w w w . i n s t a p a p e r . c o m

You're on the internet looking for one thing and

something else pops up and grabs your

attention.

Someone sends a link to a great article and

reading it will take 10-15 minutes out of working

your day.

You're headed for bed and can't focus on a

weighty article.

Now is not a convenient time (you have to

restart your computer) or you just don’t feel like

it.

Whatever … it’s something you might be

interested in at some future point in time, just

not now!

You don’t want to get distracted.

You think you might want it (a recipe or tech

article or a piece of research) but you don’t

have time to check it out.

You don’t want to read it right now.

Whatever ….you want to read it later.

And another thing … you want to read it off line.

Instapaper is a web

based application

that allows you to

save and read web

content offline later

on your:

Computer

iPhone

iPad

Kindle

Android phone

This is not just reading it later and throwing it

away like we used to do with paper.

You may want to save it to use as a

reference material for project you working

on.

You want to save a recipe you think you may

want to use it in the future - maybe more

than once.

You want to share it with a friend by email.

You may want to share it with all your friends

or on Facebook or Twitter.

Too many bookmarks quickly

become unmanageable. You

can’t find anything and can’t

remember why you

bookmarked it anyways.

You want to save your

bookmarks for genuinely

frequently used websites like

Facebook, for sites that use a

login like banks and credit

cards, for your email accounts

(for web mail), for movies

theaters and movie review

sites and so on.

INTERFACE

SAVE ‘n’ SYNC

ORGANIZING

READING

SHARING

BROWSING

BACKING UP

DRAWBACKS

NUMBERS

Extra BITS ‘n’ PIECES

The interface

is nice and

clean—or bare

bones basic

depending on

your design

aesthetic.

The

iPhone/iPad

and Web apps

all look, feel

and work a bit

differently.

Save articles, web pages, blogs, videos,

audio files and more.

All saved items available off line at any time.

Save links to articles you haven't even looked

at - send a link from an email to your

Instapaper account.

Sync seamlessly between all devices -

iPhone/iPad/computer.

Use folders to keep unread topics under control.

Send articles to Evernote you have read and are

sure you want to keep and re-use.

Archive or delete

read articles so they

don’t stuff up your

devices.

your favorite

articles.

Jump to original website.

Read text only – ad free. Images are retained.

Reading is optimized for iPhone/iPad screens.

Hyperlinks are retained in the text—they are not saved

as footnotes/references at the end of an article.

Customizing of fonts (including san serif) and font

size, line spacing and column width etc. is easy and

good enough:

iPhone/iPad viewing features in read mode include:

tilt scrolling (my personal favorite viewing feature).

double tap to show/hide the top/bottom bars

single tap a photo to share or zoom/pinch

Email to friends.

Share with your social networks

(Facebook/Twitter).

Save to Evernote

Use the Browse function to see your friends’

favorite articles and share your faves with them.

Read the Instapaper community's most saved

stories.

Export a cvs or html file of all your saved articles.

Export is limited to the most recent 2000.

Instapaper is supported by over 150 other

iPhone and iPad apps.

Nice built in Dictionary (tap and hold –

iPhone/iPad)

iPhone/iPad viewing features in read mode:

tilt scrolling

double tap to show/hide the top/bottom bars

single tap a photo to share or zoom and pinch

Filing folders takes patience.

There’s no drag/drop or easy sorting.

Save to Kindle isn’t seamless yet.

There’s no search feature therefore use of folders

is key. Apparently you get this feature with a paid

subscription. In the meantime you can export a

cvs file and sort and search there.

There’s no note taking or highlighting facility - this

is Read-and-Share-Only.

The link to an RSS feed (Google Reader) is no

longer available.

COST

Web app is free.

$4.95 for the iToys app (one time charge)

Support the developer with a $1 a month

donation. This will surely speed up feature

development.

ARTICLE LIMITS

500 article limit on iPhone/iPad.

Unlimited on Web.

www.instapaper.co

m

Once you have an

account and are

signed in click on

Account (top

right) to set up

sharing options.

Link Facebook,

and Evernote in

just a few quick

minutes and

Twitter, Tumblr

and Pinboard if

you use them!.

Email a link

directly from

your mail

box to

Instapaper

POSTBOX

MAIL

Readability: www.readability.com

Read it Later: www.readitlaterlist.com

Clearly: www.evernote.com/clearly

KlipMe: www.klip.me

Marco Arment is the founder of

Instapaper. He cofounded Tumblr

and served as its lead developer

for four years, scaling it from zero

to thousands of requests per

second.

He is based in New York and

writes about software, technology,

and coffee at www.marco.org

Instapaper Blog:

http://blog.instapaper.com/

Sharing articles with your Kindle is fiddly.

http://david-

smith.org/blog/2012/01/13/instapaper-on-the-

kindle/