up” on articles and videos with my iPhone and iPad. The Mac is were I discover stuff. I guess a desktop app can be seen as an add-on, a companion to the main experience.

Looking around for alternatives that would work with the service I use on a daily basis for text articles, Marco Arment’s Instapaper, I was not impressed with Words:

Unfortunately, while promising, Words isn’t there yet. Words looks decent when it’s focused on text (generated by the Instapaper parser) in full-screen mode, but everything else is pretty buggy, unstable, and unfinished.

ReadKit, a new app by Webin released today, is — finally — a solid piece of software for those who have been looking for a desktop version of their favorite read later service. ReadKit, in fact, works with Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability, therefore covering the most popular third-party read later services. The app costs $1.99, and if you want to use it with Instapaper, you’ll need the $1 monthly subscription. (more…)

In my original review of Readability for iOS, I praised the app’s focus on clean design, beautiful typography, and focus on building a different system to support web publishers as unique aspects of what could have been easily dismissed as “yet another read later” app. In particular, I wrote how, ultimately, “it comes down to habits, curiosity, and willingness to try out a new service that offers a slightly different take on saving web articles for later”.

Ever since my review, I have switched to Pocket as my personal go-to read later web service and app on iOS, as I thoroughly enjoy Pocket’s wide-ranging approach to saving everything for later, rather than just articles. Today, however, Readability is announcing a new service called Readlists, which might give many a reason to use multiple “read-later” services in tandem — and that’s because Readlists leverages Readability’s existing platform and engine to target a different segment of web reading: collecting multiple links together. (more…)

The official Readability app for iOS, available today on the App Store, had a complicated history with Apple and its approval process. Since Readability relaunched last year with an ambitious focus on publishers and “read anywhere”, the service struggled to get its native app for iPhone and iPad approved by Apple due to an initial controversy with iTunes app subscriptions, which were seemingly reserved to “publishing apps” only, and weren’t meant to be accessed by any third-party developer. With the app stuck in a limbo, Readability went back to the drawing board and developed a full-featured HTML5 web app for mobile devices, whilst releasing additional tools for the web and Kindle at the same time. Months passed, and Readability — which in the meantime put together a quite impressive list of advisors and supporting developers — announced an updated strategy with free access for everyone, and a paid option for users willing to actively and directly contribute to the sites they are reading the most in Readability. With the new free plan, Readability also announced they had submitted a new version of their iOS app to Apple. Three months later, the app is now live on the App Store.

I have been able to test the app — a collaboration between Readability and development and design studio Teehan + Lax — for the past week, and I’m fairly impressed by this first version. But let’s go back to the main point: what’s Readability? And how does the native iOS app complement the ecosystem the developers have built in the past 12 months?

Much like Instapaper, Read It Later, or recent entrants in this scene like Evernote Clearly, Readability’s goal is to declutter webpages to offer an elegant, comfortable reading view on any device. Meant for web articles, Readability can fetch a webpage’s text and images, strip out unnecessary elements like ads, and reformat everything with a focus on beautiful typography, a clean layout, and the possibility of syncing this reformatted content to mobile devices like an iPhone, iPad, or Android handset. Like the services mentioned above, Readability works in any web browser thanks to a bookmarklet or extension, as well as compatible third-party apps that have been updated to include a “mobilizer” functionality or a “send to” action to forward URLs directly to a Readability account. As you can see from Readability’s website, the list of apps supporting the service includes excellent names like Tweetbot (our review) and The Early Edition 2.

With the proliferation of read-later tools and apps we’ve witnessed throughout 2011, why would anyone switch from, say, Instapaper or Read It Later to Readability, which is a rather new player in the field? Well, for one, Readability isn’t exactly new to this market, as the company behind it, arc90, licensed the original codebase for its reading technology to Apple for the Safari Reader feature seen on the Mac and iOS. Second, to differentiate its product from the plethora of available read-later browser companions and mobile apps, Readability spiced up its offering with a unique “support the publishers” spin that, as we detailed, allows users to pay for Readability and give 70% of their subscriptions back to the websites they read.

Readability explains:

Here’s how it works: Every time you use Readability to read an article, a portion of your monthly contribution is earmarked for that publisher or writer. For example, if half of the stories you read in a given month come from The New York Review of Books, half of your earmarked funds will be allocated to The New York Review of Books.

