> forlater is an email-based bookmarking service. You send us an email with a link (or links), and receive a readable, clutter-free version of the article in an email.
This is an awesome concise straight-to-the-point summary (which is harder to achieve than it looks).
> This is a “paid service” — you just pay how much ever you want via Liberapay. I insist that you try it out before you do; you can better gauge how much value you derive from forlater. It’s completely fine if you don’t want to pay too!
I don't really use cryptocurrency, but since you mentioned "push" donations -- do you perhaps mean something like Ko-fi? If yes, I've set one up at https://ko-fi.com/icyphox.
I kind of do the same with telegram (send to myself). Their clutter free instant preview is great if you trust their unclear business model. However, I love to see more of those convenience services around classical messaging (aka email)
I was considering adding the ability to specify /when/ you want the email delivered -- something like a weekly/whenever-ly newsletter, curated by yourself.
Hey HN. I decided to build forlater.email after frustration with existing read-later services. They all want me to create an account, or install an app.
Somewhat inspired by rss2email, I decided to build forlater -- a bookmarking/read-later service you can use via email. Send a link to save@forlater.email (subject doesn't matter!), and get a readable version of it in your inbox. Email is especially useful here because you can organize it however you like, and gives the you -- the user -- full control of your data, no account required.
I've been dogfooding it, and it's super handy. Here's what a saved page looks like on FairEmail (Android): https://x.icyphox.sh/B8J4o.jpg
Getting the HTML email template was surprisingly hard. You have to write HTML like it's 1999: <table>s and inline styling. For plaintext, I'm using the oh-so-handy 'lynx'.
Rest assured, you can be sure that forlater isn't going anywhere. It costs me very little (for now) to run, and I'm its biggest user. I plan to make it more self-hosting friendly and write some docs for the same.
OpenSMTPD and a small Go program I wrote: https://github.com/forlater-email/mdawh. Reads mail from stdin and sends a webhook to the mail processing/sending service.
I know that with the big transactional mail providers, it's important to use their services to ensure deliverability, however if your service is primarily inbound, is there any downside to forging your own path and running your mail server?
Asking because I'm also about to embark on an email-related product in a similar spirit to yours.
I'd rather recommend using a cheaper service like Amazon SES than running your own mail server. Email deliverability is complex and figuring it out may not be worth it.
The biggest problem I see is that this is going to (eventually) be used by spammers.
I can send a mail with a FROM anywhere with a link. That link will be advertising for something, and your service will mail it off to some unsuspecting person.
This means your mail server's reputation will end up being black listed everywhere.
Enforcing DKIM/SPF validation would help a lot (but not perfect). I verified that you are not currently doing any validation today. I was able to spoof my gmail address from my residential IP. You do not have very long to fix it before it gets abused.
I haven't played with the service like the other user, so I'm not sure whether this idea is viable.
You could send some sort of initial opt-in email to the recipient that would let them verify their desire to use your service. This combined with usual email validation should be good to keep spammers out.
Neat, didn't know something like this existed. They appear to have a restriction of 20 saves per month on the free plan, though. forlater doesn't, and will never, have a premium plan. :)
Took me a moment to realize that it’s “for later”, because we have a verb in Norwegian “å forlate” which means “to forgive”, and in one of its forms, it is called “forlater” (“forgives”).
Name is perfectly fine though, don’t get me wrong :)
I like the idea. However, I’m a big Pocket user and can’t help but notice that this way of bookmarking takes significantly more effort than sharing to Pocket or clicking on the Pocket extension.
What’s the benefit over Pocket outside of not having to install an app/extension ?
> I like the idea. However, I’m a big Pocket user and can’t help but notice that this way of bookmarking takes significantly more effort than sharing to Pocket or clicking on the Pocket extension.
Is it significantly more effort? I don't feel so -- and I used to use Pocket heavily before I built this. On Android, instead of clicking 'Add to Pocket' in the share menu, I just click on the 'save@forlater.email' email contact.
On desktop, I'd say it's about the same effort -- instead of clicking on the 'Add to Pocket' icon on the browser action bar (or whatever it's called), I click on the 'Save to forlater' icon instead.
It's just a matter of clicking send after that, in both cases.
> What’s the benefit over Pocket outside of not having to install an app/extension ?
