Posts tagged with "instapaper"

Instapaper 4.0 Available: Completely Redesigned iPad UI, New Features, Search Subscription

Since I started using Instapaper in 2008, this app has changed the way I read. Instapaper 4.0, released today on the App Store, will change my reading habits, again.

For those who are not familiar with the concept of Instapaper, it’s a web service that allows you to save web articles for later. But unlike the number of similar solutions that have surfaced since Apple featured the app multiple times (or simply its merits, which have been recognized by millions of average users alike), Instapaper isn’t simply a website with an account, a bunch of text stripped off websites, and a bookmarklet to grab articles. Over the years, Instapaper’s Marco Arment, founder and creator of the service, has managed to build an ecosystem around Instapaper, which is based upon but doesn’t stop at apps connected to the service via an API. Apps that support Instapaper play a big role in the service’s success and Arment even showcases this kind of integration in the new 4.0 version, but what really made Instapaper great is its simplicity coupled with publishers’ support, user adoption, multi-platform nature, and interconnectedness of tools that has allowed Instapaper – once a small indie project churning out a couple of thousand articles per day – to become the most popular way to never miss a good read.

Instapaper works on the web, on the Amazon Kindle with automatic wireless delivery, and on Apple’s iPhone and iPad. The foundation upon which Instapaper works and prospers is the Read Later bookmarklet, a button you can install in your browser’s toolbar to send any webpage off to your Instapaper account. Instapaper, however, works best with articles, as its main goal is to provide users with an elegant way to read the words of an author without seeing ads, graphical elements, or readers’ comments. Just text. In this regard, Instapaper works like magic: you hit a button, and any web article is transformed into an elegant, readable, easy on the eye page that you can customize to your liking with different fonts, pagination and brightness settings, or “dark mode” if you prefer white text on black while reading at night.

And I have been reading with Instapaper at night. Since the original iPad came out last year, pretty much everybody had a feeling the device could turn out to be ideal for reading, but no one really stopped to think about the implications of a device for Instapaper before the iPad’s release. When Apple did release the iPad and a native version of Instapaper was available on day one, it was clear Apple’s form factor and Arment’s UI decisions would play well together in the long term.

I’m not the only one to think Instapaper nears perfection on the iPad. In fact, I’m not even the only one to think the iPad edition of Instapaper has redefined portable web reading since its introduction in April 2010. Amidst the proliferation of social magazines, RSS readers, social news readers and more or less any other variation of the terms “social” and “reading”, Instapaper for iPad provides a unique solution to a seemingly unfixable problem: to create your own collection of web articles, ready to take wherever you want. A collection – or, if you will, a constantly updating combination of inbox and archive – that’s also connected with the articles your friends like and the pieces written by people you trust.

On the App Store, Instapaper started as an iPhone app. The app, featured in a great promotional video with Adam Lisagor, introduced iPhone users to the concept of “saving articles for later” – if you, too, have had too many interesting articles in your web browser and have wished there was a way to take them with you all the time, here’s the app for you. The video made it extremely clear that all you needed was a bookmarklet to hit, and an article would appear later on the web, or even better, on your iPhone. Instapaper for iPhone is a fantastic app; it updates fast, it’s elegant, it focuses on articles as it should be, and it gained a number of cool functionalities over time such as pagination, Twitter sharing, and Evernote integration. Yet, as this 4.0 update suggests, it’s clear Instapaper for iPad has somehow overshadowed its iPhone counterpart, making it the version to use when you can’t access your computer or iPad. Read more

Extending Evernote: AppleScripts for Chrome, Safari, Instapaper and Alfred

Evernote is a cross-platform note taking solution that is adored by many for its ability to not just store snippets of information but also serve as an external brain. Among the many reasons users are drawn to this product is its extensibility. You may not realize this but Evernote has a very in-depth AppleScript dictionary that you can use to extend the feature set and make it do some pretty neat things you can’t do with it out of the box. I am going to show you how simple AppleScripting can add a few cool features to your Evernote workflow.

Note: These scripts work best when called with a global keyboard shortcut using an app like Keyboard Maestro, FastScripts, or Alfred.