With these differences in mind, I was excited to try the finally-approved Readability iOS app, and see how it would compare to Instapaper, which is my go-to app and service when it comes to saving articles for later, as I wrote in my review of version 4.0. From an Instapaper lover’s perspective, let me get this out of the way right now: if you’re used to all the features Instapaper offers — especially on the iPhone and iPad — you’ll be disappointed to find in Readability for iOS a “simple” app to read the articles you’ve saved from a browser. There is no discovery, no Friends integration, no support for forwarding liked items to Pinboard or Evernote. On the other hand, Readability’s simplicity and focused approach might just be what you’ve been looking for, so let’s dive in. (more…)

Earlier this year, web reading service and platform Readability found itself in the middle of a debate regarding Apple’s newly launched subscriptions for apps and in-app purchasing rules, which forced the developers of Readability — a web-based tool to organize and read articles found online — to either follow Apple’s guidelines and give a 30% of their revenue to the company, or give up on the idea of having a native iOS client for iPhone and iPad. Because Readability’s unique twist was that, with a monthly fee, 70% of the revenue would go to the publishers of articles consumed through Readability, the developers decided to change direction and create a full-featured HTML5 app with offline access and most of the features they originally planned for the native Readability app. Readability’s revamped service was promising, but its developers didn’t expect subscriptions and in-app purchase rules to apply to them. And so they chose HTML5.

Today, however, Readability is announcing major changes to the platform, which include a new price point: free. Users that still want to support publishers will be able to create a Premium subscription that will also give them “additional features”; Readability says that going free will allow more people to enjoy the service, and solidify Readability as a platform for web reading.

With this release, Readability is available at no cost. Sign-up and you’ll have your own profile and reading list in no time. Both Readability accounts and our companion apps will always be completely free, but we also offer a premium experience for users who want additional features and an easy way to support their favorite writers and publishers.

Another big change for Readability is that, by going free, this time they have a chance of being approved by Apple. In fact, the developers explain in a blog post that a new iOS app — built in collaboration with Teehan+Lax — has already been submitted to Apple, and is awaiting approval. Considering the aforementioned Premium option for users, we assume it’ll be built directly into the app as well as in-app purchase (as only publishing apps with recurring subscriptions are accepted into Apple’s Newsstand).

Alongside the new iOS app, work continues on Readability’s HTML5 website and the entire Readability feature set, which is now open to developers and publishers willing to ”enrich their own services and apps with Readability.”

Since its re-launch earlier this year, Readability has always looked like a viable alternative to more popular “read later” solutions like Instapaper and Read It Later, both available on the web as well as iOS devices. Currently, Readability comes with an array of browser-based tools such as bookmarklets and a Chrome extension, whilst the website has a landing page for the iOS app “coming soon” for free.
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A new feature uncovered in OS X Lion by MacRumors reveals that Apple plans to take on “read it later” services such as ReadItLater, Instapaper and Readability. It has implemented a new bookmarking feature in that latest Lion builds of Safari that Apple is calling the “Reading List” and can be used by users to save pages for later reading. Apple describes it feature saying:

Reading List lets you collect webpages and links for you to read later. To add the current page to your Reading List, click Add Page. You can also Shift-click a link to quickly add it to the list. To hide and show Reading List, click the Reading List icon (eyeglasses) in the bookmarks bar.

The feature is currently hidden away in the latest OS X Lion build and no mention of the feature has yet been made by Apple in any of its announcements or documentation of Lion. One question certainly is about how robust the feature will be and whether it will become a service that synchronises the bookmarks across devices, including mobile devices. Marco Arment, the creator and developer of Instapaper, appears not to be to worrying about it so far and believes that “Instapaper would still have a market even if Apple implemented Reading List synced to iOS devices.”

[Via MacRumors]

When I first reviewed TweetMag back in December, I called it the “most beautiful Twitter app” for the iPad. Lots of things have changed since then, but I stand by my statement: the iPad 2 is now available and Flipboard went under a major update that refined the UI and added Instagram integration, yet TweetMag still holds up as a gorgeous way to consume Twitter as a magazine specifically built for the tablet. There are some similarities with the iPad app of the year 2010, Flipboard, but with the recent 1.1 update TweetMag takes another important step to become the most beautiful alternative Twitter app.

TweetMag 1.1 is faster. The backend was entirely rewritten, and you can immediately tell the difference in speed — especially on an iPad 2. Images load faster, tweets are parsed in seconds, content appears within moments after choosing a magazine from the top “rack”. The speed issues encountered by several users in the first version have been fixed, and rarely did I stumble upon wrong headlines or non-loaded images in TweetMag 1.1. There are still some minor issues here and there (1.1.1 update coming soon?), but this thing is simply faster now. The new system that powers TweetMag definitely shows its capabilities.

