インターネットで様々なサイトを見つけても「今読んでる暇はない」ということも多いと思います。そんなときに便利なのが、このInstapaper。ブラウザに用意するブックマークレットをクリックして、あとは読みたいときに読むだけです。

そんなシンプルなウェブサービスのサイトが、更にシンプルなデザインにリニューアルされていたので、ご紹介。

このInstapaperのいいところは、様々なサービスと連繋をしてくるところ。ブラウザで、あとから読むことも出来れば、iPhoneでも可能（アプリがある）ですし、なんと我らがKindleでも可能なのです。

ということで、早速Kindle用のデータをダウンロード。最新20記事をmobi形式で用意してくれます。ダウンロードされたデータを、MacのFinderからKindleのdocumentフォルダに放り込みます。

先頭に、「Previous ←」「Next →」「Content ↑」とナビゲーションも入ってそれなりに使い勝手が良いです。文章を読むために存在するKindleですから、まさに用途が合致していて、良い組み合わせのサービスだと思います。（誤解しないように書いておくと、iPhoneやKindleで使えるようになるずっと前から、Marrさんは愛用しているサービスの一つです。）ぜひ、お試しあれ！

If you spend any time online and haven’t been using Instapaper you really should. I can’t think of any single thing that’s improved my web experience more than this.

It’s a really simple bookmarking tool. Like digital post-it-notes.

BloggingTips—one of my favorite sites for blogging and SEO advice—rolled out a couple posts today on how to stay inspired with the handful of sap-your-motivation-to-work holidays that are coming up. I thought those posts were great starters, but they came up short on specifics and I thought I’d offer my two cents on what I use to stay creative and motivated (though I’m not immune to the occasional dry spell).

I pull most of my blogging ideas from five different sources that vary in their chronological frequency. I’ll go in descending order of frequency for the first four and save the “out of left field” one for last:

1. Twitter (right now)

Most of the stuff I pull from Twitter goes into category No. 3—at least if I feel inspired enough to blog about whatever I’ve seen. Sometimes I’ll blog right away, but usually I’m at work (my real job) so it gets saved for later. If I have any “can’t lose” thoughts, I’ll jot them down in an e-mail, subsequent Tweet or blog draft and come back to them later.

2. Google Reader (today/last week or so)

I’m probably as guilty of anyone of letting Google Reader fester for weeks at a time every now and then, but I try to keep up with it as best as possible. Since I subscribe to a ton of feeds, I skim using list view and “Option 3″ (or 4) anything that I can’t get to right away. I don’t know how anyone survives—creatively, organizationally or otherwise—without an RSS reader of some sort.

3. Instapaper (last week/last few weeks)

I just recently discovered Instapaper, but it’s grown on me quick. It’s a great tool for when I’m otherwise swamped, but still incidentally picking up bits and pieces from The Stream. A simple click of my “Read Later” bookmarklet drops whatever item I’m interested in into my Instapaper queue and I get to it the next time I have a few free minutes.

4. Publish 2/Delicious (months/years ago)

These are long-term storage devices and I use both because I really do value the links I collect. (Specifically, I use the Publish 2 bookmarklet and duplicate most all of my links into Delicious, just in case.) When stuff goes in here, I’m thinking either, “Good read, worth passing along, but I’m not inspired enough to write just yet,” or, “I know I’ll need this five months from now, so into the file cabinet it goes.” Every so often when I’m feeling uninspired, I’ll click through my tags and see what jumps out.

5. Anything that isn’t the Internet (any time frame)

Some of my favorite posts that I’ve written have come from things that have nothing to do with journalism or blogging (re: “Star Trek” and “Lost“). I like them because they feel the most creative—here I am sitting around watching a “Star Trek” preview and I think, “Ooh—this is sorta like journalism!” (which also marks an odd feat in branding myself a “Star Trek” and journalism geek in the exact same moment). They also break up the “expected-ness” of my blog.

The number of times I’ve found a long article I want to read but don’t have the time for. So I end up skimming it, putting it off until later (also known as forgetting about it) or bookmarking it, which seems like overkill for just an article (plus I also end up forgetting about it).

Enter Instapaper. It’s a simple idea, and works brilliantly, so in reality it’s probably really complicated behind the scenes. Anyway, it works like this. You visit the webiste, sign-up for a free account, and drag and drop a ‘read later’ button to your browser tool bar. Then when you find an article you want you read later you click the button.

