Hands-On Tech 246 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Hands-On Tech, let's take a look at replacing a beloved app with something new. It's all about what to do when Pocket has left you. Stay tuned.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:23]:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Hands-On Tech. I am your host, Mikah Sargent, and as is my way, I am pulling your questions out of Santa's bag and answering them for you here on this bit of parchment I've rolled out from the bag. It says, the question comes from Kurt. Kurt writes in and says, my wife and I used to use an app called Pocket. It was fantastic. It would curate and offer articles. In addition, you could add articles to the app as you came across them, and then the app would read them back to you. You could load the library up with articles from any source and it would go from one to the next effortlessly.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:08]:
The best part was it was free. The app is gone. Are you familiar with this? Do you know of a good replacement? We miss reading articles from multiple sources. I do know about this, Kurt. So let's talk about what happened to Pocket. Where did you go? Pocket. So Pocket was an app that I actually used as well. I am very much a save it for later kind of person, much to my detriment a lot of the times.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:37]:
And so I will quickly find something that I like, pop it into at the time Pocket, and then hopefully go back and read it later. Pocket was acquired by Mozilla, the Mozilla Corporation, back in February of 2017.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:55]:
The app existed free and independent of Mozilla up until that point, and along the way, Mozilla made the decision to shut it down. It officially was shut down in July of this year. Leading up to July, the company stopped allowing new signups, stopped web access, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to prepare users for the fact that it was no longer going to be around. And yeah, as of now, it's not available as a, you know, an app that you can use to kind of keep track of things, read it later, et cetera. Now, here's the deal, Kurt. There are so many different ways of saving stuff that you read online for later, and I have used many a service for this. There's a great app called Keep It that I'm not going to be talking about on here because it isn't what you're looking for, but I just wanted to briefly mention it as one of the apps that I have used as a means of saving stuff. It was a stuff saver, not just an article saver, but there are built in, there's built in functionality for doing this.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:08]:
There are third party apps for doing this. So let's talk about some of the replacement options given what you're looking for. Specifically, something that has quickly become a darling in the Save it Later space is an app called matter. It's@getmatter.com we'll have a link of course. And it is a Read it later service that has the functionality that I think you're looking for when it comes to being able to find curated articles. So you talk about with Pocket, liking some of the suggestions that you would get. This has that functionality as well. It looks at what you read and then uses that to inform its own algorithm on what's to what's make available to you.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:59]:
Now it also has some text to speech capabilities. I've heard that when it comes to Matter, it is.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:11]:
It's sort of read it out loud system sounds really good.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:18]:
And because of that you will have something that is closer to human than you would get with other options. It is not just an app for kind of saving links. It'll handle, you know, articles from all over the web. Now here's the rub. You aren't able to get access to all of the features with a free tier. And so if you are, you know, wanting to make use of all of the features, including the more powerful voice text, or rather text to voice features, then I'm afraid this isn't going to be the thing that you are happy with because you do need to pay for it. But if you're looking for a really good replacement for Pocket,
Mikah Sargent [00:05:18]:
I feel like Matter is right there at the top of the list. It's just very good at covering all of the bases that you have. And it's kind of funny because if you go to the Get Matter website, one of the first things it says is like hello Pocket users. It's very much the people who were once on, who once used Pocket. One thing to be mindful of, and this is a really good point, Paul brings this up. Matter. Nothing like reusing a common name for making searching your product nice and easy. Yes, there are loads of different things that you might find when you're looking for Matter.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:00]:
So that's why I've got that direct link to it to find the Matter read it later service as opposed to Matter, the smart home protocol, which is an entirely different thing. Now that's Matter. Another option out there for you. Something that's been around for a long time and so has that staying power that you might Be looking for, you know, for me, when I'm looking for a service, I'm wanting to commit to something that's going to commit to me, be around for a while. And so that is where you might look at Instapaper. Now, Instapaper has changed over time. It has.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:44]:
