January 30, 2008

Simple Bookmarking Now Available with Instapaper

Henry Work

36 comments »

Instapaper is a cool new service taking bookmarks back to basics. If you come across some websites that you want to read but are too busy to do so, you can click on an Instapaper browser bookmarklet and then return to the Instapaper website later to read them. Think of it as Del.icio.us stripped of any tagging or social features.

Instapaper is a side project of Marco Arment, lead developer at Davidville, which produces the very popular micro-blogging service Tumblr. Here is Marco’s premise for the site:

You come across substantial news or blog articles that you want to read, but don’t have time at the moment.

You need something to read while sitting on a bus, waiting in a line, or bored in front of a computer.

Instapaper has a very simple design; you don’t even need a password or email address to use it. When logged into Instapaper, your links are sorted into three groups: Unread, Recently Read, and Recently Skipped. Buttons on the side help you sort links between the groups. Clicking one of the ‘Unread’ links automatically pushes a site down into the ‘Recently Read’ feature.

Instapaper also plays nice with the iPhone, featuring an optimized interface and the now-obligatory customized web clip.

We’ve covered two other similar bookmarking services recently: WebMynd and ControlC.

[ via John Gruber ]

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Comments

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  1. scratchiti

    Pretty similar to the “Read it Later” Firefox extension

    http://www.ideashower.com/idea.....-it-later/

  2. Jaisen

    It’s a bookmarking plugin. It’s also 2008. Weren’t these headlining stories a few years ago?

    No disrespect to the author…I’m sure it’s a great service…just not sure why it’s “news”.

  3. damon

    dumb d dumb dumb

  4. What's Hot Today.com

    Fairly useless

    http://www.whatshottoday.com

  5. san

    fairly speaking http://www.toread.cc already did this aeons ago

  6. Matt K.

    I was developing something very similar. It is a very simple concept. But It’s really useful for long articles that you just don’t have time to read.

  7. Matt K.

    I don’t think anyone is arguing that it’s a “new” idea.

  8. Nate Hillfinger

    This is an interesting idea, but conflicting. Why are you browsing if you don’t have time to read?

    Why would you want to read old news?

  9. David Mackey

    Interesting idea, though I don’t see why my regular bookmarks won’t work?

  10. Myke

    Are you all dimwits?

    For one, it’s not bloated like everything else out there. Two, you don’t need to get an e-mail verification just to use it. I could go on and on.

    To David Mackey, and the rest of you people thinking this can be replaced with a Firefox extension, it’s better than regular bookmarks because it doesn’t matter what machine you’re on, or where you are. You can access Instapaper anywhere.

  11. damon

    and a dumb name to boot
    - dimwit

  12. sandeep

    one more player into bookmarks market

    will check it

  13. Dave

    I fail to see the utility. Why not just use the bookmark feature in your browser?

  14. Jamie

    There’s another really cool one along these lines: AnyCircle.com (you get to it by going to any circle of 6 keys, in any direction - i.e. gfr56y.com, jko98u.com, awedxz.com) :)

    Features sweet dragn’dropiness and a cool share-with-friend feature.

  15. Otis Gospodnetic

    Interesting.
    But look at this: http://www.simpy.com/links/tag/toread

    There you go, those are everyone’s “to read later” bookmarks.

  16. dave

    I agree with the majority. I use that crazy “Bookmarks” or “Favorites” feature built into my browser…even though it is so 1.0.

    This reminds me of a new web 2.0 idea I came up with a while back - “hyperwords” - its simple really…make certain words “hyper” - they will be blue and underlined and take you to other websites and files hosted on the web.

    I am a TechStars and YCombinator finalist.

  17. anono

    jamie, the circle idea is some kind of special genius even though the service is forgettable. nice work snatching the 168 domain names to make it work.

  18. dave

    Also #15 - I almost registered “simpy.com” a while back - it was going to be a simple, one page weather website. Good grab.

  19. Ryan Spahn

    Nice job Marco!

    Maybe in the future create a firefox instapaper search engine so you find previous info quickly!

  20. bruce

    I like the lack of bloat, but there’s another services at http://netrocket.com that does this and does it much better imo. It’s a more practical interface and there are many other features too. I do like the lack of bloat though which is one of the reasons many don’t like delicious any more.

  21. Otis Gospodnetic

    dave at #18 - nice little domain name indeed.

  22. Nichole

    Bored to tears.

  23. Don Jones

    There are lots of other clipping apps out there - why does this one get special TC treatment? Is here a conflict somewhere that is undisclosed?

  24. Nate H

    Don, the reason why is because of the developer behind the project who rocks.

  25. Baher

    Considering that my del.icio.us account has more than 2700 bookmarks, it lost its purpose as To-Read manager and become more like my collection on the web. Instapaper should be perfect for managing my To-Read list.

    I wrote about it in my blog http://technozzle.com/?p=70

  26. Technology

    New bookmarking sites seem to be popping up every day.

  27. Bloobeard

    I’ll bookmark this for later

  28. uhhh

    FAIL

  29. nandy

    http://popdup.com. This is a new bookmarking website for videos,news,pictures & more.. Comment about this website!

  30. rubu

    This reminds me of a new web 2.0 idea I came up with a while back - “hyperwords” - its simple really…make certain words “hyper” - they will be blue and underlined and take you to other websites and files hosted on the web.

  31. Patrick

    I’ve been using this service quite a bit since picking up an iPhone. It’s a great way to bookmark articles to read for the commute home. Unlike delicious and many other services, this isn’t a bookmark archiving service, it’s more like disposable bookmarks. Delicious is a nice service but I’ve found that I never need to go back and re-read 99% of those links.

  32. Wills

    Sorry guys, but i’m finding this to be incredibly useful. Very quick and fits into my workflow between Mac and iPhone (and vice versa)

  33. Brian

    This is an interesting idea, but conflicting. Why are you browsing if you don’t have time to read?

    I’ve used it once today - to mark a long paper that I stumbled across while searching for something else. I want to read the paper but I don’t have time right now.

    Why would you want to read old news?

    There is more on the net than just news. Technical papers, long articles, tutorials … I suppose it depends on how you define ‘news’ and ‘old’.

  34. rodg97

    This reminds me a lot about I site I recently started using on my phone called PhoneFavs. It has a similar bookmarking concept, but also has a automatic mobilizer for better reading on a slow, small screened phone.

    http://phonefavs.com

  35. zondron

    good idea, very useful