And… that’s it. When you want to read the article just go to the site and there it is, along with any other’s you’ve saved.

It works with iPhone too – they have a free app and a paid one with a few more features, which I bought because I like it so much, and I’m hard to please, so it must be good.

The developer seems like a good guy too, take a look at his FAQ.

First off, the FTC can go to hell because both these apps are free.* Second, I have to confess that I haven’t necessarily used either of these a whole lot, but I will because they’re awesome (I’ve played with them enough to know).

I found out about Posterous through my boss (who you should all get to know, as he seems to find everything). The gist is that you e-mail Posterous whaever you want and it automatically posts, like a blog. It can also automatically post to Twitter, Facebook, WordPress or pretty much anywhere else you can think of. You can start to imagine the journalism/reporting implications from here. My boss passed along this story about TwinCities.com using Posterous to basically power all their UGC for a couple specific events. They explain it all way better at the link, so I’ll let you read about that there. You should also check out Posterous’s FAQ, which will impress upon you how easy and all-encompassing it is.

Update: Here’s an interview Robert Scoble did with Posterous’s founders (Interesting: It’s pronounced “pah-ster-us,” as opposed to “poh-ster-us.” They explain why at the beginning):

The "Read Later" button at the bottom saves to Instapaper.

I just signed up for my Instapaper account this morning; it, too, is extremely simple-yet-useful. Looking at something you want to save for later? Click the little “Read Later” bookmarklet and the page you were looking at saves to your Instapaper account (which you don’t even need a password to sign up for). Now I know this in itself isn’t entirely revolutionary—we’ve all got RSS readers, Delicious accounts or whatever that can fulfill this basic function. The difference is that this is all Instapaper is built for, which makes it a little more user friendly. There are also free and “pro” iPhone apps, which will allow you to read your posts offline, and, if you’re a Tweetie 2 user, T2’s browser lets you save posts directly to Instapaper (see inset).

I’ll admit that Instapaper is a bit of a…luxury item. It’s sort of like having a separate bag for your shoes instead of just jamming everything into your suitcase. But we’re talking about a Web/mobile app here, not material goods and physical space. I’ve actually been using it to help filter my Google Reader—I’ve cherry picked which posts I want to read, put them in Instapaper and “Mark All As Read’ed” the rest.

If I discover any new tricks for these two gems, I’ll post them here.

*Aside: I think anytime anyone blogs about a product just for the sake of telling people about the insane coolness of said product (not because they have a commercial stake in it), the blog should be prefaced with the general formula of that sentence.

One of my favorite iPhone apps received a solid improvement yesterday. Instapaper’s text parser can more intelligently remove text likely unrelated to the body content of a page, and also will include some inline images. The “Read Later” bookmarklet can be updated with this new parser via an Accounts setting.

(via Instapaper Blog)

This is a tip for anyone who wants to get any web working done while you’re traveling and/or in transit for any reason. If you’re going to be in areas of questionable network access, you’d better have the ability to get work done offline at your disposal, and you should also be ready to dig in for extended periods of time without a connection.

For some tasks, you absolutely need network access, but for others, a rich and varied stock of offline-accessible information and research resources should provide plenty of fodder for getting things done. Your iPhone (s aapl) or iPod touch can be a great supplemental resource for exactly this kind of thing. Here’s how to turn your device into an offline road warrior.

Instapaper or Read It Later

These apps are great because when you do have connectivity (if you get a signal briefly, for example), you can quickly save articles for reading in extended blackout zones of little or no coverage. Both these apps allow you to capture and store web content as offline pages. What’s more, integration with both of these apps is often baked into other iPhone gems, like Tweetie, the popular Twitter client that recently got a brand new version with lots of extra bells and whistles.

Instapaper comes in two flavors: a Free version, and a Pro version for $4.99. The more expensive app allows for Folders, article recommendations, background updates, and more, and really is worth it if you’re an avid Instapaper user. Read It Later also comes in Free and Pro flavors, with the Pro costing only $2.99. It features full-screen reading, sharing, and the ability to send articles to other iPhone apps.

Dictionary.com or WordBook

Despite having impeccable spelling skills (quiet, Simon), even I can see the value in a dictionary app. For instance, I often have an overwhelming urge to look up the origins of words. Not necessarily of tremendous professional value, but still. And of course, I’m kidding about the spelling thing. I often need to double-check words, especially ones for which I seem to have a mental block like “aesthetics.”

