Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 1

Wallabag is a service for saving articles you find on the web to read later. It’s built on open-source software that you can run yourself if you want (but you don’t have to). Not as polished as Pocket, but you know it’s not using your saved bookmarks to train a recommendation engine!

Setup is a bit clunky, even using the hosted service at wallabag.it, and it’s not quite as good as Pocket at extracting the content of an article. This varies according to site, of course. Sites like this one that just show you the article will work better than sites that break into the middle with a 12-image carousel and a “sign up to read more…” dialog or a redirect through CloudFlare.

You can also export articles to various formats ranging from plain text to PDF or ePub. So if you have a super-long article you want to read on an e-reader later on – or a group of articles? Easy!

Feeds and Automation

Both incoming and outgoing feeds are supported. You can set it up to follow RSS/Atom feeds to add posts to your reading list. And in the website config, you can enable full-text feeds for unread, archived, starred, or all articles so you can read them in any feed reader. Outgoing feeds include any tags you’ve added, but not annotations.

This also means you can use feeds for automation: You can use another service to aggregate keyword searches, and as long as the results are readable as a feed, you can pipe that into Wallabag. Or you can use Wallabag as a source, using IFTTT to send your starred items to another bookmarks service, or build a linkblog out of articles you’ve given a particular tag, or create a draft post. You won’t want to just give out your starred feed URL, because all of your outgoing feeds have the same access token.

Another cool feature for automation is tag rules: Like custom email filters, you can create rules to automatically tag articles based on the title, estimated reading length, content, and various other elements. This is especially useful when following feeds.

Browser Integration

Chromium/Firefox Browser Add-Ons

Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers that support WebExtensions can use the Wallabagger extension to save an article from the toolbar. (Here it is at the Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-Ons.) It also lets you add tags if you want, and it can (usually) extract the content from the view you’re looking at, which helps with paywalls and login walls. (Otherwise the Wallabag service doesn’t necessarily have access to your logged-in view.)

This extension also works in [Orion] as a toolbar button, but currently can’t add itself to the drop-down menu on links.

Setting it up needs API keys, and the UI doesn’t make it clear when it’s actually ready to use. Once you’ve got it working, though, you can save it to a file and load that config in the extension on another device or browser. Mostly.

Safari Extension

Safari can use the Wallabag QuickSave extension (App Store), which is similar but just silently adds the page. You can always add tags later on.

Though I did have trouble setting it up on my old home MacBook: the setup window was twice as high as the screen, with all the fields way down at the bottom. I had to use the overview to see what field was selected, return to the window, type or paste, hit tab, repeat until I could validate my credentials.

Bookmarklet

Other browsers like Falkon can use the bookmarklet, which you can find on the web app in the “Howto” section under your account menu. (Here it is on Wallabag.it.) Though I find myself missing that drop-down option for adding a link directly instead of browsing to it first.

Mobile

The Wallabag Android app handles offline sync well once you enable the right settings. I have it set to run a “fast” auto-sync every 12 hours and on start, with the separate auto-sync for local changes, and the “deleted article sweep” after fast sync.

Not only can I read articles while offline, I can share a link from my email app to Wallabag while offline, and as with Pocket, it’ll add the article once the device is connected again. I’m still trying to determine under what circumstances it actually caches images, since I’m still seeing placeholders after enabling “Put article images in cache.” It also has a theme specifically designed for e-ink displays, which is a big help on the Boox Poke3 I use as an eReader.

Edit: One problem I didn’t notice until after posting this is that the mobile app doesn’t seem to have a way to manually tell it to try re-fetching the content of an article.

Text to speech is at least OK for listening in the car. I haven’t used it enough recently to know whether it has the same kinds of oddities in Pocket’s speech back in the day!

I assume the iOS app is similar at least, but I’ve never had the opportunity to use it.

I recently read a review of Frigoligo, another Android app, that has me thinking I should give it a try also. (TODO)

Other Apps

The website view works well installed to a desktop as a progressive web app (PWA) using browsers that support it. Links open in the app, which isn’t necessarily what I want all the time.

Linux Desktop / GNOME: Read it Later (on Flatpak) is fairly basic: It lists your unread, starred or archived articles and you can read them in the app. You can also add an article, or move articles between these lists. Links in articles open in your default web browser. Other than that, there’s no support for tagging, search, or any other features that would help you find a specific article if you’re using Wallabag for more than just “read this thing I saw yesterday.” On the plus side, it does seem to keep articles cached when you go offline, which would make it useful for Linux laptops, tablets, or your desktop if you live somewhere with unreliable internet access.

Some others that I want to try out, but haven’t yet:

KOReader: unofficial plugin (TODO)

Kobo eReaders: wallabako (TODO)

And lots more for various other platforms.

