A knowledge management tool is a tool that allows you to store and organize important information. These tools also help you quickly share information, keep track of your knowledge, and spark innovation in your mind.
There are many knowledge management tools on the market that stand out from the crowd,Glasp, Ereading.
While Readwise is one of the more popular options, it's not the only option. Glasp quickly comes from behind and can even outrun Readwise at times. Each tool has a different approach and product philosophy. Before you decide, I will compare these two products in detail to provide you with a lot of information to help you make a better decision.
Overview of Glasp and Readwise
Glasp
Glasp is a "social web bookmark" for the desktop. That means you canhighlight web contentB. Web Articles, PDFs, Kindle and YouTube. And your knowledge is shared socially in the community, so others can learn from you as you learn from others.
Glasp supports several ways to export your content as a file, for example.html,.md,.png, E.TXT.
reading
Readwise is a knowledge management tool focused on importing and exporting digital content. It has several integrations with other apps like iBooks, Instapaper, Kindle, etc. and lets you import and export your collections like notes, highlights, tweets, etc.
If you've ever used a highlighter for the best quotes or emphasis, Readwise does it for you digitally.
In order to understand the two apps well, this article will explain their features based on the following categories:
- How to collect content,
- Supported Devices,
- export options,
- How they help users learn and manage knowledge,
- AI resources, E
- Unique features
How to collect content
Knowledge management is a place where information is collected and organized. Therefore, all knowledge management tools have common and unique ways of collecting information.
Glasp
Glasp offers two ways to collect information on its platform. The first way is to highlight the web content itself. And this is its main feature. With the desktop browser extension, you can highlight web content such as web articles, PDFs, and YouTube videos, and add notes to each highlight and content.
The second option is to import from Kindle. If you spotlight on Kindle ebooks, you'll get plenty of spotlight on Kindle devices or apps. Glasp allows you to import Kindle highlights and notes into Glasp and organize your highlights there. You will also need a browser extension for this process.
Although they accept a lot of content from the web, there is one thing you need to know: you must do this manually. It makes sense if you create bookmarks yourself, but they don't support the automatic import of Kindle apps that some other apps do.
reading
They also offer three ways to collect information. The first option is to import from other applications. And this sets them apart in terms of the number of applications supported.
You can import highlights from Kindle and Apple Books, web highlights from Medium, Pocket, Instapaper, Hypothesis, Feedly, Raindrop, tweets and podcast transcripts via Snipd. And once you connect to the apps, Readwise does it all automatically.
The second way to collect information is to upload files. You can upload My Clippings.txt (Kindle Highlights), emails, PDFs and printed books with images.
And finally, you can highlight web articles with your browser extensions, like Glasp does. They can tag categories with each highlight and see it on their platform.
Supported Devices
As a user, one of the most important things to know is which devices you can use. Because it directly determines what you can do and affects productivity.
Glasp
Glasp is a desktop highlighting tool and you need a browser extension to highlight or import content. So in terms of gathering information, you should do it with the desktop. They currently support browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi.
However, to see your knowledge or the knowledge of others on the platform, you can see it using any device such as desktop, tablet or mobile.
It doesn't have a mobile or tablet app right now. According to its website, an iOS mobile app is in development.
reading
You can use a web app, a browser extension on a desktop, and a mobile/tablet app to collect information. And to view your content, you can use any browser on a mobile, tablet, desktop and mobile/tablet app.
The browser extension works on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave and Safari. And the mobile app is available on the App Store and PlayStore.
export options
There are many concepts for knowledge management. One thing that Glasp and Readwise have in common is that they are not permanent places where all knowledge is stored or organized.
Both work in the middle tier of the knowledge management workflow. They are not a place to discover information or store all knowledge, but rather the place where content is collected from various sources and exported to various formats and applications.
Glasp
Glasp supports three ways: export as file, copy and paste, and integration.
Your highlights from web and Kindle content are exported as files, for example.TXT,.html,.csv,.md, E.png. And you can export all highlights at once and one by one.
The second option is simple copy and paste. Once you're done highlighting or importing the web content, you can click the "Copy Content" button on the webpage or browser extension. It copies all the highlights and notes you've made, as well as metadata like title and URL.
Glasp supports integration with Readwise. You can submit your web content and Kindle highlights to Readwise. This process is not automated, so you must do it manually when highlighting.
reading
Readwise supports two forms: integrations with other applications and export as a file. As for exporting notes, you can do it for Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, Roam, Logseq, RemNote and Mailbrew. And once you plug Readwise into those apps, it's automated. You don't need to export them every time you add content.
You can export your knowledge as a file. They have two formats such as.csvE.md.
How they help users learn and manage knowledge
In the paragraph above I mentioned the similarities between Glasp and Readwise, but in this section I present the difference in philosophy and approach between Glasp and Readwise. And this is the most striking point of these two knowledge management platforms.
Before getting into the differences, I want to point out their similarities, which capture the two and keep the highlights. I think the highlight is that moment when something comes to mind.