Both Dictionary.com (Free) and WordBook ($1.99) offer offline access to more than 200,000 definitions. My personal preference of the two is WordBook because of the UI, but both provide a thesaurus, word of the day, audio pronunciation guides, and more.

Encyclopedia

Wikipedia is a great on-the-spot reference for background and contextual information on new and unfamiliar terms and concepts. Which is fine when you have an active network connection, but doesn’t help much when you’re on a train in a 3G dead zone and you’re looking to provide a quick overview of the USB 3.0 standard for a client report.

Enter Encyclopedia ($8.99, iTunes link), an iPhone/iPod touch app that stores a complete full-text offline version of Wikipedia on your device. All internal links function, and you can navigate your history and backtrack when you need to. Beware, references are excluded in the interest of usability, and it will take up a full 2GB of your device’s storage space, but it’s much simpler and more convenient than the alternative.

myPANTONE

Web designers, and people who just take an interest in the finished look of their documents and web work, will truly appreciate the usefulness of the recently released myPANTONE app. The app gives you access to Pantone’s color libraries, and allows you create color schemes on the go. You can even use colors from photos taken with your device to find matching Pantone hues. Even if you’re not a professional print designer, this app can still be very helpful in coming up with pleasing color combinations for documents, personal websites and more.

It’s a little on the pricey side at $9.99, but it does let you do really cool things like GPS tagging, and voice/text annotation of palettes you create. If color is important to the work that you do in any way, there might be no better way to spend otherwise unproductive time out of network range.

The Pocket Reference Re-imagined

Imagine how crazy the idea of having an encyclopedia in your pocket would’ve seemed 20 years ago? Plenty crazy, I’d say. Thanks to the versatile platform Apple (s aapl) developed for its mobile devices, you can now have multiple encyclopedias on hand in a package slimmer than most people’s wallets. And it doesn’t end where I’ve stopped here. There are plenty of very specialized reference apps available via the iTunes App Store, for little or no money.

What reference apps do you carry with you?