Import

In theory it’s able to import from bookmarks, Instapaper, and Pocket. It’s supposed to be able to import directly from Pocket, but you need to create a Pocket app, generate keys, and even then I haven’t gotten it to work. Sometimes it tells me it failed, sometimes it times out, sometimes it throws a generic 500 server error, and sometimes it throws this specific error:

500: Internal Server Error
Wallabag\ImportBundle\Import\AbstractImport::parseEntriesForProducer(): Argument #1 ($entries) must be of type array, null given, called in /var/www/wallabag.it/app2019/src/Wallabag/ImportBundle/Import/PocketImport.php on line 134

Maybe I haven’t figured out the permissions, or maybe I just have some really old data in there. I’ve been using Pocket since it was called Read It Later, and before Mozilla bought it.

For now I’m just reading from both and adding to Wallabag, figuring Pocket will eventually clear out. At some point I might try to move the backlog again, either directly or by exporting a file and then trying to convert it to the right CSV format for Wallabag to read.

I’ve been using Pocket for ages to offload “Hey, this looks interesting” articles from times when I really should be doing something else to times when I have, well, time. And when I say “ages,” I mean it: I was using it back when it was still called Read It Later, long before Mozilla bought it.

• It syncs a copy of the article to each mobile device, which means I can see something in the morning, save it to Pocket, then read it on my tablet at lunch.
• Feedly talks to it easily. Back when I used Feedly, I even linked it up with IFTTT so that tapping “Save for Later” on the tablet will add an article to Pocket. This also helped make up a bit for Feedly’s lack of offline access.
• Speaking of IFTTT and online services I don’t use anymore, for a while I had it set it up so that saving an article as a favorite in Pocket also added it to Delicious.
• The Android app will accept shares even if there’s no network connection, then sync up when it’s online. That means I can look over a newsletter in Gmail at lunch, save the links that look interesting, and archive the email. Then I can read the article at work or at home…or the next time I’m out somewhere, after it’s synced.
• Kobo eReaders can connect to Pocket and you can read your saved articles on something that’s actually designed for reading.

You can save pages to Pocket using a browser extension for all the major desktop browser types, including Chromium, Firefox and Safari. For others, you can get a bookmarklet from getPocket.com/add while logged in. And just share a URL or page to the mobile app.

Mission Creep

Over the years, Mozilla turned it into a recommendation engine. A lot of people only know Pocket as “that annoying thing that shows me sponsored articles when I launch Firefox.” These days I’m never sure how much they’re using my bookmarking to train that engine.

And while self-reinforcing algorithms geared toward engagement may be good for the dopamine hits (and a convienient channel to add sponsored articles), it’s not too helpful in the long run.

I’ve finally given Wallabag a try. It’s not as polished, but I feel more confident about what it’s doing with my data, and if I really want to, I can host my own server. Plus Wallabag still works on my Poke3 e-reader. I haven’t been able to get Pocket to log in on it since it stopped syncing and I reinstalled the app.

Speech Oddities

For a while I used the text-to-speech feature to listen to articles in the car while driving to and from work. Even in the mid-2010s the voice was fairly decent, despite the usual flat tones and lack of natural rhythms.

There were a few oddities, though:

• # is always read as “hash.” This makes it really odd for comics articles, which frequently talk about issue numbers. “Batman Hash 123” just sounds wrong.
• Italics are…always…emphasis, and presented by…pausing…rather than changing tone. This makes it…awkward…for anything involving lots of titles.
• It parses words, rather than using a dictionary, and can’t always figure out whether initials should be read individually or pronounced as a word. This usually works fine, but occasionally leads to phrases like “tah-kay-down notice,” (takedown) “link-uh-din” (who knew LinkedIn rhymed with Vicodin?) or “pohs terminal” (POS as in Point-Of-Sale) On the other hand, it figured out “I-triple-E,” so I imagine it’s got a dictionary for special cases.

They’ve probably been fixed by now. Probably.

Review History

Primarily a bakery, but they do coffee and tea as well. I usually end up getting one of their cream cheese and fruit filled croissants (blueberry or pineapple) or a danish, and my son likes their cookies. The one time I was here at a time to grab breakfast, I got one of their breakfast sandwiches, and it was really good too! Somehow I’ve never gotten around to trying their lunch menu. And one of these days I should just buy a loaf of bread or something.

There’s a decent amount of seating indoors and a couple of tables outside. Friendly service every time I’ve been. It shares a parking lot with Vons, so parking is easy. They don’t have WiFi anymore, and it’s not really set up for working on a laptop anyway, but sometimes when I need to be in the area on a workday I’ll still set up on one of their outside tables with a hotspot for an hour or so.

Notes

Gorgeous views from the trailhead, and I even saw a hawk just perched in a tree the second time I tried to hike here, but the trail downstream is closed and I couldn’t find the trail upstream on either visit.

Getting There

There’s a sign off of Montemalaga Drive across the street from a church. The upstream trail should be right by the sign, but it was too overgrown for me to find. It’s not clear whether you’re allowed to park in the church lot for hiking or not, but there’s plenty of street parking.

The trail itself isn’t on the PVPLC main map, just the reserve boundary. The website links to the Portuguese Bend PDF instead. It’s not on AllTrails as far as I can tell.

