My Projects

My Experimental App, Myst

I have been a regular user of Pocket app (earlier Read It Later) for few years. One of the things that I have always wished the app had was a bit of analytics/numbers on how many articles do I have in queue, how much have I read, how am I doing with respect to reading, etc., and some engagement driving hooks that would prompt me to read more.

Unfortunately, Pocket’s roadmap never got it in their priorities and it never got done.

So, a few days back I decided to solve the problem myself by building this analytics by my own.

I started with Google Apps Script and managed to get some data in excel and prepare charts out of it. I had thought that I would build a Google Spreadsheet Add-on.

But later I felt that an app is a better way of checking this data regularly and to have engagement hooks.

So, I got to building a mobile app, and have now managed to make it live.

Here it is on the Myst on Google Playstore (Sorry, iOS folks. Maybe when I get some helping hand to build an iOS App).

It has the dashboard for Pocket, where you can see your reading trends, queue size and other such insights and statistics.

I must appreciate the way Pocket has offered their APIs and is encouraging people to build apps on top of their platform. After Pocket I have dabbled with quite a few applications so far, but most of them don’t seem to be offering APIs like this.

Etymology of Name

I call the app “Myst”. It is short for “MY STatistics”. Of course intention is also to clear the mist and mystery of users’ usage patterns of the apps!

Please give the app a try, and let me know how it can be improved.

What’s on the cards?

I am looking to add more apps’ dashboards in it. Would be making Pocket’s dashboard richer.  Would also add engagement hooks in due time.

Some screenshots from the app:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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