「Tweetie」の無料アップデートと勘違いし、「Tweetie 2」を買ってしまいました。

が、これは買って良かったです。

この画面の上部を下に向かってフリックすると

Release to reflesh…と

指を離すと更新作業が！

これは使ってみると意外なほど便利です。

Tweet画面では、140と残文字数が書かれた箇所の↓をタップすると

この画面に。

これまた便利で、かつスタイリッシュなデザインです。

Tweetをタップし、この画面から

クリップのアイコンをタップすると

・Mail Link
・Repost Link
・Read Later

一番右の→アイコンをタップすると

・Retweet
・Quote Tweet
・Post Link to Tweet
・Mail Tweet
・Translate

翻訳までしてくれます。

チマチマしたアイコンと違い、この辺りの見せ方が分かりやすいです。

URLをタップして内蔵ブラウザで表示。

一番右の→アイコンをタップすると

・Open in Safari
・Mail Link
・Repost Link
・Read Later

私の中ではなくてはならないRead Laterがちゃんとあります。

設定画面。

外部連携が充実しています。

Image Service

何と7つのサービスから選択、そしてカスタムまで出来ます。

Video Service

yFrogとTwitVidからの選べます。

URL Service

これも6つのサービスから選択、そしてカスタムまで出来ます。

Read Later

定番のInstapaperとRead It Laterから選べます。

これだけ充実していると、自分が利用しているサービスが見つかりそう。

逆になかったらちょっとへこみますね。

設定のAdvance

まぁ～色々とあるものです。

検索画面。

Nearbyはマップとリストで見ることが出来ます。

ここからギューンと絞り込んで行って、どこの家か分かってしまいそうなぐらい拡大出来ます。

・・・の画面、Moreと言えば良いのでしょうか？

Tweetを書いている途中でやめる時、セーブするかしないか聞いてくれます。

セーブするとDraftsに保存してくれます。

これは大変便利。

先ほど「Echofon Pro(元TwitterFon Pro)」をメインで使ってみようと書いたところですが訂正。

「Tweetie 2」をメインで使っていきます。

一画面目の主力アプリ。

「Evernote」　最近になって有用性にやっと気付いてきたので、ここに持ってきました。

「iMandalArt」　まだ活かしきれていないけど、これは面白いアプリ。MindMapの代替として使っています。

「InstapaperPro」　「RSS Flash g」との連携が便利過ぎる。

二画面目の準主力アプリ。

仕事とSNS。

「Dropbox」　iPhoneへの保存機能が便利。Sugarsyncよりアップロード、同期が早いように感じる。

「G Marks」　Googleブックマークとの同期、編集管理が便利。

「はてブポケット」　はてなブックマーク用アプリ。
Instapaperとの連携が便利。

三画面目は写真系がメイン。

「QuickMark」　バーコードリーダアプリ。Fujimottaさんの「想造ノート」で見て、「メディアマーカー」登録に利用。

四～五画面目はゲーム。

「Cartoon Wars」　こんな絵のゲームが・・・と思っていたら、面白い！

「Dexter the Game」　デクスターファンの私にはたまりません。

六画面目は何かの時用。

「Displex」　Googleカレンダーとの連携は便利です。めったにTVを見ないので、これで忘れずに見れます。

七画面目はたまにしかチェックしないものや、とりあえず購入してみたアプリ。

気に入らなければ即削除。

気に入れば前の方の画面に移動させます。

「PushGmail」　Gmailが一番良く使うメールなので、なくてはなりません。が、このアプリ自体からメールを見ること、バッジの数字を確認するまでもないのでここら辺に置いています。

八画面目は、写真加工アプリでめったには使わないけど、入れておきたいアプリ。

「eCamera」　良いアプリですが、週一回使うかどうか。

九画面目は、デフォルトで入っているけど使わないアプリにしています。

今月はまたアプリ購入多いなぁ・・・

無料、有料色々なTwitterクライアントを試した挙句、デスクトップ版の使い易さ、横フリックでの画面切り替えが気に入って、今は「TweetDeck」を使っています。

「Tweetie 2」発売を機に、削除していたTwitterクライアントを再度試してみました。

そんな「Tweetie 2」はおいといて。

以前紹介したことがある「Echofon Pro(元TwitterFon Pro)」の外部連携について。

基本このような画面です。

設定画面。

様々なマイクロブログに一度に投稿してくれるサービス「Ping.fm」の設定。

Get Mobile Key on ping.fm

をタップすると何故かエラーが表示されて出来ず。

Mobile Key

「Ping.fm」のサイトに行き、自分でMobile Keyを作ってメモをして入力。

これで「Ping.fm」との連携が出来ました。

「Ping.fm」便利なんですが、使っている人を見かけたことがないんですよね・・・

アプリを始めて立ち上げた時の、この設定画面。

初回以降どうやったらこの設定画面に行けるのかと思ったら、一番上の画像「Friends」画面の最上部、自分のIDをタップすると

「Accounts」になります。

ここで＞をタップすれば行けるんですね。

前回使っていた時、結局行き方が分からずじまいでした。

「Photo backend」で画像のアップ先が「TwitPic」、「Flickr」から選択出来ます。

私は「Flickr」を選択しました。

iPhoneの「設定」画面からの設定。

「Bookmark service」という項目があります。

「Instapaper」、「Read It Later」を登録することが出来ます。

両方登録すると、「Instapaper」が優先されます。

「Instapaper」は便利だなぁ。

最後にFireFoxのアドオン。

ここでTwitterの未読件数が分かり、クリックすると

小窓が出現します。

あまり使い勝手は良くないですが、普段使うブラウザで未読が一目で分かるのは便利。

iPhoneでは「TweetDeck」に慣れてしまったので、「Echofon Pro(元TwitterFon Pro)」はちょっと見辛く感じてしまいます。

しばらく使えば慣れるかなぁ。

「Ping.fm」の投稿にクセがあるので、投稿は「Pingle」を使うとしても、しばらくは「Echofon Pro(元TwitterFon Pro)」をメインで使ってみよう。

いや、ちょっと待てよ・・・

「Ping.fm」との連携がどうでも良いなら、「Instapaper」との連携はある「Tweetie 2」もありだなあ。

この分野は良いアプリが沢山あるので迷います。

Pc에서 인터넷서핑 중 나중에 아이팟 터치에서 보고 싶은 내용이 있을 경우 서비스 사이트에 저장하면 터치에서 업데이트를 이용해서 해당 페이지 내용을 나중에 오프라인으로 볼 수 있다.

instapaper 프로그램은 앱스토어에서 유료로 팔고 있고, 사이틑 무료로 제공된다.

One of my favorite Web tools to hit the scene lately is Instapaper, a simple bookmarking tool created by a co-founder of Tumblr. Here’s how Instapaper works:

• Sign up for an account (no verification required, but you’ll need to use something you’ll remember). You don’t have to set a password, but you’ll need a user name.
• Drag the Instapaper bookmarklet button to your toolbar
• Find an article you want to read, but don’t have time right now? Click the “Read Later”‘ button, and it’s instantly saved to your Instapaper account.