You own your data. Probably not a big deal for you, but it is for me. Especially with the trajectory Mozilla is going in, I wouldn't be surprised if they punt the Pocket team altogether and call it a day. Also, I didn't really like the other stuff in the Pocket app: discover, activity, profile, friends/following; all that jazz. Just give me plain and simple bookmarking.
Further, I just really love email. Yeah, the protocol is old and its security is shit -- but it's ubiquitous. If it's been around for the past 50 odd years, I'm sure it'll stick around for another 50. Can you say the same about Pocket? ;)
39 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 88.7 ms ] threadThis is an awesome concise straight-to-the-point summary (which is harder to achieve than it looks).
> This is a “paid service” — you just pay how much ever you want via Liberapay. I insist that you try it out before you do; you can better gauge how much value you derive from forlater. It’s completely fine if you don’t want to pay too!
Love it. Such a great approach.
I like the idea of having a "push" donation system than a "pull" one.
Somewhat inspired by rss2email, I decided to build forlater -- a bookmarking/read-later service you can use via email. Send a link to save@forlater.email (subject doesn't matter!), and get a readable version of it in your inbox. Email is especially useful here because you can organize it however you like, and gives the you -- the user -- full control of your data, no account required.
I've been dogfooding it, and it's super handy. Here's what a saved page looks like on FairEmail (Android): https://x.icyphox.sh/B8J4o.jpg
Getting the HTML email template was surprisingly hard. You have to write HTML like it's 1999: <table>s and inline styling. For plaintext, I'm using the oh-so-handy 'lynx'.
Finally, it's all free software: https://github.com/forlater-email (or https://git.icyphox.sh/forlater)
Rest assured, you can be sure that forlater isn't going anywhere. It costs me very little (for now) to run, and I'm its biggest user. I plan to make it more self-hosting friendly and write some docs for the same.
Until then, thanks for checking it out!
https://mjml.io
Asking because I'm also about to embark on an email-related product in a similar spirit to yours.
But yeah, I'd really like to switch to running my own mail server and not have to use Mailgun. Maybe later this year.
The biggest problem I see is that this is going to (eventually) be used by spammers.
I can send a mail with a FROM anywhere with a link. That link will be advertising for something, and your service will mail it off to some unsuspecting person.
This means your mail server's reputation will end up being black listed everywhere.
Enforcing DKIM/SPF validation would help a lot (but not perfect). I verified that you are not currently doing any validation today. I was able to spoof my gmail address from my residential IP. You do not have very long to fix it before it gets abused.
You could send some sort of initial opt-in email to the recipient that would let them verify their desire to use your service. This combined with usual email validation should be good to keep spammers out.
Name is perfectly fine though, don’t get me wrong :)
Only the Google account surfaced the saved mail in the inbox. MS365 put it to junk. On iCloud it does not surface at all.
I like the idea. However, I’m a big Pocket user and can’t help but notice that this way of bookmarking takes significantly more effort than sharing to Pocket or clicking on the Pocket extension.
What’s the benefit over Pocket outside of not having to install an app/extension ?
Thank you!
> I like the idea. However, I’m a big Pocket user and can’t help but notice that this way of bookmarking takes significantly more effort than sharing to Pocket or clicking on the Pocket extension.
Is it significantly more effort? I don't feel so -- and I used to use Pocket heavily before I built this. On Android, instead of clicking 'Add to Pocket' in the share menu, I just click on the 'save@forlater.email' email contact.
On desktop, I'd say it's about the same effort -- instead of clicking on the 'Add to Pocket' icon on the browser action bar (or whatever it's called), I click on the 'Save to forlater' icon instead.
It's just a matter of clicking send after that, in both cases.
> What’s the benefit over Pocket outside of not having to install an app/extension ?
You own your data. Probably not a big deal for you, but it is for me. Especially with the trajectory Mozilla is going in, I wouldn't be surprised if they punt the Pocket team altogether and call it a day. Also, I didn't really like the other stuff in the Pocket app: discover, activity, profile, friends/following; all that jazz. Just give me plain and simple bookmarking.
Further, I just really love email. Yeah, the protocol is old and its security is shit -- but it's ubiquitous. If it's been around for the past 50 odd years, I'm sure it'll stick around for another 50. Can you say the same about Pocket? ;)