instapaper:

The new Kindle feature is intended to replace the old one, not to supplement it.

The old feature generates a big HTML file every day or week for each user and emails it to Amazon’s email conversion and transfer service. This is the only way to get content automatically delivered to a Kindle.

Unfortunately, it’s extremely unreliable. Very few people use it, yet I think I’ve heard from nearly all of them at least once about missing deliveries and content never getting through. Some have been told by Amazon that they were filtering my deliveries. Some were able to have these filters removed. I’ve attempted to get in touch with Amazon many times, through both official channels and business connections, and have never received a response. It’s clear to me that Amazon doesn’t want me to continue doing this.

The new feature allows you to download saved articles as a .mobi file, readable directly by the Kindle if you transfer it via USB. It doesn’t involve Amazon at all, and therefore cannot be blocked, throttled, or delayed. It also now includes images from article content on many sites.

In addition to the massive reliability gains, it solves one huge problem: content duplication and flooding. I ended up turning off automatic deliveries for myself months ago because I was overwhelmed with a bunch of daily files with no idea what was in each one. And there’s no good answer to the “Include articles that have already been sent” checkbox — both options have problems.

The old feature, at this moment, is still technically operational. But over the last few days, I’ve received a huge number of reports from Kindle users who suddenly aren’t receiving their Instapaper deliveries, even when sent manually from Instapaper’s “Manage my Kindle settings” page. Even my own tests are spotty for the first time. I suspect that Amazon has finally done a blanket block on all Instapaper deliveries, so I’ve worked like crazy this weekend to finish and release the new feature to replace it. Unless something big changes on Amazon’s end, I’ll probably remove the old feature this week. I’m sorry about that, but I don’t think I have another choice.

I recognize that it’s not as automatic or convenient as the previous feature. I’ll work on ways to make it more convenient over time. And if I can work something out with Amazon in the future to re-enable automatic delivery, I’ll be happy to. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to make the new Kindle feature as awesome and convenient as possible.

This is great.