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Dear Corporate Megalith, Let my Poor, Tired Hands Guide You to Safety pt 1

Jim Kosem

Jim Kosem

— 2 min read

This is the new column (did I just write that?) where I give massively unsolicited, and potentially unwarranted, advice to some of the largest organisations in technology.

Mozilla Pocket

I use Firefox. I work with a dude who actually made a bunch of it. I somehow conned my wife into unwittingly chucking Chrome to the curb to use it. Free, open, privacy pushing, add-ons, all of that. Pats on the back all around.

I used to use Pocket. Pocket, if you were wondering, is a nice little thing, now owned lock, stock and barrel by Mozilla, that lets you save web pages so you can read them later. This means you can save the web page in a way nicer, reader-type view that also works offline on your phone. I don’t know who to pat and where. Part of the reason I use the past tense when I talk about my use of this otherwise fine product, is because I started getting confused where things should be and where I should be reading them. Why am I not using it anymore? Because the amount of hours I saved to read and never got to totalled roughly 3,457.65 man hours which I don’t have in my life. If only I did.

it looks really nice, works pretty darn good, but you know, too many of these sorts of things that save to read later where all of your best reading intentions go to die.

But, this very same functionality also more or less built into the Firefox browser on mobile (iOS and Android) but without the offline mode. So two things made by the same company let you save something for later.

Unsolicited Suggestions Which Would Clearly Result in Massive Stock Price Gains

  • Roll Pocket into Firefox and just have it as all part of the same thing. After all, why are you selling us two things? Why not make the browser as good of a reading machine as it is a application housing?
  • Have it actually readable, meaning not on a flicker-bound, eye-tiring screen, but on a eInk display that would also be open source.

There you are MegaCorp, I just saved you roughly US$286,000 in consulting fees. Now please buy me a coffee, for when I can go outside and actually buy myself a coffee. It’s cool, we’ll both wait.

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