Review: Instapaper + Instapaper for iPhone
Does this ever happen to you: you find an interesting article on the web but have no time to read it at this moment in time? What do you do? Do you just leave the window open, hoping that your browser doesn’t crash and if it does, it will remember the tabs you left open? Do you the web page to that overflowing bookmarks folder called “stuff to read”? Or do you just take the environmentally-unfriendly route and send the article to print? All of those solutions work, but they can be equated to using a stick with dry leaves to start a fire: antiquated and inefficient, to say the least. With today’s technology having come as far as it has, there must be a better solution. Meet Instapaper.Instapaper is a very simple web app that serves one purpose: savings web pages for reading later. It does this superbly. The user registers for a free account on the service’s website and adds the the Instapaper bookmarklet (looks like this: 
) to the browser of choice (it works in all of them). The next time the user comes across an article he really wants to read, but simply can’t do so at exactly that instant, clicking on the Read Later bookmarklet will send the article to the Instapaper service up in the cloud (that’s the web, for those not up on the coolest lingo).
When the user has some free time to read, he can go on over to instapaper.com, login, and get a list of all of the links he marked for reading later. From there the user can click on the title of the webpage that he marked for later reading and, upon doing so, will be taken to the original webpage of the article. The web interface also allows the user to mark the site as read, delete it, and to subscribe to an RSS feed of the items marked for later reading. Pretty cool so far, right?
On-the-go
Instapaper iPhone - modified reading layout
Where the service really shines is when it gets away from the desktop and goes mobile. Instapaper has an iPhone/iPod Touch app (free and paid versions) that allow the user to do everything he could from the desktop’s web interface, only now with the iPhone. It has a very clean and simple interface that has a list – just like the web version – of all the links marked for later reading. Upon launch, the app instructs the user on how to install the “read later” bookmarklet for Safari on the iPhone.
The Instapaper iPhone app uses touch gestures (such as swipe to delete) and the paid version uses tilt-scrolling using the iPhone/iPod Touch accelerometer. As would be the main purpose of such a mobile app, it is synchronized to the web interface: add a story from the desktop browser and the iPhone version gets it also; mark a story as read on the iPhone/iPod Touch and the web interface will be updated accordingly.
The iPhone app has an interesting feature wherein it formats a marked webpage by taking out all images and displaying just a plain text version, which I found allows me to focus on the story more as opposed to being distracted with images or obtrusive site ads. This text-only version allows for offline reading (no connection/signal required) – great for reading in Airplane mode, when there is no cellular signal, or on an iPod touch when not in a Wi-Fi area. Of course, the option to view the original in Safari is available as well.
The Instapaper iPhone application has a free and a paid “Pro” version. The free version has full functionality but the “Pro” adds:
- Position-saving – for resuming any article where the user previously left off
- Tilt scrolling – for scrolling without touching the screen
- Adjustable fonts, text sizes, and colors
- And more
No iPhone? Looks like you’re in luck as well.
Whereas there is no application (yet) for non-iPhone/iPod Touch mobile devices, I imagine that the simple web interface of instapaper.com can be used on any mobile device that can browse the web in full HTML mode.
Revenue model
At the present time, it looks like the revenue model for instapaper relies on selling the “Pro” version of the iPhone app. Perhaps down the road, it would be a smart move for the developer – Marco Arment – to charge for increased amounts of archived articles/links. It would be nice to see native Instapaper apps for other mobile platforms such as Google Android, Palm webOS, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and Blackberry OS. For now, though, this is an awesome service that solves a much-needed problem. No more living in the stone age when it comes to marking material to come back to later. Good job, Instapaper; keep it up!
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Posted in Cloud Computing, Monetization, Solution, Synchronization, iPhone
16 comments to “Review: Instapaper + Instapaper for iPhone”
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26. February 2009 at 12:01 am :
[...] The first co-host ever!TechNest Weekly Report – 5 – Google Chrome ShuffleApp Store for Mac? Why not?Review: Instapaper + Instapaper for iPhoneSHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “TechNest Weekly Report – 3 – Speculating about the future”, url: [...]
8. April 2009 at 2:42 pm :
[...] in the morass of articles I’ve marked to read later, I simply give in. On the subway, however, Instapaper’s simple, neat interface lets me read those careful analyses and important blog posts with a [...]
