ReadItLater.com now getpocket.com....please login? Again?

2012-04-30T18:22:00.000-04:00

Here's a little tip I finally figured out!

I was having trouble with ReadItLater (which has changed to "Pocket". Not sure right off how that would be a MORE descriptive name than before, but I digress as always...)

The summarized symptoms of the problem: I am using Chrome (doesn't matter which version I don't think) with the "Read It Later" bookmarklet in my bookmarks bar. It used to work, then one day, broke. I would be on a page I wanted to "read later" (not "pocket") but when I click the "ReadItLater" bookmarklet, it gave the message, "Please Login". Well, that's reasonable...until I went to readitlater.com, logged in, came back to the tab with the page I wanted to read later *cough* not pocket *cough* then tried again to use the bookmarklet. Same result... Please Login. So I did, again, even though the readitlater.com page already said I was "Logged In" at the top. Then tried to login again, because hey, the other page said to so of course you should do what it says, right? (That's your first lesson, non-computer-people. Just because the computer says a particular error, it's only guessing at it too. If what it SAYS doesn't seem to fix it, it's probably just wrong about the exact cause of the problem. Digression!!)

Okay, so I tried all of the regular things...refresh the page, shift-refresh the page, kick the monitor, buy new monitor, all the stuff that usually works, or at least gets a newer better bigger monitor past the wife. No luck. And of course, nothing on the [no-]help link on readitlater.com other than half a dozen other people with the same symptoms, none being answered by a readitlater.com person (and certainly not a getpocket.com person), and some being answered by people who say it's working for them so therefore, it should be working for you too. Like I said, no-help.

So that's the lead-in to the bombshell we'll end with here.

Google Chrome | little wrench icon | Settings | (left-side menu) Under the Hood | (Privacy section) Content Settings | (Cookies section) Block third-party cookies and site data

I had previously at some time since my last successful login to readitlater.com (now getpocket.com) set Chrome to "Block third-party cookies and site data". Well, there ya go. From the page that I wanted to send to getpocket.com ...err... readitlater.com, the "Login" cookie that is set by readitlater.com is a third-party cookie. So, the only pages that would know you're logged in to readitlater.com would be pages ON readitlater.com itself. Any other page is not allowed to read the cookie that says you've logged in on readitlater.com. So the solution is to click the "Manage Exceptions..." button in the Content Settings in Chrome, add readitlater.com in the text box at the end of the list, and set the dropdown box next to that to say, "Allow".

There is no Save button for this setting. It's automatically saved, applied, and live when you set it. Of course, you wouldn't know that since it doesn't tell you that, and the standard Windows convention is to always have a Save button when you change things, but....well Chrome at the time of this post is only on version 18...point something.

But wait...there's more. That was a couple of months ago, when the site was readitlater.com. Today I tried the bookmarklet, and again it wanted me to log in. I figured, fine, it's been a while so my login from before must have expired. Wrong. Same crazy loop of logging in and it telling me that I need to log in. The reason is, they changed their name from "readitlater.com" to "getpocket.com"! So guess what...now getpocket.com is a third-party cookie issuer on any web page other than getpocket.com! Hence, now we have to go into the "Manage Exceptions..." setting again, and add getpocket.com with "Allow".

Now you know why I've been obsessed with pointing out that readitlater.com mysteriously changed their name to getpocket.com. It's not just idle chatter, it's actually the whole point of the Login to getpocket.com problem.

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ReadItLater.com now getpocket.com....please login? Again?