Tech Archives | The Digital Reader

Instapaper is Charging for Premium Once More – The Free Ride is Over

7 August, 2018 // 0 Comments

One of the first things that Pinterest did when it bought Instapaper from Betaworks 2 years ago was to make Instapaper's premium service free for all users. Now that Instapaper is independent (and [Read More ...]

Gutenberg, WordPress, & You: the What, the Why, and the How

6 August, 2018 // 1 Comment

If you have a WordPress site, chances are you have heard of something called Gutenberg. You could have seen one of the posts written about it over the past 18 months (such as mine), or you may have [Read More ...]

Come Join my Facebook Group

5 August, 2018 // 0 Comments

I've mentioned this in various places on social media, but I don't think I've announced on the blog that I officially launched my Facebook group last month. It's called The Help Desk, and it's a [Read More ...]

Germany’s Weltbild Launches an eBook Subscription, Also Reminds Us Why Amazon is Winning the Book Market

1 August, 2018 // 7 Comments

The German retailer Weltbild has offered its customers a limited ebook subscription service via its stake in Tolino since last November, and now it is launching an even more crippled version of [Read More ...]

Twitter Will lock Your Account If You Change the Display Name to “Elon Musk”

26 July, 2018 // 4 Comments

I just found a 100% effective way to cut back on my time wasted on Twitter. In what is very likely a response to scammers impersonating the South African billioniare, Twitter is now automatically [Read More ...]

How to Download Audiobooks from Google Play Books – DRM-Free!

23 July, 2018 // 4 Comments

When Google started selling audiobooks in Play Books back in January I was quick to dismiss their service because the audiobook experience was simply awful. It was so bad that I concluded "Google [Read More ...]

No One Wants to Own Instapaper

17 July, 2018 // 9 Comments

Originally launched by Marco Arment as an iPhone app, the save for later service Instapaper was sold to Betaworks in 2013, who then sold it to Pinterest in 2016. Now Instapaper is being spun out as [Read More ...]

How to Tell How Many Followers You Lost in the Great Twitter “Purge” of 2018

13 July, 2018 // 3 Comments

In what is being widely mis-characterized as a purge of fake users, earlier this week Twitter started removing "locked" accounts from the follower counts belonging to active user. According to [Read More ...]

Do You Still RSS?

11 July, 2018 // 66 Comments

The fifth anniversary of the passing of Google Reader went largely unremarked in most circles, but there was some coverage on Techdirt and other sites (Wired even called for a revival of RSS). RSS [Read More ...]

California’s GDPR-Lite Bill is Signed Into law

29 June, 2018 // 1 Comment

California just passed a law that is going to cause a lot of binge-drinking (and possibly mass resignations) at US tech companies in the near future. Assembly Bill AB-375, appropriately referred [Read More ...]

Goodreads’s New Android App is Faster, Smaller, and Also Makes Julienne Fries

26 June, 2018 // 1 Comment

Following several weeks of public beta testing, Goodreads has launched a new Android app. Try the new Explore page, where you can browse books trending on Goodreads, new releases hot off the presses, [Read More ...]

BookFusion’s New Calibre Plugin Lets You Sync Your eBook Library With the Cloud

25 June, 2018 // 5 Comments

If you keep your ebook library in calibre, and you want an easy way to sync it online with your mobile devices, may I recommend that you look at BookFusion's new calibre plugin. BookFusion is an [Read More ...]

Google Launches a Podcast App for Android

20 June, 2018 // 5 Comments

There are currently more podcast-playing apps than you can shake a stick at, but that's not enough for Google. In its bid to collect as much data bout you as possible, Google has launched its own [Read More ...]

Kindle Unlimited Funding Pool Rose in May 2018

17 June, 2018 // 1 Comment

In spite of cheats like Chance Carter, the third largest ebook market in the world continued to expand in May 2018. Amazon announced on Friday that the Kindle Unlimited funding pool total $22.5 [Read More ...]

Microsoft Edge Browser for Android Now Claims to Support eBooks

12 June, 2018 // 4 Comments

Launched in October, Microsoft's Edge web browser for the Android always struck me as a product that was released so MS could check off another box, but it looks like I was wrong. Microsoft released [Read More ...]