Once you save a page to check out later, you can choose to Edit, Delete, or Skip that selection. Simple, streamlined, and extremely useful – just the way a good Web tool should be.

Facebook’s Purchase Is Bid to Own Social Media – washingtonpost.com

What you need is an aggregator — a place to come that gives you a news feed not just of what’s happening inside your walled garden, but also what’s going on elsewhere, too. A Facebook/FriendFeed mash-up — FaceFeed, we (and many others) will call it — would be exactly that.

The cornerstone of any online marketing strategy is, for better or worse, the company website. Many of us (myself included) have spent hour upon hour pouring over page after page of a website, revising and refining content, mapping out the user path from top to bottom and agonizing over the user experience behind each and every click.

At the same time I think we often forgot that as internet users, we devise processes to extract and organize information in ways that make sense to us, regardless of the appearance or impact on the people responsible for that information.

Take, for example, the RSS Feed Reader. Originally intended to be a way to drive people to news sites, the RSS feed quickly became a way to pull content from many disparate sites into one centralized place. Combine a RSS Reader with a service that displays only the text of the page (Instapaper, Ad Blockers  or Readable, for example), and now you have the ability to interact with information in a way that, I’m guessing, is not what the company had intended.

Much has been made about the announcement by Rupert Murdoch that all NewsCorp papers will soon begin charging for content. One potential problem with this arrangement comes with the idea of aggregation – as time passes, fewer and fewer websites are being treated as “destinations,” while more and more are finding themselves simply part of the pile from which information is plucked. It will be interesting to see whether Murdoch’s sites revert back to destinations or simply fade into obscurity as users refuse to alter their paradigm to fit Murdoch’s.

If, on the other hand, linking and aggregation are the new internet reality, I wonder how we can modify our models to remain both relevant and (hopefully) profitable. Television, partially in response to time-shifting and ad-blocking DVR functionality, came up with (or, should I say, reverted to) in-program product placements. Could we use a similar model?

Or should we simply acknowledge that the information has indeed become commoditized and focus our efforts on the next layer of complexity (the analysis), and then the next layer after that (multi-systems analysis) and then the next layer after that … and on and on and on and on?

Unfortunately, I don’t really know the answer here, but it seems to me that users are going to do what users are going to do, regardless of what we want. We can either spend our time shouting at the rain or we can find ourselves a pair of galoshes and go jump in some puddles.

If you use Google Reader and Instapaper, then you want to make sure you pay attention to this post here. Using some of the new features introduced over at Greader this week, it permits you to add articles to your Instapaper queue straight from inside your feed reader. It’s very slick.

The only shortcomings I see at the moment are the blank 201 result page and the lack of fine tuning what URL gets sent over. I like to choose a print view before adding an item to Instapaper, but perhaps saving a few clicks may be a worthwhile tradeoff.

I’m getting software has an excellent post explaining how you can read your Google Reader Starred Items in Instapaper.

As the writer points out, both Instapaper items and Starred Items in Google Reader act as ‘to read’ lists. Its not ideal to have more than one such list and this technique combines the two.

MakeUseOf.com highlights a great tool called Instapaper which it describes as:

“…an application we’ve covered before here on MakeUseOf – Abhijeet even featured it as one of “4 Awesome Tools to Save Pages For Reading Later.” Instapaper is a great tool for saving pages and reading them later, but it’s also got the potential to be so much more.

Instapaper has, over the last several months, become my only source of bookmarks – I’ve ditched Diigo, which I loved; I’ve ditched Evernote, which I still use for everything else. Everything I find on the Web that I want for later now goes into Instapaper, which was made possible by some fantastic updates to the site, and more importantly, to the companion iPhone application…”

Instapaper is like surfing the net without the net! Save your favourite web pages to read on the go with this application. With the pro version of the application, you get extreme pro features including: folders, star recommended articles, automatic background updates, saves your position (bookmark), tilt scrolling, adjustable fonts and text sizes, dark mode for night reading and much, much more! Before you download it for five bucks, check it out the lite (free) version at the App Store to try it out.