This first AppleScript is used for storing a URL to whatever webpage you are currently viewing and it works with Safari, Chrome, and Chrome Canary. By default Evernote stores the entire webpage including images, navigational menus, and even advertising links. Having a snapshot of a page is great for some situations, but most of the time you just want to grab a link to the site and safely store it in Evernote so it can be easily retrieved. This script will check to see which browsers are running and it will grab the frontmost tab from the browser that is currently active; it’ll then neatly format the information into a note with the proper title and source url, and automatically sync Evernote.

Here is an example of a page I enjoyed and wanted to be able to find again at a later time. Everything is neatly formatted with no extra fluff.

URL to Evernote

URL to Evernote

Here is an example macro to launch it from Keyboard Maestro:

Download the script: Webpage Link to Evernote AppleScript Read more

Pulse.me Saves Your Favorite Stories on iPad, iPhone, and Web

RSS users who live inside the Pulse ecosystem are getting a boost this afternoon in collecting articles to read later. Pulse has unveiled Pulse.me, which is a brand new web component that allows you to save a story from Pulse on your iPhone or iPad, then read it later at your office desk or during a coffee break. I love the idea of not extending the read-it-later schema off of Pulse: you simply have to star the article to continue reading it later.

Pulse.me integrates with your Pulse account or Facebook login, making sign-up relatively painless. Because stories are saved on the web, you can return to your reading list on your iPhone, your iPad, your Android smartphone or tablet, and even your desktop for a consistent experience. If you choose not to use Pulse, they’ve included Instapaper, Read It Later, Google Reader integration, and Evernote support so stories can be read in multiple places. These services work simultaneously with Pulse, meaning if you star an article for Pulse.me, it will star the article in your Google Reader account as well.

Pulse is a free download from the App Store for the iPhone and the iPad.

Tweed for iPad Filters Your Timeline, Integrates with Instapaper

Released earlier today at $2.99 in the App Store, Tweed is a Twitter client for iPad aimed at presenting you links from your Twitter timeline. Instead of visualizing all tweets from people you follow, mentions and direct messages as most Twitter clients do, Tweed filters links out of your timeline, enabling you to “drag them” onto a stack on the right that will generate previews for the selected webpages. As you log in with your Twitter credentials, Tweed will display tweets that contain links in a narrow sidebar on the left; if you place your finger on a tweet, you’ll be able to move in on the right, and go back to the timeline. The more tweets you save in the right panel, the more pages Tweed will stack on top of each other, letting you tap on them to read the original article. Very simple. When in web view mode, you can check out the normal page or switch to text-only mode. When you’re done reading, you can tap on the tweet bubble and flick it to delete it from the stack.

One cool feature I’ve noticed in Tweed is direct Instapaper integration. Tweed comes with a Read Later tab, but unlike other apps that support Instapaper and also have their own reading queue, Tweed’s reading list mirrors every link to Instapaper – if you save 5 articles in there, those 5 articles will be immediately sent to Instapaper. If you can’t find enough reading material in your timeline, Tweed’s developers have baked some curated Twitter lists into the app showcasing relevant Apple and tech news, world news, and so forth. The selection is pretty good, although limited for now given the early nature of the app.

Tweed won’t replace your default Twitter client, but it may come in handy if you’re looking for a way to turn your timeline into a list of links you’re likely interested in. You can download Tweed at $2.99 from the App Store.

Safari “Reading List” Discovered In Lion, Apple Taking On Instapaper and Readability?

A new feature uncovered in OS X Lion by MacRumors reveals that Apple plans to take on “read it later” services such as ReadItLater, Instapaper and Readability. It has implemented a new bookmarking feature in that latest Lion builds of Safari that Apple is calling the “Reading List” and can be used by users to save pages for later reading. Apple describes it feature saying:

Reading List lets you collect webpages and links for you to read later. To add the current page to your Reading List, click Add Page. You can also Shift-click a link to quickly add it to the list. To hide and show Reading List, click the Reading List icon (eyeglasses) in the bookmarks bar.

The feature is currently hidden away in the latest OS X Lion build and no mention of the feature has yet been made by Apple in any of its announcements or documentation of Lion. One question certainly is about how robust the feature will be and whether it will become a service that synchronises the bookmarks across devices, including mobile devices. Marco Arment, the creator and developer of Instapaper, appears not to be to worrying about it so far and believes that “Instapaper would still have a market even if Apple implemented Reading List synced to iOS devices.”

