I use instapaper for articles I really want to read. The tilt to scroll is amazing. It might be my favorite way to read.
Instapaper gives you your saved links when you have nothing else to do (e.g. commuting), and this makes a huge difference.
Oh, Wired. Continuing to destroy your credibility by insisting that a single client among dozens is a killer application if you use a certain website in a certain rare use case.
Twitter is the #13 site globally according to Alexa. Does that mean that a Blogger app would be more of a killer app than a Twitter app? What about a MySpace app? MSN? Windows Live? Google? If I told you that the iPhone's killer app was a Google search, wouldn't that sound stupid?
But Wired isn't just saying that. They're saying that Tweetie, one of a hundred Twitter applications, is a killer app and that the other applications aren't. Furthermore, Tweetie is a killer app if you use Twitter with multiple accounts. That is an incredible weird rare fringe thing. I'd bet most Twitter users have a single account.
Now do you want to attempt sarcasm again? Because I'll warn you: Not only do I know more about what I'm arguing than you do, I'm a better snarker than you, and I will tear you to little fucking pieces.
I remember when I joined HN and routinely felt dwarfed by the intellectual discourse here. Now I say something and the response is likely as not bullshit like yours. I feel so goddamn old.
Instapaper's popular items
Not a big deal I suppose, but this is perverse to the point of obnoxiousness. This is slanderous, when you think about it.
But I find the way that ReadItLater works inside Firefox to work well - the fact that it's an icon on the toolbar, showing me how many unread things I have is kinda nice.
Is there a way to block this app or have it generate just a link instead of a full-text version of the article that lacks all the advertising?
I use Camino so it's happened to me once or twice. I used the history listing to find them again (camino lists both the first and last visits to a given URL, a bunch of URL grouped together with identical last access and first access widely different both from one another and the corresponding last access points to the URLs loaded the last time I launched the browser e.g. after a restart)
Audio from the talk will be available on http://2009.dconstruct.org/podcast/ soon.
Filtering information is not a new idea at all.
As for "discourse", well, I've been active here for a while and lurking for longer, and my first impression was that HN was a site that syndicated TechCrunch articles. Took me a while to realize there was anything other than an echo chamber here, and I'm still not entirely sure about that.
I've already responded to this. Wired implies that Tweetie is a killer app if you use Twitter with multiple accounts. That's an edge case even among Twitter users, and Twitter is not an enormous web site. It's like saying the Facebook app is a killer app because it's gorgeous and provides near-full site functionality right now. It is, and it does, but say I'm writing an article about an app that I'm claiming "justifies" your entire app purchase. It doesn't help me look serious when I go on to say "Oh, also this one Twitter application is just as justifying. Seriously, accessing Twitter like this is as important as being able to store and read articles offline."
just as I expect that people who believe in the myth of the Wonderful Hacker News Comment Community will downmod all such comments into oblivion
It's not the sarcasm that isn't welcome. It's the sarcasm when dealing with subjects worthy of discussion. You know? Here we're talking about something that's provoking a good deal of debate, so your sarcasm is actively harmful to the discourse. If we were talking about some ridiculous subject, then sarcasm is totes coo'.
As for "discourse", well, I've been active here for a while and lurking for longer, and my first impression was that HN was a site that syndicated TechCrunch articles. Took me a while to realize there was anything other than an echo chamber here, and I'm still not entirely sure about that.
Shit like this isn't even snarking. It's just you being an asshole. Come on. We're all venerable old men here, we can afford some courtesy.
Additionally, I see nothing wrong in them pointing out Tweetie, even though it is one of billions. Design and user interface is a very important layer to take into account, especially with these iPhone apps, and Tweetie's design is very intuitive, in my opinion. Design has much to do with an app being killer as its underlying technology.
The iPhone is killer, but when Wired is making the argument of "Instapaper justifies your owning an iPhone", it hurts the argument a lot to add "just as much as this Twitter app will". Tweetie is nothing ultraspecial. Instapaper might be. It hurts to compare it to a web site client.
The funny thing is that ubernostrum joined HN just a few weeks after you did.
There's no point in having a social network button when you can't reach Digg or Reddit to submit or to vote. There's no point in having a blank space for an ad, if the user doesn't have a persistent internet connection that can be used to retrieve the ad to show on your page.
And because this is an iPhone or an iPod touch, the screen space is still limited. This means: Only having the text of the site - the essential content - is the goal for the end user. For the end user, this is very much preferred to displaying the entire webpage and zooming back and forth (while ignoring ugly empty spaces for ads that didn't load). Or maybe your ads are in flash and just won't load at all, because they can't be displayed.
