Posts Tagged
Instapaper
You love scouring the web for reading material, but you just can’t find the time to read everything on the spot. Perhaps you’ve already run into popular “read later” apps such as Instapaper, Readability, and Safari’s own “Reader” feature.
One could certainly be perfectly satisfied with what those apps have to offer, but just how much would you be missing out on if you pass on Pocket (formerly Read It Later)?
Three services dominate the read later category. They are Instapaper, Read It Later, and Readability. Instapaper and Read It Later have been around the longest but Readability has been gaining a lot of transaction ever since the service was released last year and re-branded with a free service this year. I have mostly been an Instapaper user over the last couple of years but have looked at Read It Later every so often, and I wanted to take a look at all three services to determine if I still am happy with Instapaper as my read it later app of choice!
Read later services take articles, content, and websites, and let you save items in a queue for you to read later. The services will strip out all of the ads and weird formatting to leave you with just text. Instapaper and Read It Later download these articles to your iPad so you can read them offline as well.
While it’s all good and well looking up app reviews and reading roundups to find your next favourite app, sometimes the best thing is to get a solid recommendation from a friend. A few weeks back I asked the followers of iPad.AppStorm on Twitter what their most-used apps were; the apps that they open every single day, or even several times a day!
I’m just going to take a minute or two to look at the apps that AppStorm readers love and think about why they make such a difference, why they deserve a place on your home screen.
Instapaper has gotten more than its share of love over here on iPad.AppStorm. Consistently rated among the most useful apps and best-of lists, Instapaper is an app and service that has made reading anything you find on the web a joy again.
With version 4.0, Instapaper has gone through some serious changes. The iPad version has changed the most of all, sporting a brand-new interface that utilizes all of the iPad’s large display.
On first glance this title might seem to have little to do with the iPad, but that’s simply not the case. Since owning an iPad I have become more and more enamored by RSS; it’s almost invariably the first thing I do once sat down with my breakfast, open up Reeder and peruse the latest articles and posts from my favourite sources.
There seems to be a current trend of people moving away from using RSS towards different solutions, one of the most popular being Twitter. I guess it’s a matter of personal taste but, with the iPad by my side, I’m prepared to staunchly defend and promote RSS as the best way to keep yourself in the loop.
Today I thought I would write a short article about those apps that truly bring the iPad to life for me.
Each of us will have those apps that make a huge difference to the usability and experience of using the iPad. I am in no doubt that we will differ.
That we differ is merely evidence of the vast and ever expanding capabilities of the iPad, as it makes significant inroads into our lives. For some, apps like Mail, Safari, and Calendar will form the basis of the iPad’s functionality. While for others, specific third-party apps are what turn the iPad into something revolutionary.
I’m going to take a brief look at those apps that make the iPad so hard to put down…
I’m going admit something to you right now, please don’t think less of me for it. I’ve never really used an RSS reader on my Mac. I didn’t even have a Google Reader account until I had the original iPad in my hands.
I read the news online, sure, but normally in a sligthly haphazard and meandering way; drifting through a sea of news sites and magazines, never commiting to read past the first break.
The iPad has changed me. Could it change the way we read, forever?
Let’s say that you’re wandering around the Internet and you stumble upon an article that you really want to read. Problem is, it’s a bit long, and your boss is coming around the corner so there’s no way you can read it right now. Your options are to leave the tab open on your browser indefinitely, bookmark the article for later reading or just close the tab and move on with your life. Not much else you can do about it, right?
Hold on there, chief. There is an answer, and it’s named Instapaper. Not only will the service allow you to access that article anytime you want, you don’t even have to be online to do it. How does it do this hocus pocus? Follow along as we teach you about the app that will change the way you consume the Internet.
