Looking for feedback on my new side project - Email This
Hello IH,
I've been working on a new side-project for the last couple of weeks. It is a small "email me this article" service called Email This.
If you've found an interesting article or webpage but don't have time to read it now, you can use Email This to remove ads and distractions from the page and send you an email with just the text/images.
Here is the URL: https://www.emailthis.me
I have also written a bit more about it here - https://hackernoon.com/introducing-email-this-send-ad-free-articles-to-your-email-inbox-for-later-reading-5a5c972b98f1#.4dpzftfr5
I was hoping you guys could share your thoughts and critiques.
Thanks!
Beautful landing page and nice idea! How are you stripping all ads? Is it a manual process or automated? Also, how will you monetize?
Thanks! Article extraction is an automated process. I am using Mozilla's readability library. If that fails (Content security policy, or if it takes too long to load), I have a fallback option in my backend that pretty much does the same thing (using Elixir language).
For now, there is no monetization plan because I made it primarily because I felt a personal need for it. I am thinking about trying out a donation based service. Maybe a campaign on Patreon.
Good luck! Really great stuff!
Bharani, loved the simple landing page.
Emailthis would be handy and a cool tool.
Interesting idea. Maybe try marketing to people who use Pocket?
Also, do you have a template that you used for the landing page? Looks great!
Thanks.
No, the landing page is a custom design. I'll see if I can open source it.
I've open sourced the email template though - https://github.com/EmailThis/typographic-email
Yeah that would be awesome. The landing page looks great and I'd love to use it as well.
Solid idea (just registered)! This is perfect for someone like me as I email myself webpages from both my laptop and phone on nearly a daily basis, so that I can read them on my daily commutes.
A few quick things I'd like to comment on:
I sent a link to myself of a Reddit thread and found it didn't include the contents of the thread. I'm not sure if you're going for universality in that all kinds of websites can be stripped and sent to one's email, but wanted to call this particular instance out.
Something similar occurred when I tried to send a myself a page that was one of your typical Buzzfeed style posts, with lots of images and texts; I only received the opening blurb.
I wanted to bring these to your attention. I'm happy to test this out further for you if need be!
Thanks.
Investigating the issues you pointed out shortly.
Mozilla's readability library is pretty solid but it fails at certain pages. I'll try relaxing the settings a bit to avoid missing any important article text.
I like the idea and will probably try it. My current solution, prior to this was to keep multiple tabs open on my mobile browser, which I eventually go back to read, and then use Safari's reader mode to remove the clutter.