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Omnivore Alternatives
Omnivore is joining ElevenLabs which the blog post plays as a positive thing, but you have till November 15th to export your information before they delete everything. This has left people upset and looking for alternatives.
I’ve been using Linkwarden which you can host yourself but I pay a reasonable $3/month to use their hosted service. It saves offline copies of your articles and asks Archive.org to get a copy so each article has a 3 versions you can choose from when it comes time to view them. I would love better keyboard navigation and I wish you could filter by 2 tags at once.
Another nice looking alternative is Walabag which is also open source and you can self-host it. You can use their hosting service for 30€ which includes support or 11€ without support. Both seem like reasonable costs to me.
There is also Obsidian Web Clipper, Intapaper, Pocket and many other read later services.
I think that most of the hate for the Omnivore team is that they were running an open source app and then sold out to AI/VC money. I’m sure from their perspective the money was great and they’ve got families to feed and houses to live in, but with other open source drama going around people feel ripped off by the Omnivore team. They likely bought in because it was open source and believed in the idea of an open source option, then the rug pull happened.
Jill’s Actionable Notes
I’ve been loving Jill’s short practical videos, this one is on actionable notes. Part of me still wishes I could use my iPad as much as she does, but another part of my is not a big fan of Apple’s locked in eco-system and is very happy using Linux and cross-platform tools.
Either way, take actionable notes.
Deliberate Friction
I love deliberate friction. My current task manager is NVIM ORGMODE which I do not sync to my phone in any way. When I’m away from my desk I write stuff down in a pocket notebook because why should I always have my phone on me. It distracts me from important things like interacting with my family far more than it helps me.
On my phone I use Blank Spaces to remove as much UI as possible, but most importantly I try very hard to leave my phone on the counter instead of in my pocket. When I want to use my phone I walk over to the charging station and use it there, leaving it when I’m done.
One big thing I notice is how often the rest of my family is face down in screens instead of interacting when I’m the best version of myself and do this. It’s like when I stopped drinking at parties in high school and realized how dumb everyone was when they were drunk at parties. The world I live in feels different when I stay away from phone usage.