In what is plausibly a new trend, there are two online services that say they can “compress knowledge”. Or words to that effect. In today’s world of way too much knowledge…it seems at times anyway…first rate curation could be extremely valuable. Not just the google search link, which is sort of a greatly improved version of the library’s card catalog…a “knowledge compressor” would find, at that link, the crucial pieces of knowledge we “need” IRT.
Wikipedia is good, but even smarter curation is better. Hopefully future “knowledge compression” will be smart enough *AI* to not put blinkers on our awareness through finer and finer focus. Human intelligence is dependent on a broad context as well as a narrow focus.
From a review at Quora.com by Andrii Shekhirev
- Library. At the time of writing, Blinkist offers 2200+ titles, while getAbstract has 5000+ (for the cheapest premium plan). However, there’s a catch: the latter has its library divided into topics, and some of the most popular ones, like leadership, management, sales, finance, and economics, are not included into the above plan – you can access them only in the Pro version, which will set you back $300 per year. On the variety side, however, getAbstract wins hands down when it comes to language versions of the summaries – Blinkist is currently only available in English and German. Winner: DRAW (it depends)
- Pricing. The least expensive premium plan on Blinkist is currently $50 (or $35 if you apply this promo code), which includes everything important except for the possibility to listen to blinks. The respective getAbstract plan is $59 per year, and, as mentioned above, it offers a limited version of the library and also doesn’t allow you to get the audio versions. Winner: BLINKIST
- Interface. This is quite personal, so read it with a disclaimer that it’s strictly my own opinion 🙂 I’d say I’m divided here, since I like Blinkist’s modern design more, but getAbstract offers some nifty features that the former doesn’t have at the moment, for example multi-dimensional ratings for summaries and a more structured personal library. Winner: DRAW
- Mobile. Both have apps, of course, which are both very fine and usable. I’d say getAbstract’s is a little more elaborate one, but if you like simplicity, then Blinkist is your thing. Winner: DRAW
From a review at Quora by Paul Galante
I’m am using Blinkist and its absolutely amazing. I have my highlights linked up to Evernote and I can even read on my kindle. Not to mention there is audio playback as well. To good to be true, my favorite app of all time.