I can't disagree with your right to make money from ads. I can only point out my right to not want to waste bandwidth (which can be expensive if going over the limits with the iPhone, on AT&T at least) in order to display useless content that does't contribute anything to the item I wish to read. And I can ask you to revisit your stance on Instapaper. Because as a consumer of content, presumably someone who you may potentially target, your stance seems irrational.
While I can certainly see why someone would want to use Instapaper and that it clearly has a lot of benefits for the user, that doesn't change the fact that their app operates in a grey area of copyright infringement.
Just because something is practical does not mean that it is therefore legal.
But ad-supported pages are equivalent to selling newspapers in giant heavy boxes, where you can't just get the newspaper, you have to take all the crap in its box. Well what if you don't want to carry a whole box? What if it would take you 10 times as long to bring the newspaper home by carrying the box? Would you not be tempted to rip open the box and just take the paper? Or, tempted to just go away, and not take the box or the stupid paper? At some point, the obnoxious mechanism outweighs the value of the content.
Instead, there could be a stack of papers on a table, with a cup and a sign "please deposit 50 cents". Some people will take a paper and leave nothing. Others will leave 50 cents. Still others will leave a buck or two, because they want to. You might even see people drop off a new stack of papers for you, and not care if you get the cash. Maybe somebody else sees your stuff (because it's not locked in boxes), and that leads to other opportunities. So maybe it isn't "fair" that some people pay more than others, but this is certainly does not spell doom for the content provider.
Like I mentioned earlier: I'm not as informed in copyright law as I would like. Would you mind pointing out to me where this is a grey area? Since I'm personally an American citizen, where - in the US Code, the DMCA, or some other law that we have - is this a grey area?
By encouraging use of InstaPaper (or its ilk) with longer articles on your site you may just find that it improves your readership.
Yes, and by allowing users to share MP3's of your songs you may find that over the long run your listenership is improved.
Nonetheless, under current (US?) copyright code, reformatting documents by stripping out 'extraneous' advertising and saving them in a different format for later use is flat-out illegal. This may not make it 'wrong', and certainly does not make the app any less useful, but I think the OP's point stands.
Really? Would you mind pointing out where in the US Code or the DMCA (or whatever else you're referring to) that says this? I'm not as knowledgeable on copyright as I'd like to be; need to start learning more somewhere, and this seems like a good place.
Consider ripping your CDs so you can play them on your MP3 player. Legal. Selling those MP3s? Not legal.
Instapaper * Have link blah.html * Download blah.html * Don't parse, don't worry about any built-in links * Display
Now realize this has NOTHING to do with a derived work or copyright infringement. I'm merely choosing not to download and display some parts of published content, saving bandwidth which I'm paying for!
You are right that ripping a CD (that you own?) to MP3 for personal use is covered as fair use. This was established relatively recently in RIAA vs Diamond Multimedia[1], a case that primarily decided that the Rio was legal because it _wasn't_ a digital music recorder. But it also stated "the Rio's operation is entirely consistent with the Act's main purpose -- the facilitation of personal use" and that "Such copying is paradigmatic noncommercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act".
But simply transforming a musical recording into a different format isn't quite a parallel example, as the goal is usually to make a complete copy. I think a closer parallel would be recording a television show with the ads clipped out. While 'time-shifting' is held to be legal (under Sony vs Universal), if you save a version with advertisements removed, you may well have created a derivative work.
I think Tivo is probably a pretty close example. While I don't think there has been a precedent setting case yet, it's probably worth noting that Tivo does not allow its users to automatically skip advertisements in the shows it records, despite the fact that this would be a popular feature with users. They no longer even have a button on the remote to allow the ads to be skipped easily.
For example, a law review article[2] titled "The TiVo Question: Does Skipping Commercials Violate Copyright Law?" reaches this simple conclusion: "Using a DVR to skip television advertisements violates copyright law, and DVR manufacturers should be contributorily liable. By providing a means for television viewers to skip advertisements, DVR manufacturers deny television networks the intended incentive for their creative expression--advertising revenues."
I've only skimmed it, but the article provides a lot of useful background on the relevant arguments and case law.
[1] http://www.virtualrecordings.com/diamond.htm
[2] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=901062
The TiVo Question: Does Skipping Commercials Violate Copyright Law? http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=901062
Please don't mistake my opinion here on what the law is for my feelings on what the law should be. It sounds like a great app. I'd be very happy to proven wrong, and to find that the copyright law regarding such matters is more user friendly than I've been led to believe.