Best practice currently to get a single NY Times article to an e-reader offline?

[avid01]

The NY Times offers 10 or 20? free articles per month (the Google hits confuse me for these numbers), in all fairness, I don't read that much NY Times in a year, however in whichever browser (and from whichever IP) I'm trying, it simply redirects me to this page: https://myaccount.nytimes.com/ - without mentioning any quotas. I'm trying to get a simple article from 2013, if that matters. (I'm not sure: do they just want me to create a free account which gives me access to this one old article? I don't know, the page doesn't tell anything.)

Anyways, the last time I remember I tried some magic to get a NY Times article to my Kindle (was about a month ago), it wasn't as simple anymore as it used to be. My 3 offline options I use to get any article to my Kindle, one of the 3 use to work:

- Save complete web page, import to Calibre (works 98% of the time, even worked on the older NY Times, too, not the new one)

My two failover modes:
- The GrabMyBooks browser plug-in - the result is not always satisfying. Sometimes it is.
- Copy the text from the web page, paste it to a LibreOffice Writer document, export to ODT, import to Kindle - It's far from being perfect on some fancy web page layouts, which the new NY Times site is.

I don't want to wait a month or so for this article (and I'm not even sure my quota is the issue, but I don't read the NY Times that much, barely at all), the first question is: let's say I want to instruct a friend to get this article to me from his IP and browser setup. Which of my above 3 methods work best for simply getting the article in ebook format from the current version of the site? For the question to remain geeky enough, let's forget about any mobile apps, just the web as input, and an ebook file as output.

Second, I'd truly appreciate any nice reader with a subscription (if that's the missing link at all!) to send me the article here in the topic, or in PM, I'd truly appreciate it, but even if we go the second route, the first question is still an important question in general, for the 2% of sites which don't work with my preferred web to ebook method.

[PeterT]

Sent you a PM with what I think is the article. I was not able to get it thru the NY Times website, rather I used a database that the Toronto Public Library subscribes to called "Infotrac Newsstand".

[frahse]

A favorite quote of mine is "where there is a will, there is a way."

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (in the movie at least) used "where there is a "whip," there is a way." Nice little song by Glenn Yarbrough on the way to Mount Doom, in 1980.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-tjJDFfjQw

[Nate the great]

I would save the article to Instapaper, then move it to a certain folder. I have IFTTT set up to snag anything in that folder and email it to my Kindle account.

Setting it up was a bother, but it's worth it sometimes.

[GtrsRGr8]

I don't know if this will do what you are wanting to do or not.

I use an extension to my Chrome browser called PrintWhatYouLike. What it does is basically snip a webpage. Then, you can print it. I've got a print option to print to PDF. I am not computer-savvy at all, but I assume that your ereader can read PDF's.

I went to news.google.com and, at random, picked out an article. It happens to be from the Washington Post. I saved it to PDF and attached it to this message.

One nice thing about PrintWhatYouLike is that you can, before printing, quickly delete parts of the article that you don't want. For example, at the bottom of this article, you could have deleted all of the "comments" section.

Hope this will do what you want to do. If not, maybe someone else will find it helpful. I just love this little extension.

ADDENDUM: I just remembered that it probably would be a violation of copyright to attach the copy of the article. Anyway, you can try it out for yourself.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by avid01

The NY Times offers 10 or 20? free articles per month (the Google hits confuse me for these numbers), in all fairness, I don't read that much NY Times in a year, however in whichever browser (and from whichever IP) I'm trying, it simply redirects me to this page: https://myaccount.nytimes.com/ - without mentioning any quotas. I'm trying to get a simple article from 2013, if that matters. (I'm not sure: do they just want me to create a free account which gives me access to this one old article? I don't know, the page doesn't tell anything.)

Anyways, the last time I remember I tried some magic to get a NY Times article to my Kindle (was about a month ago), it wasn't as simple anymore as it used to be. My 3 offline options I use to get any article to my Kindle, one of the 3 use to work:

- Save complete web page, import to Calibre (works 98% of the time, even worked on the older NY Times, too, not the new one)

My two failover modes:
- The GrabMyBooks browser plug-in - the result is not always satisfying. Sometimes it is.
- Copy the text from the web page, paste it to a LibreOffice Writer document, export to ODT, import to Kindle - It's far from being perfect on some fancy web page layouts, which the new NY Times site is.

