Show HN: I created an app to make my online reading experience easier

Show HN: I created an app to make my online reading experience easier(q.mimicrylabs.com)

61 points by k-i-r-t-h-i 5 years ago | 32 comments

gnicholas 5 years ago |

How do you see this differing from services like Instapaper/Pocket? I have used both and definitely think there are areas available for improvement, but I'm just wondering what you're targeting. Congratulations on what you've built, and good luck!

BTW, I found the layout of the website to be a bit confusing. Perhaps in the side-by-side portion, there should be some sort of divider? Or better yet, one column with a simple tab/toggle above the mobile/desktop segment so that someone can see how it works on one or the other?

Also, thanks for thinking of user privacy here. It definitely makes me more likely to use the services, and I think it was very clever of you to create a dummy account that HNers can use.

k-i-r-t-h-i 5 years ago | |

I used to be a pretty big user of Pocket myself! I think it works really nicely as a bookmarking tool meant for archiving and aggregating links / resources. I realized what I wanted was something to help me get through my reading queue / content.

I mostly made Q(ueue) to be focused around my reading experience, instead of my collecting experience. I wanted it to be really easy to find that next article (which is why it's based around a queue). The browser extensions were meant to make it super easy to add things or retrieve the next entry and just start reading.

> BTW, I found the layout of the website to be a bit confusing. Perhaps in the side-by-side portion, there should be some sort of divider?

Yea, I think the main page needs a bit of rework for simplification. I think the tab/toggle approach would be nice - let me see if I can add that in to make it nicer!

> Also, thanks for thinking of user privacy here. It definitely makes me more likely to use the services, and I think it was very clever of you to create a dummy account that HNers can use.

Thanks! I really dislike having to create accounts for apps too, so figured it'd make it easier for other people as well. There was another commenter that mentioned it would be easier to just allow local offline access. I think I'll try giving that a shot soon - the dummy account isn't too scalable / will get swamped with content too quickly in the long term anyway.

(I haven't tried Instapaper yet, so will have to check that out in more depth before I can comment on that.)

Terretta 5 years ago | | |

Does feel optimized for low friction ambiently available reading queue, a touch less like Instapaper or Pocket, more like “Reading List”?

https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/keep-a-reading-list-s...

ashishb 5 years ago | |

Pocket is on the death bed. Instapaper is good but last I checked they didn't let you create an RSS feed. I ended building a readbility viewer with an RSS feed for personal usage.

input_sh 5 years ago | | |

> Pocket is on the death bed.

What makes you think that? Happy Pocket premium user here. The product staled a bit for quite some time, but it received a large-ish update in January and they've posted this at the bottom of the changelog:

> We’ve also made significant changes to our underlying codebase so we can make more rapid improvements in the future.

That definitely doesn't sound to me like it's anywhere close to being killed.

ffpip 5 years ago | | |

> Pocket is on the death bed. Instapaper is good

Instapaper is more dead than pocket is. Their android app hasn't been updated since June 2019 [0].

[0] - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instapaper...

Pocket works great, even on the free plan. The apps have a beautiful UI and it is fast.

scpedicini 5 years ago | | |

Huh, what's your reasoning for this? I've been using Pocket for practically a decade with zero discernible issues. The Pocket app on iOS also works great.

jamil7 5 years ago | |

Anything in particular you miss? One of my side projects is something similar to Instapaper/Pocket, it doesn't see as much love as it probably should but brings in a little money.

gnicholas 5 years ago | | |

I think Pocket used to remember my place when I was reading an article, and I find that it no longer does. This is a big problem for long articles. Also, the margins in their web app are enormous, and look ridiculous on iPhone. I've talked with their support about this, but here we are years later and it hasn't been fixed.

Instapaper is definitely coasting right now, and as far as I can tell they haven't made any substantive improvements in half a decade. The reader aspect doesn't necessarily need to change in that timeframe, but the web has changed, and they should be integrating with new/different things to stay current.

dominotw 5 years ago | | |

I use pocket on my ereader. I see a lot of ghosting and slowness sometimes. Not sure if there can be an low power eink version.

k-i-r-t-h-i 5 years ago | | |

What's your side project (if you don't mind sharing)? Would love to see other projects in this space!

kossTKR 5 years ago |

Your site has not worked for a few hours?

k-i-r-t-h-i 5 years ago |

Hey HN!

Long term lurker here - hoping to share my side project, Q.

Like most people reading this, I normally start my day off by going through the first few pages of HN, finding articles I'd like to read. If your experience has been anything like mine, you probably also open up a bunch of tabs, read a few, and eventually close the rest (especially if Chrome is eating up all your memory!). It's pretty much the same process with other websites I visit as well.

I built Q(ueue... heh) to make my online reading life easier. I wanted a simple way to add and read articles while on my computer, so I made a browser extension that lets you do things with just keyboard shortcuts (Pressing "Ctrl+Shift+Space" adds my current page, while "Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow" fetches the next article in my queue - I can also right click add, which I find helpful when browsing HN).

In order to pick up where I left off with my phone, I created an app (on iOS only for now) that makes it really easy to add (via the share thingy) and read articles. You can even set it to open up articles in reader mode which I find gets rid of a lot of visual clutter on most pages (and annoying ads).

I've been using it for a few months now and have been quite happy so wanted to share Q with the community as well.

At the end of the day, this is really just an extremely minimal bookmarking app fine-tuned to how I personally wished they worked. I really hope you find Q useful as well!

I collect the bare minimum to create an account (username, email, and password) but I understand people might not want to create an account.

Here is an account you can use if you want to try it out first: email: hackernews-demo-user@gmail.com password: hackernews

Would love any feedback or suggestions on things to improve! You can also reach me at mimicrylabs@gmail.com as well.

Website: https://q.mimicrylabs.com/

Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/q-by-mimicry-...

Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/q-by-mimicry-labs/...

iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/q-by-mimicry-labs/id1552578757

bonestamp2 5 years ago |

No offense, I just wanted to provide some feedback. The black text on the pinkish background of your site was too hard on my eyes and I had to close your site. I don't have any vision disabilities that I'm aware of and my monitor has been color calibrated.

k-i-r-t-h-i 5 years ago | |

Changed the text color to be white now, so hopefully it is a little easier to read. Let me know if you have any issues or feedback!

k-i-r-t-h-i 5 years ago | |

Ah, sorry about that! Was trying to keep it on the dark mode side, but I may have gone too far in that direction ha - let me see if I can change the color scheme really quickly to be at least white for the text!

jraby3 5 years ago |

This looks great. I just downloaded the iOS app. I always end up with multiple windows open in safari and then eventually lose some of them, so this seems to fit my needs perfectly.

Loved the layout design. Looking forward to trying it.

k-i-r-t-h-i 5 years ago | |

It sounds like the app crashed a little while after you downloaded it (I was asleep so didn't notice). Please try it again when you have a moment! Hoping you find it useful as well.

Darmody 5 years ago |

I don't really like Pocket but this is great. No more pinned tabs with stuff I want to read later.

Cypher 5 years ago |

It don't work

k-i-r-t-h-i 5 years ago | |

Sorry! Just brought it up back. Had some issues with the load earlier earlier. Please check out it out again when you have a chance!