20. August 2009 at 6:28 pm :
Hello Alex,
do you think that Instapaper might replace del.icio.us? Currently there is no desktop apps for a Mac and the integration is some kind limited. Maybe for only bookmark sharing is better to use del.icio.us and for pages on-the-go use Instapaper and read the pages on the go on your iPhone or any other device. What do you think about it?
21. August 2009 at 6:50 am :
What happened with the line breaking??? It's unreadable
21. August 2009 at 1:53 pm :
Hhhmmm, I checked with Firefox and Safari on the Mac, I don't see it.
21. August 2009 at 2:27 pm :
Now it's ok. It was something temporary with that line breaking. I got a message also broken. Now, it's ok, weird. I have listened the last podcast. Now I know what to do
Thanks a lot Alex for the discussion, but I think that's something interesting and might be discussed even further. Integration of all of your web activities in one place is IMHO very interesting.
21. August 2009 at 2:32 pm :
Agreed! Take a look at my personal site, I've made some changes to the blog to pull my tweet summary for the day – http://alexluft.com
21. August 2009 at 2:40 pm :
I've seen your personal site. Looks promising. As you said, micro blogging might in the future replace the traditional blog sites. To be honest, I use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn much more than I write to my blog. Information flow is just to fast to aggregate all of these information on time and post them together to the traditional blog. It's much easier to just tweet using #fb at the end of the tweet message and have the same post on Twitter and Facebook at the same time.
21. August 2009 at 2:49 pm :
Exactly. Not sure if you've visited my site in the last few days, but I've changed the Twitter integration so that a recap of all my tweets for that day are posted as a blog entry.
I could have them post as separate tweets in real time, but that seems to cloud the entire message of the site.
21. August 2009 at 2:55 pm :
Yeap, I've seen your site before. Now is much better! Good idea, but it's possible only if you have .org WP site. In case of .com, what you can do is something like that: mkrzych.wordpress.com.
21. August 2009 at 3:41 pm :
I don't think you can do the same on the .com side. The .org gives you the ability to upload your own plugins – which is how my Twitter summary posts work-usingtheTwitter Tools plugin by Alex King here:
http://alexking.org/blog/2007/03/20/twitter-tools...
21. August 2009 at 1:58 pm :
It's a possibility, but I think that if there were a really well-made delicious app for iPhone/mobile devices, delicious would have Instapaper beat.
You would be able to use it for bookmarking as well as for sharing those bookmarks. Instapaper doesn't have that kind of social aspect – and if it acquires one – it would also need the community aspect, something Delicious has.
All in all, you're right about one thing: there needs to be better integration between the desktop, mobile, and web environments. Instapaper on the iPhone is awesome, but nonexistent on the desktop unless it's through a web browser. This isn't really a problem, since you can make Instapaper your home page and use the bookmarklet to mark things for reading later. Delicious, on the other hand, has a great Firefox add-on but the mobile experience is kind of flaky(I haven't looked much at iPhone Delicioius apps – will be doing so soon – thanks for the idea).
Eventually, what we need are plug-ins and add-ons for mobile web browsers to extend their functionality, just as we currently have on the desktop. I think Apple and everyone else will get there, but it will take some time.
PS: did you listen to the most recent Weekly Recap? We talked about your question; I forgot to mention that there is an awesome iPhone app for WordPress as well.
-Alex
23. October 2009 at 7:46 am :
From December 2008 through June 2009, my weight stayed exactly the same. ,
14. December 2009 at 4:22 pm :
Hmm. Interesting concept for an app. Who thinks up all these crazy app ideas? While I can see the use in an app like this, I don't think it would work for me. I can just see it creating too many headaches. Still, I may give the free version a twirl and give it a chance to win me over. Interestingly, the site where I read my iPhone app reviews has not covered this one at all…Migh tbe time to switch it up a bit..
14. December 2009 at 6:24 pm :
Nice plug
2. December 2010 at 5:38 pm :
I've put that bet on one year ago, by creating Instapaper firefox addon http://bit.ly/instaright
Still there is huge market cap to be won, but instapaper is going in right direction