Have you found yourself running out of time to catch up the news? Would it be fun if we can save site for offline reading later in our free time? Would it be even more fun if we can read it as PDF or print it so we can read it in real touchable paper?
I’ve been dreaming about it recently. Lucky us, that “save it for later” service has been implemented by LaterLoop. Using laterloop we can save a page for later reading. We can even download the pages as ZIP file (consisting of text only pages) for offline reading as well. However there’s still some feature missing. We can’t choose which one we want to take offline. The only option available for offline reading is 30 recent entried, 30 random entries and 30 oldest entries.
While LaterLoop for sure will update their service to support nitpicking offline entries, why not taking it ourselves to the next level? We can create a simple site to convert our laterloop list to PDF, readily printable on paper. My wish getting stronger after reading copyblogger and Bokardo. Special for Bokardo, I found it hard to understand his writing in one shot. I can see his interesting point but to fully understand it I still need to read it a few more times. So it’d be trully a blesing for me if I can have it in paper so that I don;t have to open my browser to read it. For some occassion, paper is still suitable. Eg: bedtime reading (I don’t want my mac book air — if I have any — to be crush when I fell asleep).
So what do we need to augment laterloop? We’ll actually we don’t need to limit ourselves to laterloop only. The reading source can be obtained from anywhere. So what next would be building the converter of (rendered) HTML to PDFs. I can see konqueror can do this, and I’m sure there are many libs/apps to fill this job. So, technically it’s very feasible.
Monetizing plan? Well, ads is once again no-brainer. Printing service will be premium, and the ads here would be premium as well. Ads can be targetted and the best part it’s there forever printed onto paper. This would be magazine 2.0. Printing service itself can be varied; hardcover; monthly or weekly subs, auto create based on source (eg: RWW, Scobleizer, etc), auto-create content base on popularity (RSSMeme, TechMeme), or even based on alert from google alert. The best part is it’s on demand, no stocks, everyone any taste can be covered.
It’s a bit like Lulu, no? Yes, it’s like Lulu. No, we’re magazine, we are newspaper, we are books, we are the new media! No, we are printing agency 2.0
Photo by FelipeArte