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Granary.pro – Beyond Bookmarks and Read-It-Later (granary.pro)
40 points by wantaek_lim on April 4, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 49 comments



This post is more like a first impression of the service.

This service interested me since it looked like it would be able to automatically add tags to links that I already had in pocket. But doesn't do this, but I thought I would share my thoughts.

With the uBlock Origin extension enabled on Firefox, clicking on the "Sign up free with Google" button does nothing. When searching for links I would expect that my own links would appear first rather than "Search results on Granary.pro". You should be able to move items to their folders from the search interface.

For the English version of the web site I suggest you find a native English speaker to review your content. Specific sentences that have issues are:

"If you stop importing the file into Granary.pro before complete, the processing will be stopped."

"Or do not you wonder where the web page you saved in Bookmark or Evernote is located?"

"Do you imagine the files that filled your PC desktop?"

In the help section: "How to delete my account: You may not use Granary.pro at any time. If you deletes the account, If you deletes the account, Granary.pro deletes all data associated with the account as well as the account, and the user can no longer use the deleted account."


Thank you for your detailed and friendly reviews and I wrote a brief answer below.

Unfortunately, we do not extract tags for links already stored in Pocket. However, if you save the link to the service, it will automatically extract and store your search terms.

It looks that uBlock is blocking the popup requesting third party authentication for sign up. We will solve this problem with developers.

We set the order to emphasize "Search results on Granary.pro" rather than my own links.

We will review “move items to their folders from the search interface” and apply them in near future.

I will get a review from a native speaker as soon as possible.


The uBlock issue is quite annoying indeed, would love to give it a try without adding exceptions to uBlock.

Also, extracting tags for links stored in Pocket would be very useful. There may be tags you can't extract. E.g. I've tagged a bunch of things as "work". Please add that functionality to your Pocket importer :)

Other than that, I look forward to trying it out! I find Pocket too limited, would love something that's more powerful.


We will try to find out if the uBlock issue would be solved by the way you mentioned. We will also check if it is possible to extract and save the tags of Pocket.

We improve Granary.pro, based on various user feedback, until it is the best. Thank you.


I get that web developers need to accommodate their audience, but uBlock blocking things you actually do want to see is more a uBlock problem than anything else.


Thank you for your advice and interest and We will concentrate on uBlock troubleshooting.


I like where this is going with search-term focussed history, but after the first two points your website copy lost me. I imagine that is crucial to convincing your audience because up until that point, use-it-later hadn't really been established on the page yet.

Then we get to this section, which I find is incredibly vague:

> Make a note related to a saved link [.] Simply make a note of your thoughts on the link you saved. For example, you might want to note where this link will be used, how it will be used, and what is important.

I feel like you need to improve the specificity of both your iconography and your copy in order for your audience to understand what your product is.

I wish you luck and hope that you can make it more clear what you are trying to achieve because it seems as though it could be unique!


I appreciate for your warm interest and advice. I will take a careful look at what you have mentioned.


Sorry from the homepage I don't understand what it is. How does it differ from conventional "read it later" services?



Thanks - so the main perk seems to be searchability and some social networking? Would be great if I could sample the search functionality before signing up.

Must admit I am not 100% convinced I need it - bookmarking sucks, but in Firefox I can use tags. Not as good as full comments on bookmarks, but sufficient to organize links by subjects.


Thanks again. The following blog will tell you why we created granary.pro. https://medium.com/@blog.granary/why-we-created-granary-pro-...


Perhaps you might explain your USP on your landing page instead of needing to cite two blog posts not linked from there!


Good point!! We will review your advise carefully, and then may change something on the landing page in near future. Thank you for your warm interest and helpful advise.


How is this different from using google keep with tags?


In that kind of a service Privacy Policy is a must (at least for me). Emptiness of this page alarms me: https://granary.pro/privacy


I was just going to say, it's refreshing to see an HTML page that renders without the help of JavaScript.

The page you linked to, however, disappointingly does require JavaScript to execute in order to show text.


That exactly was the first link I clicked, then closed the site not to come back. Privacy is a thing.


The reason why the privacy policy is simple is that Granary.pro has very little personal information (Gmail address, username, links and notes, etc.) and does not use it commercially.


The links & notes I save are private to me! It's crucial that you guarantee you'll treat that info with the privacy it deserves.


We definitely agree with you. Privacy protection is our top priority.


This is how Privacy Policy page looks on my computer: https://anonimag.es/image/JT9sncB


Can you tell me which browser and version did you use? And also let us know the default language on the browser. I will try to find out the reason why.


Chrome, Firefox and Safari newest versions on macOS 10.12 with Polish language as default.


I am sorry about reply so late. I will contact you again after looking at that issue.