Something is unnecessary to understand at this point, but it says something important or resonates with your mind. And later, as you review or organize the highlights, they connect to information in your head and become knowledge.
It takes time to convert information into knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary to save something that caught your filter. At this point, both Glasp and Readwise seem to have the same understanding.
Glasp
Now that we understand the importance of highlights, let's look at the Glasp approach. With Glasp you can capture the moment, save it and organize it on your profile page. Also, they provide a way to see the knowledge of like-minded people.
You can find people who are reading the same article as you and view their grades, you can find articles by peers who are reading articles, and you can find the most popular articles in each category.
They help you find other opinions and interests, keep you motivated, and connect with like-minded people to learn together. Also, you will receive a notification when your followers read the same article as you, which causes the articles to randomly reappear.
After that you can export your highlights and notesnotes appsasPerformanceEObsidianwrite it down and keep it organized. They will also send out twice-weekly email newsletters that might interest you and a weekly email recap to remind you of what you learned during the week.
In short, they help you learn by keeping you motivated, exploring interests, and immersing yourself in a deep understanding of others' opinions.
reading
Readwise, on the other hand, tracks one place where all the information is collected and users can export their content to other note-taking apps. I think it's because Readwise would think people would be well understood if they dedicated themselves to note-taking apps.
Highlighting and looking back is crucial, but people understand them deeply when they organize them. Therefore, they provide multiple features and span many applications to help people focus on more important things and reduce time spent on unrelated things.
However, they do offer some features on Readwise. The most notable feature is a daily reminder email. Readwise takes the top highlights and emails them to you.
You can choose the frequency of each highlight and which books/articles you get the highlights from. Apparently, spatial repetition is effective for remembering what has been learned. The more you see highlights, the more likely you are to understand and connect with what you already know.
AI resources
2022 was a year of generative AI. Many knowledge management tools have developed AI capabilities to help users use them effectively. The integration of AI in the current knowledge management tool will be inevitable in 2023. In this section, I will introduce the AI features they offer or will offer.
Glasp
It's interesting to look at Glasp's AI feature lists. They offer writing assistance, custom summaries, YouTube summaries, and digital clones. According to Twitter, all features are based on GPT-3 or GPT-3ChatGPT.
Like other writing assistance tools, Glasp offers its writing assistance function. If you want an idea for a sentence or paragraph, you can ask AI for suggestions. Custom AI Digest is a cool feature of Glasp. Based on the articles' content and your highlights, Glasp creates an article summary that suits you.
YouTube Digest gives you a summary of the YouTube video even before you watch the video. You can determine whether you want to watch the video by reading the summaries, which can save you significant time. Digital clones would be Glasp's most attractive feature.
It collects your highlights and notes and gives you a digital clone of you. This means you can ask your digital clone any question and its AI will answer. So when your friends share their digital clones, you can ask them any questions they know well.
reading
Readwise recently released a new reader app called Readwise Reader (now it's in public beta) and you can use some AI features. You can summarize, translate, define and generate flashcards for the webpage you are reading without having to switch to another browser tab. They're trying to make Readwise AI the "Copilot of Reading", so you'll see a lot of other AI-related features.
One of the most useful features is asking the document a question. After loading the document, it will search it and display the answers after entering the prompts.
For example, you can load an esoteric legal document and ask questions about commercial real estate loans, then it will extract the phrases that answer your question and generate phrases along the way. This feature is incredibly useful.
Unique features
As mentioned earlier, Glasp and Matter have unique qualities that set them apart from the rest of the crowd.
Glasp
Glasp is a community-based tool that can be used for individual purposes. What sets it apart is its wide range of features based on most users' preferences. In addition to notes and highlights, it lets you find content from like-minded people. It even has a community page.
As Glasp attempts to create a digital clone of itself, it's interesting to keep watching. Finally, there will be a lot of digital clones of humans, so you can ask Isaac Newton questions. And a digital clone of him answers his questions.
reading
It's also interesting to see Readwise's use of AI and its features. Readwise seems focused on increasing people's potential and productivity. Readwise will be the ideal place for people to look up what they've read, learned and written.
And Readwise will not only be the place to import and export content, but also to take notes, create summaries, define words and simplify complex language.
Unlike Glasp, you don't have to worry about privacy. Everything you import and write is kept private and nobody can see or access your knowledge. It should be noted that Readwise is not free.
To use the tool for more than 30 days, you must pay $4.49 or $7.99 per month. And unless you pay, you won't be able to import and export content, even if you've saved it there. For prices, please see the image below.
Should you use Glasp or Readwise?
Glasp and Readwise offer different features depending on user preferences. It's best to write down the features you need in a knowledge management application and make a selection from there.
If you prefer a social aspect that lets you share insights and learn from others, Glasp is a great choice.
For those who prefer to manage all their knowledge transparently and keep it private, Readwise is suitable for this option.