PVPLC does link to the trailhead on Google Maps, which shows another connecting trail on the far side of the church. Apparently the downstream end of the trail connects to Via Campesina and the upstream end connects to the Mossbank Trail, which conncets Basswood Ave and Mossbank Drive.

These days when I look for a specific eBook I’ll often check the author’s and publisher’s websites first, and see if it’s available from them directly. Or if they have a preferred source.

Here are some places I’ve bought, borrowed, or otherwise legally acquired e-books from:

Free (as in Gratis)

Standard eBooks focuses on making well-formatted books (review) from public domain sources, mostly from Project Gutenberg, and publishing them in major eBook formats like ePub.

Project Gutenberg makes bare-bones documents (review) of public domain material, but produces them in lots of formats including ePub, HTML, and even plain text.

Library Access

Libby and Hoopla both connect to your local library account, and you can check out eBooks and other media. Their mobile apps works well even on my eink tablet. Hoopla also has graphic novels and individual comics, and you can check movies out to watch on something like a Roku.

DRM-Free: Publishers

Dragonmount sells most of Tor’s publications, and Tor provides most (or possibly all?) of their books without DRM on (almost?) all digital bookstores. Yes, even the big ones. Ironically, while I have bought some books from them, I bought the Wheel of Time series somewhere else.

Argyll Productions is a small publisher. I’ve bought some of T. Kingfisher’s books from there, both in ePub and print format.

Apress and its sibling publishers offer science, nature and technical books with watermarking instead of DRM. I bought a C++ book from them a while back, but they’ve since been bought by Springer Nature, and the website is focused on research institutions and inconvenient for individual use.

Smashing eBooks focuses on web design/industry topics, and while I could swear I’ve bought from them before, I can’t find anything with a cursory search. It’s possible I’m just thinking of articles I’ve bookmarked, or books published elsewhere by authors who write for Smashing Magazine.

No-Starch Press publishes computer/tech books. I bought a Humble Bundle of their stuff a while back, but haven’t bought from them directly that I can recall.

Angry Robot and Subterranean Press are a couple more that I think I’ve bought from before, but nothing rings a bell.

A Book Apart used to publsh “books for people who design, write and code” in the tech and web industry, but they shut down in 2024 and returned the publishing rights to the authors.

DRM-Free: General

Humble Bundle always has at least one bundle of books available, using a pay-what-you-want model with the remainder going to a specific charity (or group of charities) per bundle. They’re not always DRM-free, unfortunately. Sometimes they’re codes to redeem at Kobo or some other bookshop. (Even more ironically, the Ursula K. Le Guin bundle last fall was one of these, including The Dispossessed.)

DriveThruFiction publishes a lot of indie comics, RPG guides, and small-press books. I’ve bought a few graphic novels through them, in PDF form, and most of those were Kickstarters that offered the finished products through DriveThru.

Smashwords also sells mainly small press. I think I’ve only bought one book from there, and it was a while ago.

See Also:

• Libreture’s Ultimate List of DRM-free Bookshops

General EBook Stores

Places that sell both DRM-encumbered and DRM-free books. Most of them sell ePubs, and most of them have their own mobile apps for accessing your purchases (including the DRM’ed books). Most of the apps work fine on my phone and Android-based Boox Poke3 eink tablet which is my preferred reading device, except where noted.

eBooks.com focuses on business ethics (review) and has a good selection. Books with DRM are readable on their website or on their app. The app is kind of bare bones compared to Kobo or Kindle: it stays out of the way and just lets me read instead of trying to sell me more books first!

Bookshop.org supports indie bookstores (review). You can designate a local shop of your choice to get part of your print or digital purchase. At first they only sold print books, but they finally added eBooks in January 2025. The selection’s comparable to eBooks.com, but their app just doesn’t work right on the Poke3. At least not yet.

Kobo is a solid alternative to Kindle (review), from the eBook selection through apps and hardware. The app works well on my eink tablet without too much tweaking, though it still wants to sell me more books before I can open the one I want to read.

Barnes and Noble’s Nook ecosystem is like Kindle, but I’ve only ever bought a couple of books on there to see how the app works on the Poke3 (it’s fine). By the time I started looking for a non-Kindle system, Kobo was partnered with IndieBound and Nook was just another silo.

I haven’t used Google Books in ages, or Apple Books much at all, so I can’t really say much about them except if you’re looking for alternatives to Amazon, you’re probably also looking for alternatives to Google and Apple.

Kindle, of course, is owned by Amazon, which has been the subject of so much criticism over the years that the Wikipedia article is 32 pages long when exported to a PDF, plus another 38 pages of reference citations. I won’t go into detail, because if you’re ok with Amazon in general or Kindle specifically, you probably aren’t reading this page anyway (or stopped early on). But most recently, the item that prompted me writing this list, they’re holding a giant discount sale during Independent Bookstore day.

A conicidence, I’m sure. 🙄

See Also:

• Where to Buy Books Other than Amazon
• Ethical Consumer: List of Ethical Bookshops