Instapaper: Fuck it for later - you should see how it BLOGS NOW! @instapaper

There’s an app for this - The Boston Globe

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http://blog.arc90.com/2009/03/02/shhh-im-trying-to-read/
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http://www.instapaper.com/

Shhh, I’m Trying To Read! | Arc90 Blog

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

By Rich Ziade

The Web has become a very rude place. We’re trying to mind our own business but we’re bombarded more and more with noise that makes it harder to focus and read. It’s become a painful experience. Just visit MSNBC or Yahoo News and you’ll quickly find yourself waist-deep in all sorts of advertising clutter.
Well, we decided to do something about it. Readability is a browser bookmarklet that takes a crack at wiping out all that junk so you can have a more enjoyable reading experience. It works with all the latest browsers and its success rate is pretty respectable (we’d guess over 90% of web sites are handled properly).
It’s our latest lab experiment and a small gesture towards a more peaceful, civilized Internet!

And if you want to tap into the world of ideas? Well, yes, there are apps for that, too. So, for the iPhone owners out there, here are a few suggestions for keeping up with the conversation:

Instapaper (Free). Ever come across something you would really like to read, but don’t have the time? Instapaper provides an easy way to save articles to read at a more convenient moment. After creating an account, you download a button for your browser. Any time you click the bookmarklet, Instapaper saves the text on a website in a readable format, stripped of ads and images. It is easy to download your saved articles to your iPhone and read them on the train ride home, or whenever you have a few minutes. Instapaper is widely used - and loved. Wired’s Dylan F. Tweney once wrote on the Gadget Lab blog that Instapaper “just about justifies the phone’s purchase price all by itself.” Also be sure to have a look at Instapaper’s most frequently bookmarked articles at Give Me Something to Read (www.givemesomethingtoread.com). It is an eclectic list of magazine articles and short fiction from publications like The Atlantic, Seed magazine, and The New Republic.

Newsstand ($4.99). With an aggregator like Newsstand, you “subscribe” to your favorite publications so you can read them all in one place. Simply type in the names of websites that you like to read and it will alert you to fresh content. Newsstand has a mock newspaper interface for reading headlines and articles. Many newspapers and blogs even display their full articles in this format, known as “RSS,” so you can read everything in the app without waiting for Safari to load. Newsstand is best for casual use; with more than about a dozen subscriptions, the app may feel overwhelming. And use care when subscribing to large publications, like BBC News, or you will be flooded. Instead of a publication’s main feed, you might want to subscribe to specific sections like “Science & Environment,” which, in the case of the BBC, averages about 50 updates in a week.

NPR (Free). In July of last year, National Public Radio released all its material online so that anyone with enough technical savvy could build applications using the network’s vast archives and streaming audio. Shortly after, a formidable unofficial NPR app emerged called NPR Addict. The official NPR app quietly debuted last summer. Have you made the switch? You should. The official app is remarkably robust, with a sleek interface for searching by show, topic, or station. You can listen to recent episodes of programs like “On the Media” or “Science Friday” or play live streaming radio from any member station. Still can’t get enough public radio? Check out CBC Radio (Free), a similarly designed app for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Joanne McNeil lives on the South Shore and blogs at The Tomorrow Museum, www.tomorrowmuseum.com.

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