I don't want to wait a month or so for this article (and I'm not even sure my quota is the issue, but I don't read the NY Times that much, barely at all), the first question is: let's say I want to instruct a friend to get this article to me from his IP and browser setup. Which of my above 3 methods work best for simply getting the article in ebook format from the current version of the site? For the question to remain geeky enough, let's forget about any mobile apps, just the web as input, and an ebook file as output.

Second, I'd truly appreciate any nice reader with a subscription (if that's the missing link at all!) to send me the article here in the topic, or in PM, I'd truly appreciate it, but even if we go the second route, the first question is still an important question in general, for the 2% of sites which don't work with my preferred web to ebook method.

The article in question is Where Are the Graduates of University of the People?

Since you have a Kindle, you can use the Send For Kindle plug in for Firefox. (this works if you can get to the article in a browser) I just tried it with the article in question, and it worked quite well.

Shari

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I don't know if this will do what you are wanting to do or not.

I use an extension to my Chrome browser called PrintWhatYouLike. What it does is basically snip a webpage. Then, you can print it. I've got a print option to print to PDF. I am not computer-savvy at all, but I assume that your ereader can read PDF's.

I went to news.google.com and, at random, picked out an article. It happens to be from the Washington Post. I saved it to PDF and attached it to this message.

One nice thing about PrintWhatYouLike is that you can, before printing, quickly delete parts of the article that you don't want. For example, at the bottom of this article, you could have deleted all of the "comments" section.

Hope this will do what you want to do. If not, maybe someone else will find it helpful. I just love this little extension.

ADDENDUM: I just remembered that it probably would be a violation of copyright to attach the copy of the article. Anyway, you can try it out for yourself.

There are also a couple of other Chrome extensions that you might try. I haven't vetted them enough to say how well that they work. They are "PageZipper" and "Web Clipper."

Also, I am not yet an EverNote user, but seems that I read that you can clip an entire webpage and save it via that app.

Again, I'm not sure if these are the kinds of solutions that you're looking for.

[avid01]

Thanks for everyone reaching out to me in PM! The part of my question dealing with the actual article is solved.

@Nate the great
Instapaper can only send to a Kindle account (meaning, I need Wi-Fi, and an actual Kindle account set up), but not to an ebook file (ePub or Mobi)? That would be more neat.

@GtrsRGr8
The Chrome browser can actually print any web page to a PDF, without any add on. And most e-readers are notorious of not being the ideal devices for reading PDFs.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by avid01

<snip>
@GtrsRGr8
The Chrome browser can actually print any web page to a PDF, without any add on. And most e-readers are notorious of not being the ideal devices for reading PDFs.
<snip>

Yeah, print-to-PDF apps proliferate. I have at least three listed as devices on my print device menu. The page basically ends up looking like you had scanned it in--it is identical, or nearly so, to the image on the screen.

PrintWhatYouLike, PrintFriendly and others do that, but go an extra step. They make it quick and easy to delete anything superfluous or that you otherwise don't want. That is where they "shine." Then, you can save that cleaned-up image.

I remember now (I don't own an ereader, per se) that PDF's don't render well on ereaders, at least generally speaking. Sorry for forgetting that and giving you a lot of unhelpful information.

Seems like I remember an application that will do what you want to do, but again, I don't own an ereader, so I don't have any real reason to keep up with things like that. But, I can guarantee you that there is an application somewhere, in English, that will do exactly what you want to do. Maybe not a commercial application, but a shareware or freeware app. There are just too many people out there who love to code (Ack!) and are writing shareware or freeware just for the fun of it (Ack! Ack!) Hope you can find it soon.

[jj2me]

I just tried saving a random NYTimes article using dotEPUB, which allows the option of saving to epub or mobi.

Unfortunately, it didn't capture anything above the first advertisement, which amounted to four paragraphs missing. (It captured the rest of the article, 30 more paragraphs.) Same outcome whether I saved to mobi or epub.