Two new features in TweetMag 1.1 allow you to create a magazine out of your favorite tweets (and consequently add tweets to Favorites directly within the app) and link to your Readability account to create a Read Later mag. We’re big fans of Readability here at MacStories, and full integration with the service is more than welcome. You can add articles to your reading queue or simply head over to the rack to check out your Read Later mag — made of articles you have saved in your online Readability account. Instapaper support is gone, but it might be coming back in a future update. We appreciate the developers’ choice to support publishers by adding Readability right into TweetMag — which still grabs links off any Twitter timeline to present articles in a uncluttered layout with great-looking typography.

Other new features in 1.1 include a Featured section with the top publications worth following, and the possibility to add or remove friends from the app. TweetMag is a $2.99 purchase in the App Store for a limited time, and it’s still the most beautiful Twitter app, now with a faster engine. Recommended.

Web service Readability announced a few minutes ago that, with an iOS native application still waiting for Apple’s second review, they are rolling out today a full-featured, mobile optimized web version of their reading tool. To use the new Readability on your cellphone or tablet, just head over Readability.com with your browser and save the website to your homescreen. Readability’s new mobile app is indeed an HTML5-based application that runs on iOS, Android handsets & tablets and a plethora of other devices available in the market.

Underneath the hood is…the web. Readability for mobile is a web application specially fitted for mobile and tablet devices. It’s a great example of what can be achieved by building apps on the latest web technology.

A final thought regarding our iOS submission: our overarching goal is to deliver the best possible experience to users of Readability. We re-submitted the Readability app to Apple along with an appeal approximately two weeks ago. We haven’t heard back yet.

Readability made the rounds of the Internet a few weeks ago when they announced a completely revamped service (based on a revenue split model with publishers of content consumed through Readability) and went public with an open letter to Apple about the rejection of their official iOS client for iPhone and iPad, heavily based on Marco Arment’s Instapaper (Arment is also an advisor to the company). According to Readability, Apple rejected the app because of the lack of implementation of app subscriptions — the ones where Apple takes a 30% fee off every subscription processed inside an iOS application. The company didn’t understand the rejection as, in their own vision, Readability isn’t a publishing app but a web service that aggregates articles produced by others on the Internet.

Readability’s move to HTML5 is interesting because they’re proving they can have a reading platform that works on a variety of OSes without being forced to go through Apple’s approval process and subscription policies. They’re relying on the power of modern open web technologies to deploy a beautiful application that works anywhere, anytime thanks to offline reading support. An app that also lets you quickly paste URLs to read articles in an uncluttered, elegant view meant for mobile devices. The Readability webapp also senses your device’s orientation and changes the on-screen graphics accordingly for an optimized reading experience. We can’t wait to try it out tonight.

As the team stresses on the company’s blog, this app was put together in two weeks. While it’s still unclear whether the native iOS client will go through the App Store’s gate or not, cheers to Readability for delivering what the service’s users were waiting for. (more…)

Three weeks ago, web service Readability launched a completely revamped version of its “read later” platform including support for Instapaper (Marco Arment is an advisor to Arc90, the company behind Readability) and a new subscription system that allows publishers of content consumed through Readability to get 70% of the fees paid by subscribers.

It works like this: you sign up to Readability as a reader paying a $5 monthly fee, but you can decide to pay even more if you’re willing to support the project. Once you’re ready to use the service, you install a bookmarklet in your browser that will save articles for later in an uncluttered view that’s perfect for late-night reading sessions and mobile devices. Yes, it really is similar to Marco Arment’s Instapaper. In fact, the developers announced that the first official Readability iOS app would be heavily based on Instapaper — which also happens to have introduced support for sending logs to Readability a few days ago. Instapaper and Readability thus have become two integrated platforms for reading content and sharing it with your friends — but Readability’s unique twist allows publishers (like MacStories, or any other weblog) to get a kickback for every article saved for later. It’s a genius approach no one ever tried before. (more…)

Readability, the Javascript library that stripped websites of unnecessary graphics and elements to provide the user with a simple, easier to read page, has today revealed the next step in it’s future. The ambition plan includes fundamental new advancements including; usage on mobile devices, saving Readability-enhanced pages, social features, a subscription service that supports writers and a partnership with Marco Arment’s Instapaper.

One of the biggest new features of the new Readability is it’s subscription service which is a new model that aims to give back to the writers and publishers that you read from. The subscription starts from $5 but can be as high as you want to pay, and 70% go back to writers and publishers, so obviously the more you pay the more goes back to the content creators. There will still be the basic Readability which does not require a subscription.

Jump the break for full details.

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