Price: $4.99

(Web) Text storage solution Instapaper adds folders to organize and opens starred items to others; http://tr.im/pmRO

Not much to talk about (or that I can talk about). Working on some behind the scenes projects and trying to make something of my unstructured time in between applying for jobs. Today’s post isn’t about ‘productivity’ or whatever corporate throwaway phrases folks use to describe the useful tools the 2.0 era has spawned it’s just about tools that make life easier as an intensive web user and especially if you do a lot of research or reading on the internet.

Readability – One of those little applets that exists as a bookmarklet below your address bar in Firefox and that takes no memory or space to run whatsoever. If you tend to read a lot of ad-heavy news pages or other sites that are badly layed out or full of clutter this makes reading and scanning info on the net much faster and easier. Made by the cool folks over at arc90

Instapaper – another ingenious and easy to use bookmarklet created by Marco of Tumblrdom. If I find some articles I like but don’t want to go through the process of bookmarking them or just want to give a quick scan for later I’ll ’save’ it for later then go to instapaper.com, read it, star it or delete it if I want. It’s all lined up chronologically and disappears from your To Read queue once you’re finished.

Wikipedia – Not a web app but a web phenomenon. Also sitting pretty within my quick click areas in case I want to look up something I come across right away to get some general context.

Tumblr/WordPress – Of course I use wordpress for this blog and have always loved it far more than blogger. Tumblr presents a different way of doing blogging and can be customized far better than WordPress for free rather than having to pay for ‘credits’. I haven’t come across a way to truly use it for what it’s built for (quick microblogging) but love that it exists.

Anything From Google – Maps, Reader, Notebook, etc. Love and use it all extensively. I forget which exec but one of them from le Google said that all needs for work is his iPhone and that he keeps everything organized via their apps.

So-So

Twitter – Still don’t use it much can see it’s purpose (as I’ve said before). I’m trying to do something with it on LA Cycling Map that came to fruition after seeing how another biking website was using it. If I can get my arse in gear and learn to hack some RSS/XML stuff together then I think I can do some much cooler stuff with it. Also, it seems to be having problems scaling so not sure how long the phenomenon will last.

LinkedIn – Not an app but another networking site. Haven’t really found a use for it yet. This could be do to having a rather ‘light’ resume rather than the standard corporate claptrap that everyone else puts on theirs. Their job section isn’t as populated as many other sites with secondary job boards but I have found that the listings are more applicable and easier to search and find what you’re looking for.

Gone Downhill

Facebook – Was great back in college when it first came out but the different iterations has increasingly made it annoying to get on. I typically use it as a glorified address book so I can stay in touch with my worldwide network of friends. It’s great for people who travel a lot so that you can share pictures, leave a quick message on someone’s wall, etc but all the apps and games that crowd peoples’ pages are annoying.

Thank you, @problogger, for tweeting too many interesting feeds to keep track of, so many that I need a separate application to store stuff for later.

My Twitter follow list looks different today than three weeks ago. While I haven’t booted many followees, I have added feeds from blogging and social media professionals who steer me to helpful resources. The best ones (like @problogger) cue me in to what they’re reading on the web and give me links–lots of them. The worst ones send me hunting for the “unfollow” button on my Twitter app (I settled on Tweetie, btw).

Instapaper, if you’ve not already using it, saves website links as separate files that you can read later without a wi-fi signal. The saved files are either saved as web files that maintain photos and links, but sans all the goop (like flash items) that iPhone can’t cope with; or as a text file that reads like a dream on instapaper’s smooth interface (no mashed or garbled font characters). I can successfully snag and save articles that will help me build my business, but that I can read at my own pace without filling up my bookmarks bar. Its phenomenal. I’m on day-two and I’ve already thought “how did I live without this?” Tweetie links up to it nicely which is very useful, and which is also how I discovered it.

The cons are few. First, to get instapaper to work right, you’ve got to register online, save a bookmark, and then follow instructions to modify the bookmark. This isn’t such a hassle– the directions are clear, and absurdly deferent (I laughed), and will take you five minutes verses the usual minute and a half. No biggie, except that you feel like you’re on the programming end of a beta app. But if you follow the directions properly, it runs in a way that seems like magic, even for the iPhone.

Second, there’s a push to buy the Pro version, but the free version is more than adequate. The pro version costs $10, in an era where any application over $3 make you flinch. And the features are not major must-have’s; they’re just-because-you-can’s, like a flick of the wrist scrolling text option. Totally gratuitous.

Twitter’s sound-bites have the staying power of smoke and vapor. But Instapaper captures with permanence all-tweets-critical and helps you pan for gold amidst the detrius of social media. Tweetrius, I mean.