Instapaper is a simple web service that allows you to save web pages to read later. You view your saved pages by visiting the Instapaper site.
Let’s say I wanted to read this page later.
My Safari has Instapaper’s “read later” bookmarklet as the first bookmark in my bookmarks bar so I hit Apple+1 and I get a small “saving… done” message to tell me Instapaper has done its thing for me.
I can then go to my Instapaper account where I’ll find my list of items to read later.
If i click the title of the article (there it is at the top) I’ll be taken to the web page but the thing Instapaper is good at becomes clear when you click the “Text” button.
You get this.
Instapaper has removed all the ads, all the layout, lots of the formatting and is presenting me with the content I’m interested in and little else. Look at the first screenshot. Which would you rather read? This is where it differs from bookmarking services like Delicious.
That’s not all. There’s an Instapaper iPhone app too. Here’s my Instapaper account as viewed on my phone.
All this is available offline so I can read it anywhere regardless of network connection. It means I can read all the stuff I’ve saved for later while I’m out and about or on the way to and from work.
I tap on the article title and I’m presented with a version of it formatted for reading on the iPhone. There’s a tilt-to-scroll option which i quite like even though I don’t use it much.
There’s a number of sharing options within the Instapaper app so I could now post the article to Twitter via Tweetie, post it to this blog via the Tumblr app or email it to a friend. If I click on a link in the article I get the option to save that for later too, which means I can carry on reading the article I was reading without losing my place. Really nice touch.
Instapaper integrates nicely with some of the other apps I use. NetNewsWire is an RSS reader for Macs that syncs with my Google Reader account. If i right click an article in a feed I get the following options.
RSS to Instapaper. Nice.
Tweetie on the iPhone allows me to save links in tweets to read later too.
Tweet to Instapaper. Pretty damn useful.
All this adds up to mean that Instapaper is one of the few web services that I can safely say I couldn’t do without. In just a few months It’s become such an integral part of my daily browsing that I don’t think I could go back. I’ve even found myself Instapapering articles to read immediately because it makes them easier to read.
There’s a few more useful features (some people are doing interesting things with its print feature) but I won’t spoil it for you. You should find out for yourself.
I really can’t recommend it enough.
