Monthly Archives: October 2010

Smartphones are used more and more to catch up on the content you have not had time to read during the day and there are various tools to help you do this. Instapaper is one of the most popular examples for the iPhone and iPad and has quickly become one of my most used apps- almost every day I grab some content via the ‘read later’ bookmark on my Mac or via Twitter and I now have a long list of interesting content still waiting to be read. The offline web can be a ‘very’ powerful tool in the right hands and used properly you will be digesting more knowledge than you thought possible.

EverPaper (Android Market) is an app that will let you add content to your Instapaper account and thus bring the same experience even without an official Instapaper app. It works extremely well and has many options available and once tried will be forever used. InstaFetch is another alternative worth checking out which is free.

If you have a BlackBerry you can use this simple hack to add a menu item that lets you send any content to your Instapaper account when you find it. This doesn’t get around the fact that you won’t be reading the articles on your BlackBerry (usually people send from desktop to mobile), but half a solution is better than none at all.

I can’t find an Instapaper client for Symbian. Add a comment if you know of one that works well.

webOS is a similar story as far as Instapaper goes, but some people have tried. The lack of public APIs is the problem here although the effort continues on the lesser developed platforms.

So, there are options for most mobile and desktop platforms, but where are the best places to grab interesting content?

Instapaper itself stores many interesting articles which are selected based on quality rather than quantity. The Browser is a website specialising in quality content which is updated regularly with sometimes very long articles that will keep you reading for upwards of 30 minutes.

Long Reads publishes links to long articles on Twitter and some of these are well worth checking out. If you use a Twitter client such as Twitterific you can add them to your Instapaper account with one click.

longform.org takes another approach and lets you automatically receive a new long article every week if you find pressing the ‘read later’ button too tiring.

If you know of further sources feel free to add your links via a comment, but it is safe to say that the offline mobile web is gaining in popularity just when many thought that its days were numbered. I am a big fan of the concept and always have been since the days of Plucker.