Upset some users, it has not upset others. Excuse me. And so you may find that its opinionated kind of method of doing so isn't for you. The cool thing about Instapaper is that it really does a good job of making reading articles easy and sort of visually.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:12]:
Easy to kind of understand. What I mean by that is some of the read it later services will keep an article almost fully intact with lots of extra cruft. I think Instapaper does a good job of trying to just get you the content that you're looking for and leave it at that. Now, Instapaper has lots of integrations. It works with a lot of different services. You know, if you've got some, if you, if you want to read on your iPad and then like finish reading on your iPhone, bring it up on your computer, wherever that happens to be, this could be a great app for you. It's. It's got a free tier with the core features.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:50]:
If you want some of those advanced options, the text to speech functionality that like better sounding, those are going to require a subscription. So once again, it is subscription based. Again, this is kind of part of it. Right. Why do we think that Pocket went away? Well, it's an. It was probably an expensive service to keep going given that you have people constantly adding more and more to the service. It is, it can get costly to do, sort of a overtime, I mean a read it later system. And Pocket was very popular too, in a way.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:25]:
It had that going against it because of its popularity paired with a system that's like it's only adding more and more over time. Let's be real. How many people were actually going through their whole Pocket and removing old stuff? So I think that all of that together kind of made it difficult to keep around. And that is why paid services are.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:50]:
In some ways going to be a better investment, because at least you know.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:56]:
That that's where the money's coming from and that is what's making it last longer. Now, I've got one more option for you that we'll talk about next. A way to use what you've got to make it possible to do what you're asking for. To my dear friend Kurt, who's asked this question, have you heard us talk.
Mikah SArgent [00:09:19]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:09:38]:
So when it comes to, let's say you don't want to find a new app and you are using Apple devices.
Mikah Sargent [00:09:49]:
Apple has a built in Read it Later system in Safari by way of its reading list. And with the reading list it's sort of like a bookmarks bar but it's a special bookmarks bar that will keep track of your the articles that you have. Let you mark them as read or unread. Let you. And this is the big thing save offline. And so if you save articles to your reading list, they'll sync between all of your devices and then you can also set it so that anytime you save a new article there, it's saved offline. So even if you don't have access to the Internet, you are able to get to it. Now that's a big thing when it comes to being able to, you know, to use one of these Read it Later services.
Mikah Sargent [00:10:41]:
Now the cool thing about this is that Apple is of course we've talked about this a lot. A big accessibility company like that's, that's huge to what Apple does. And so because of that there, there's great built in functionality for being able to have your articles read out loud. If you go into settings Accessibility and then Read and Speak. That's what it's now called. It's had different names in the past I think like Read Aloud was one of the things. But Read and Speak is the current way. It is a means of being able to have whatever is on your screen read out loud and that functionality is actually integrated, integrated even deeper when it comes to the reading list.
Mikah Sargent [00:11:27]:
So if you are looking for a way to not have to add a bunch of extra stuff to your phone and again if you're looking for a free service then you can combine Safari's Reading list with the Speak screen or Speak article accessibility functionality, it's not going to give you.
Mikah Sargent [00:11:48]:
Not the requirement but the ask that you had of having curated articles provided to you. That is functionality that's going to require a third party service like Matter or another similar option. The last thing I want to mention in this category, if you're looking for a really good human sounding read it out loud, you know, text to Speech Option 11 Labs, which is very well known for its AI voice capabilities, makes an app called 11 Reader. And 11 Reader specifically is used to take a book, an article, a PDF, whatever it happens to be, and give you the ability to. To hear those read aloud. So you can check out the 11 reader app to be able to kind of listen back. Now it's got a free tier. You can pay more to get more.
Mikah Sargent [00:12:50]:
And it's kind of like a reset thing so you run out of credits, so to speak, to be able to use that. So that is 11 reader as one more option. Ultimately, Kurt, I like, feel. Feel like what you will want to check out first is matter and then go from there. Matter kind of hits all of those points for you and it gets smarter the more you use it with that ability to see kind of see articles from multiple sources. Great question, Kurt. Rest in peace, Pocket. We loved you.
Mikah Sargent [00:13:26]:
We hardly knew you, but I thank you so much for writing in with your question. If you out there have questions, you can get in touch with us. hot@twit.tv is how you do. So we'll be back again next week with one more episode in December of Hands-On Tech. But until then, it's time to say goodbye.