[Via MacRumors]


Instapaper Developer Explains Why Free Version Is “Taking A Vacation”→

Instapaper Developer Explains Why Free Version Is “Taking A Vacation”

In an Apple store, it’s nearly impossible to spend less than $30 on anything. Apple’s stance is clear: “This is how much our stuff costs. If you don’t like our prices, that’s fine. We don’t need everyone to buy our stuff.”

That’s roughly the stance I’ve chosen to take. My app costs $5. I understand that not everyone will like my price, and that’s fine. I don’t need every iOS-device owner to buy my app — I’d do quite well even if only 1% of them did.

Instapaper developer Marco Arment has published an interesting article explaining why he removed the free version of Instapaper for iPhone from the App Store, and he’s not planning on making it available again anytime soon. There are thousands of free applications in the App Store: most of them are games from huge companies backed by multi-million investments and funding rounds, some of them are “lite” versions of less popular apps with limited functionalities. For an indie developer like Marco – remember, he left his position at Tumblr to focus on Instapaper – choosing to offer different versions of the same app is a difficult decision: what are the features that need to be exclusive to the paid app? And what’s a customer supposed to think when he only sees the limited feature set of the lite / free version? More importantly, how many App Store users are going to choose the paid app as the first option when a free counterpart is available?

These are risks only developers who truly believe in their work are willing to take. Marco does, and he’s decided to bet on his $5 piece of software because he knows it’s a great product that doesn’t deserve to be crippled by a free version with less features and ads. Go read the full article here.

Permalink

Instapaper Adds Revamped Dictionary, Terminology Integration

An update to Instapaper for iPhone and iPad was released a few minutes ago in the App Store, and it adds a series of new features to the built-in offline dictionary that improve the efficiency of the “define” button during a reading session. First off, the design of the inline dictionary has been revamped to host more definitions, and interlinking between words. Everything’s faster, more compact, yet with more content than before. Thanks to a collaboration with Agile Tortoise, Instapaper’s dictionary can now also forward a definition directly to Terminology, which we’ve reviewed before. Terminology will automatically find the definition for the word you’ve selected, and show a button to go back to Instapaper thanks to the implementation of the the new x-callback-url draft standard.  Handoff should also be supported in version 3.0.2.

You can find Instapaper in the App Store here. Read more

Instapaper 3.0 Is Out: You Can Now “Follow” Other Users

Instapaper, the most popular “read later” tool for the web, iOS and Kindle, received a major update a few minutes ago that brings it to version 3.0 and adds a whole social layer to the app. In Instapaper 3.0 you can now follow other Instapaper users to see the articles they “like” (a new name for “starring” an article). You can find friends via Facebook or Twitter through a simple login or directly from your local Address Book.

The app is faster with a new engine that finally grants perfect quality images, and you can now search all articles (the downloaded ones, at least) for title or content. Sharing to Twitter, Facebook, Pinboard, Tumblr and Evernote has also been implemented natively, to work offline as well. This is a great improvement over the previous versions that didn’t let you share articles that easily. I love this new feature.

Other new functionalities include a “smart rotation lock” that can understand whether the change in rotation was accidental or not (it really seems to be working) and several new tweaks in the Preferences and bug fixes. Also, you can browse for articles in-app or choose from the Editor’s Picks recommended list of content.

The app also now has a completely rewritten web browser built in, so you can browse to any website, find the articles you want to read later, and save them directly from the app. And there’s a new Editors browser, featuring the best human curators on the web who recommend great articles for Instapaper reading.

With these great new additions, many customers won’t even need the bookmarklet anymore.

Instapaper 3.0 is a free update available here, and it’s a terrific new version you should go download right away. Check out more screenshots of the iPad version below. Read more

iPhone and iPad Changing People’s Reading Habits

Read It Later, the Instapaper-esque service for saving articles for later consumption has released some fascinating information on how users of the service, depending on the device used, have very different reading habits.

Posted on their blog they reveal that content is encountered pretty much constantly throughout the day, with only a slight drop after work finishes at around 5PM. As for when articles are read, those who use the computer have two key periods, during work at 8AM – 4PM and during the night at 6PM – 9PM with a slightly higher peak during which articles are read.

Read more