Omnivore

October 30, 2024
2 min read

We’re excited to share that Omnivore is joining forces with ElevenLabs, the leading AI audio research and technology company. Our team is joining ElevenLabs to help drive the future of accessible reading and listening with their new ElevenReader app.

Next, all Omnivore users will be able to export their information from the service through November 15 2024, after which all information will be deleted. 

Sometimes things just work out. While getting all my productivity tools in order, I’ve been exploring different read later apps in place of Readwise Reader. At one point, I actually chose the Omnivore app. It looked okay, it was fast, and free. I know everyone loved it because of the text-to-speech engine, but I don’t consume my articles like that. It still felt like a good fit for me. Until it wasn’t. I opened the app on the plane without an internet connection, and none of my saved articles were available. I was just happy that I didn’t migrate the whole list of articles. That was the end of my story with Omnivore. I picked Matter at the end and couldn’t have been happier. Especially now, after receiving this nice email. Sometimes free is not the best option; more often than not, you have to think about the sustainability of the service and company.

Saved For Never

June 16, 2019
2 min read

Some time ago there were no shortages for read it later services. Not it feels like only a handful of them left. There are Instapaper and Pocket, and built in Reading list in Safari. Those are big three that come to mind. I’ve been using such a service for a quite some time, going from Pocket to Instapaper and back a couple of times.

Last one, was when GDPR came into action, Instapaper just wasn’t working for European users. Such a negligence was unbelievable. Stories and information about GDPR were all over the Internet for a long time and not such a small company, that owns Instapaper couldn’t figure it out. So I’ve migrated all of the saved articles and videos to the Pocket and deleted my account. 

But that’s not the point of the story. The point is – when I open my list, I feel overwhelmed, there are tons of articles saved, some from the beginning of 2018. That got me thinking – what is the chance, that I will read the article or watch the video I’ve saved so long ago. I’ve lost the context of some of those articles. Surely there was a thought that went through when I’ve saved it, but I probably won’t remember it now. Nevertheless, I don’t delete such old items, I keep them with hope that some day I will have time to go through all of them. 

As you can guess, that will probably never happen. So I’ve decided to change my mind around it a bit. Now I look at my Pocket queue as an infinite source of articles and videos. Some of them short, some long – depending on the amount of time I have. Right now I can only hope that some day I will read and watch them all, but realistically speaking, I don’t see it happening any time soon.