Introducing Inkwell
Today we’re releasing a new RSS feed reader called Inkwell. It’s a companion product to Micro.blog, so you’ll sign in with your existing Micro.blog account.
Inkwell is a special take on RSS. It has many features you’d expect in an RSS reader, but it also adds integration with Micro.blog conversations and text highlighting. While reading a blog post, you can highlight passages to blog about later.
Inkwell is built around three main tabs: Today, Recent, and Fading. Today is for the latest blog posts. Recent is for posts yesterday or the day before. And Fading is for posts up to a week old. After a week, posts fade out of Inkwell, so you’ll never be overwhelmed with unread posts. If you missed them, it’s okay.
But Fading also comes with a superpower: Reading Recap. Reading Recap takes all of the blog posts in Fading — some you’ve read and maybe some you’ve skipped or just skimmed — and groups them together by website, summarizing what the recent posts were about. It pulls an interesting quote from one of the blog posts and includes it directly. It adds topics so you can tell at a glance what the blog has been focused on.
Reading Recap helps surface interesting posts in your subscriptions that deserve another look. You can also have Inkwell automatically send the Reading Recap in a weekly email.
(There are new costs for us to host Reading Recap, so it and the Fading tab require a Micro.blog Premium subscription.)
I’m excited to announce that a new version of Unread for both iOS and Mac is shipping today with Inkwell sync. Add an Inkwell account to Unread just as you would add Feedbin or other RSS sync services.
Jon Hays has also developed a new app for iOS called Silverleaf. This came together very quickly because Inkwell has an open API. I expect other apps to follow, including the official Inkwell apps.
Inkwell completes the suite of products that make up the Micro.blog platform. For nearly a decade we’ve worked on short-form posts, photo blogs, cross-posting to other social networks, and much more that encourages people to post on their own blogs instead of silos. And now we have long-form reading and discovery, integrated with the unique strengths of Micro.blog.
Can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks. Thank you!
P.S. While I’m working on a new video to introduce Inkwell, you can also watch this video I shared with beta testers. It’s a little out of date but still covers all the basics.
