Instapaper

When I started depending more and more on e-resources than actual books, I ended up bookmarking every other page that seemed interesting for reading later or just as a knowledge resource.

This process grew haphazardly over time.I had a few bookmarks saved in my laptop and a few other in desktop, and of course I couldn’t import/sync them (Is there a method to do this? I don’t know).

Then I stumbled upon (real stumble!) Instapaper.It helped me save my bookmarks onto their servers.So I can now manage my bookmarks from laptop and desktop or any other device.I can log into my account and edit/delete/share/like my bookmarks etc.The features are best explained in their site.

The USP of Instapaper is its simplicity, right from the homepage to how your bookmarks are treated.It reminded of those WYSIWYG applications.Its so simple that I do not have much to write about it!

You are given a ‘Read Later’ bookmark which can be added onto your bookmark bar and once you want to bookmark any webpage,just click on the ‘Read Later’ bookmark and your webpage is saved.

Instapaper is free, and a premium membership as of now has no added bonuses.But, the creator of Instapaper Marco Arment is one of those shrewd startup minds and he would come up with something sneeky about the premium membership.Why I call Marco Arment shrewd is because of how he handled the iphone paid and free Instapaper apps.More on this can be found here.

Incidently,Marco Arment was involved with tumblr before he started with Instapaper.

Yes,Instapaper is not the first to offer these services.There is evernote,pinboard,deli.cio.us and even the more recent scrible.But Instapaper struck a chord with me with its in-your-face simplicity and functionality.Scrible may have more fancier features but I don’t see them using it.

Till then,Instapaper will do.

PS : I wish the ‘read later’ bookmark had a favicon.

Gmail multiple account sign-in

I just found out that not many people who use gmail know about its multiple sign in feature.So, if you have multiple gmail accounts and wish to access all of them simultaneously, you need not have to logout of one to log into another.

This is an extremely handy feature useful to people who have multiple Google powered mail accounts, a personal Gmail account and another provided at their work.

To enable this feature, go here  and select the ‘on’ button.Check the following terms and conditions (as always) and you are set.

Now, to log into multiple accounts :

Click your name or email address at the top of the page.
Select Sign in to another account from the drop-down menu.
On the page that opens, enter the email address and password for another account you wish to access, and click Sign in.
Note : The above instructions are the official instructions from Google.Yes, I was too lazy to come up with my own.