After a post several weeks ago asking all you fine readers about the best options for reading news and saving articles, I narrowed down the list for the “read later” options to three of the most popular options:
Each offers bookmarklets or plug-ins for popular browsers, each offers apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, and all ofthem will integrate with a number of popular apps. Its gotten so complicated, I’m going to have to make a spreadsheet….
| iPhone/iPad | Android | Other Mobile Devices | Other Apps | Bookmarklet or Web Plug-in | Email to: | Twitter integration? | |
| Instapaper | yes | yes | Kindle, Nook | over 140 | bookmarklet | yes | yes and lots of app support |
| Readability | yes | yes | Kindle | Reeder, Longform, Flipboard and more | Firefox plug-in, bookmarklet | yes | Tweetbot, Twitterific, Echofon, more |
| yes | yes | Windows Phone, Blackberry | a lot incl. Flipboard, Reeder, Longform | Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera plug-in, bookmarklet | yes | yes and lots of app support |
Okay, that wasn’t too helpful unless you are using a Blackberry, own a Nook or you absolutely love having a web extension.
So, do you want my opinion about the options?
Instapaper is the original option and has lots of connections with tons of social networking apps and lots of other places but it is bland as the web interface looks. If you want a simple reader and the option that will most likely to link to all your favorite sites, stick with Instapaper. The web account is free but apps for your mobile device are paid apps.
Pocket is a great option if your “read later” needs lean towards visuals because the interface features a photo from the page if one is available. Pocket is a much more graphic interface, more colorful and pretty easy to read. I thought this was going to be my favorite and I have been using it for several weeks for reminders for the Link Love weekly posts. Pocket is free.
And then I finally started digging into Readability and I fell in love with it. The web interface is clean with beautiful typography but it was the mobile apps with typography from Hoefler & Frere-Jones. The interface on iPhone and iPad are so lovely that I wish Readability would redesign all the ebook apps because the typography and color options for reading in bright light, at night or somewhere in the middle are just fabulous.
See what I mean? Lovely. So, for me, Readability has won out as my favorite “read later” app. Now, if only they add support for PDF and ebook/epub formats I would live in Readability. Readability is free.
