After I posted my review on the Xteink X3 someone left a comment about it and made an oblique reference to something that they were working on:
I learned this working on my CrossPoint fork (hoping to get the device to pull my daily youtube summaries automatically).
This sounded interesting and while I was glad there wasn’t any self promotion in the comment it didn’t help with what the app was. Fortunately, Adam got in touch and I was able to try out the app properly.
Introducing Headwater
Once you have registered from Headwater you are able to feed it a link to a channel or pick from a curated list of popular channels. Then when any new video is released on any of these it sends you an email with a summary of the content of the video. It doesn’t seem to say anywhere that this is Ai generated but how else could it be?
Here’s a typical breakdown of a Headwater email:
Subject
At the top of the email is a thumbnail of the video along with which channel it is from and the title of the video.
Summary
Next up is a textual summary of the video contents along with a quote and who Headwater thinks this video is for.
Timeline breakdown
Finally there is a breakdown and summary of all the important plot points in the video.
How Useful is Headwater?
Actually, it’s turned out to be a lot more useful than I expected it to be. It has the following advantages:
- it’s a nudge that a new video from one of your channels is available
- it allows you to see whether the latest video is a topic you might be interested in
- where a video covers several topics you can skip to that bit.
Honestly, sometimes just reading the Headwater summary is enough. I can get from that exactly what I need and move on. Other times I look and think that’s not for me and, on other occasions I actually want to watch the video. Headwater has put me back in control of what I watch and stopped me from Doomwatching (is that a thing?) which is no bad thing.
Headwater and Xteink
The reason that I was introduced to Headwater in the first place was because that it has a link to the Xteink pocket ereaders. Headwater has it’s own firmware (a fork of Crosspoint) which brings Headwater functionality right onto your X* device. I installed it on my x3 so I could take a look.
Firstly I should say that my concern with this custom firmware is the same as every other Crosspoint fork:
- what version of Crosspoint is it based on? What are you losing by switching to it?
- how often will bug fixes and enhancements be folded in?
- what happens when the developer loses interest?
None of this is made clear on the website.
Installation and setup was straightforward. If you have already flashed your x* device with Crosspoint this is, unsurprisingly, exactly the same. You can just stick it over the top of your existing firmware and all your books and setting will be retained.
When you restart your device you will see a Headwater loading screen and then a new menu item for it. Selecting this will initially give you instructions on setting up the OPDS server necessary for syncing. Once done you will then see a new set of options under the Headwater menu. Clicking update will download and format your Headwater summary which you can then read as you would any book.
I have to admit that this isn’t something for me. I am more than happy with the emails and don’t feel the need to have this on my device too. YMMV as they say. I am also concerned about the deviation for main Crosspoint so that is what I am sticking with.
Conclusions
It’s slickly implemented and I found it genuinely useful but thought that the Xteink integration wasn’t really necessary.
Currently Headwater is free while in beta. There is no indication of pricing model following that so it is difficult to say whether it would be something worth subscribing to but it would be worth a consider.
Let me know in the comments if Headwater is something you might find useful.