Pondr
Turn saved articles and RSS feeds into a printed magazine
19 followers
Turn saved articles and RSS feeds into a printed magazine
19 followers
Connect Instapaper or add RSS feeds. Pondr selects articles for one, two, or four hours of reading and turns them into a thoughtfully typeset personal magazine. Preview it digitally, then order a single printed issue or subscribe to a monthly reading shipped to your door.
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The idea of bundling my Instapaper backlog into a typeset magazine and getting it mailed feels genuinely novel. Really curious how the article curation handles longer reads when you pick the four hour option.
@yaarxnp5 Hello Yaşar
It's relatively simple. Each magazine size is essentially the article size cap, you can fill it with with a single article.
Beyond that, you have 3 simple options of ordering: oldest first, newest first or manual. And then there's Pondr curation, where I use Big Rock + Knapsack algorithms, and some added dramaturgy for ordering, to fill each issue as fully as possible and construct a reading curve.
Finally a way to actually finish my read-later pile instead of drowning in it. The typeset preview looked surprisingly nice, kind of like a real indie zine. Honestly tempted to subscribe just to see what shows up in print.
@tolga245243 Hello, this was my motivation as well and I am happy to report it's working! Plus I don't feel bad about writing notes inside and generally using the text.
You don't have to "subscribe" for monthly, try a single issue first. But imo the subscription is the magic, you keep saving articles on screen and once month they turn out printed at your door. The reading, even academic reading, moves to the leisure off screen time and feel great.
The typesetting looks way nicer than I expected, almost like a proper indie zine. Love that I can throw my saved Instapaper pile at it and get a four hour digest without curating anything myself.
@glayoow0 hello, thanks for checking Pondr out.
You are spot on: the typesetting is actually the product, the hard thing behind Pondr. While the rest of the code stays mostly the same, I've been manually reviewing every PDF before print and there's almost always an edgcase or two to improve with the new content.
I needed to make the typesetting fairly simple and generic to work with almost anything. Now I am looking how to start introducing some creativity.
Hello Product Hunt
I had years of articles saved and never got to reading them.
Over the last few years, most of my reading on my computer or phone got replaced by doomscrolling. I tried a bunch of tricks to get back to reading, but the only thing that really worked was printing the articles.
I ended up with a monthly printed magazine made from my saved links. It’s a physical thing with some presence, you can put it on a table, make notes, lend it to someone else or pack it up for your summer vacation.
I turned this into a small service and am opening it up to others. It currently supports Instapaper, RSS and Matter.
I would especially value inputs on distribution: where are the people reading long-form regularly and getting tired of screens? The magazine from your content is a deeply personal product. How can I build the trust over distance?
As a lucky owner of one such issue, I can only recommend it. I still run my read-later list at full speed, but I have a printed-only rule that goes with my morning coffee and this is a very nice hack. Give it a spin!