Well, I don't have much spare time to read lengthy web articles, so what am I supposed to do? Before, I would have relied on a clumsy system of bookmarks in a folder called "read later". Now I'm addicted to Instapaper. I use both twitter and Google Reader to find new articles of interest, and then simply mark them to "read it later" with Instapaper. While many would argue that having clean, offline versions of web pages is detrimental to web sites because you can't see the ads, myself I find that for most of those sites I end up reading the original link anyway.
There is competition to Instapaper, including Safari's built-it reading list feature, Readability and Pocket. There's also Flipboard, but then I use that to casually look at my feeds and then mark some article to read later in the above services.
I haven't yet tried Pocket, but its previous incarnation named "Read it Later" wasn't too great of an experience. While Instapaper is now the only non-free solution, its weekly deliveries to my Kindle, folders and many other advanced options are unmatched. I tried a little bit Readability recently, now that's it's free, and it is both simple and amazing looking. I highly recommend it for casual readers, but it still lacks Ebook-style reading that Instapaper has, and has an inconsistent set of themes across platforms (web vs mobile web vs iOS app).
So I say try with Readability first, and if you want something more powerful, get the paid version of Instapaper.
Published on September 11, 2012 at 21:04 EDT
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