MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Syncing Kindle with a very large Instapaper unread queue

madmaxmedia · 01-14-2011, 03:31 PM

Thanks jsulak for developing Wordcycler, it is much appreciated!

Like OP, I have a large backlog of unread Instapaper articles. I think there are basically 3 main factors for reading Instapaper articles on our Kindle-

1. Synchronization- to be honest this is not such a big deal for me, but is a nice feature.
2. Easy transfer of large article counts
3. Efficient organization on the Kindle- with a large article count, the last thing I want is 200+ files on my Kindle that basically overwhelm my regular book collection (making browsing impossible.)

To me, #3 is the biggest problem. IIRC, I read in the Wordcycler FAQ that there is no easy way to have Instapaper articles automatically dumped into a collection. I guess you can put your regular books into their own collection. I think practically speaking this is actually a good solution, but I'm having a hard time accepting it conceptually- to me Instapaper articles are a subset, not my books.

I think the same problem would occur with Instapaper automatically sending articles to your Kindle? (haven't tried that yet.)

If you download articles manually from the Instapaper web site as a mobi file, the articles are just combined sequentially in 1 big mobi file/document. That is okay, the problem is that there is no TOC generated, some way to skip to a specific article.

I have found Calibre's Fetch News feature to work better here, it combines articles into 1 file, but at the beginning you get a hyperlinked list of all the articles (not an actual TOC by structure, but works the same way.)

Anyway, just wanted to add my impressions so far. Thanks!

01-14-2011, 03:31 PM	#4
madmaxmedia Connoisseur Posts: 76 Karma: 510 Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Los Angeles, CA Device: Sony CLIE TG50	Thanks jsulak for developing Wordcycler, it is much appreciated! Like OP, I have a large backlog of unread Instapaper articles. I think there are basically 3 main factors for reading Instapaper articles on our Kindle- 1. Synchronization- to be honest this is not such a big deal for me, but is a nice feature. 2. Easy transfer of large article counts 3. Efficient organization on the Kindle- with a large article count, the last thing I want is 200+ files on my Kindle that basically overwhelm my regular book collection (making browsing impossible.) To me, #3 is the biggest problem. IIRC, I read in the Wordcycler FAQ that there is no easy way to have Instapaper articles automatically dumped into a collection. I guess you can put your regular books into their own collection. I think practically speaking this is actually a good solution, but I'm having a hard time accepting it conceptually- to me Instapaper articles are a subset, not my books. I think the same problem would occur with Instapaper automatically sending articles to your Kindle? (haven't tried that yet.) If you download articles manually from the Instapaper web site as a mobi file, the articles are just combined sequentially in 1 big mobi file/document. That is okay, the problem is that there is no TOC generated, some way to skip to a specific article. I have found Calibre's Fetch News feature to work better here, it combines articles into 1 file, but at the beginning you get a hyperlinked list of all the articles (not an actual TOC by structure, but works the same way.) Anyway, just wanted to add my impressions so far. Thanks!