Here are my first impressions. This has some pretty serious usability issues when compared to pocket, and I'm not 100% convinced it does more, even digging into the blog notes.

Let's start at folders. The folders appear to just be categories and are exactly the same as a tag except an item can only be in one folder. This is a limitation, not an improvement. When the word folder is used, I expect that there is some way to nest items and other folders within a folder. As it is, I can "tag" or "categorize" items into one section.

In the UI, I found myself having to click A LOT. Creating ~4 "folders", I had to focus the dialog box to type every time I hit "new folder" and then click again because pressing the enter key did not submit the dialog form. I should not have to use my mouse to focus dialogs that pop up and I should not need to click to dismiss them.

Another UI woe is in mass item management. I imported my pocket bookmarks and now they're all in an unclassified "folder". I don't see any way to mass-select links and move them into categories. There is no world where I would waste my time moving items one by one to categorize.


Thank you for your deep interest and comments.

First, it is not allowed to put other folder within a folder because the service was created as simple and fast as possible. If many users ask us to support ‘other folder within a folder’, we will improve it.

Focus or Enter key issues will be improved soon.

It will take some time to select multiple links at once and move them into a folder, but it will be improved.

Thanks again.


I'm a Pocket user. I'm using it everday and it is my only bookmark-saver app. Anyway, I think the next innovation should be related to timing or reminding previous posts. Sometimes, I forget to read what I have saved before. It would be really good, If this thing could analyze my workload somehow and show me a notification or something when I'm not busy. This would be super cool.


Thank you for your feedback.

It would be nice to give an alarm for reminding you at the appropriate time. We will put it into the long-term plan of our service.


This reminds me of https://pinboard.in more than anything


I was seeing pinboard.io just yesterday. I save my bookmarks in DevonThink using the full webpage stored in the computer.

I now want to move completely to Linux but DevonThink is MacOS only and I was searching for something like DevonThink on Linux.

Nothing came up so the next best thing seems to be pinboard.io... but the truth is, unless I pay the premium service for archival (and then continue paying that without stoping every year to keep them archived and rely in a private service that can just be terminated at any moment by its developer) I really don't see any diference between using pinboard.io or using Firefox bookmarks.

Am I missing something here?


You can get archival with https://historio.us/ for free (with the trial account).

Disclaimer: I wrote the service.


Reading down the page, granary.io does not save page snapshots, and does not provide fulltext search.


I wanted to try it, but it requires a chrome plugin to save websites. Removed my account instantly.


We can not delete your account. Please delete your account by yourself from https://granary.pro/help > "How to delete my account".


- Does save the whole page/article in case it goes offline? (preferably time-stamped for citations)

- Does it allow full text search?


Granary.pro is a service that is started to find materials to refer to on the Internet and manage them systematically. Especially for writing documents.

I am sorry that it does not save the whole article and does not provide full text search. However, if we have user requests, we can assist these features in the near future. Though insufficient, you can leave an important part of the article in notes and search for them.

For more information, please refer to the blog below. https://medium.com/@blog.granary/available-in-granary-pro-fo... https://medium.com/@blog.granary/why-we-created-granary-pro-...


I was wondering about that. The problem is that sites change, or even disappear. For stuff that matters, I bookmark and print to PDF. Maybe that wouldn't scale. But it would get around needing account information.


Please see this blog post. https://medium.com/@_shankarganesh/why-no-ones-going-to-buy-...

"Quality content on the web exists forever. I don’t think NYTimes is going to die any soon, neither is Kalzumeus or the Nieman Journalism Lab. These sites are going to live on forever, it’s not like they forget to renew domains every year. If they dabble a bit with the URL structure, it’s pretty easy to dig back the content I love by just Googling for the relevant keywords."


Well, I guess that it depends on what "quality" you're after. It's not uncommon, for example, to see pastes taken down within hours. Much interesting stuff is ephemeral.


I agree with you, but Granary.pro is focused on IMPORTANT articles rather than interesting things so far. :) Anyway if we have a lot of user request, we will assist these features in the near future.


I like it but please enhance the translations, I don't need to see it in both Korean and English at the same time.


We are sorry about your inconvenience.We will ask that native speakers will review English sentences and improve them to become natural English.


Anything that Pocket doesn't have? Also, the free version seems to hold only 2000 items.


We are sorry that the explanation of the landing page is insufficient or not intuitive. Please see these blog posts.

https://medium.com/@blog.granary/why-we-created-granary-pro-...

https://medium.com/@blog.granary/available-in-granary-pro-fo...


How can you move one link from one folder to another?


Please click on the link you want to move and then drag and drop it to the desired folder.


Which version of QT does this require? :)


It seems to be related to development, I don't know what QT is because I'm not a developer. I will ask developer team tomorrow morning and give the answer if possible. It would be nice if you let me know what QT stands for.




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