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.