Tag Archives: instapaper

June 6, 2012, 8:00 am

Reading Intentionally Online

ProfHacker writers consistently recommend RSS (Really Simple Syndication) as a tool for managing the flow of digital information. RSS is so useful that Mark describes it as “the draft horse of social media.”

I’ve explained how RSS helps with “Keeping Up Online,” George showed how to use it for “Keeping Up With Favorite Web Services”, and Heather reminded us to “Check Out Those Journal Article RSS Feeds.” In slightly more advanced uses, Mark demonstrated “Hacking an RSS Feed for Twitter Hashtags,” and I showed CommonCraft explana…

April 24, 2012, 3:00 pm

Save Articles to Read Later with Pocket

By Lincoln Mullen

There are any number of web services and apps that let you save something online to read later. Several ProfHacker authors use these services. Brian introduced us to the concept with his post back in 2009 on “Asynchronous Reading.” Amy, Natalie, and Jason have mentioned Instapaper; Erin wrote about Zite (a related application); Brian and I have written about Read It Later; and George mentioned Readability.

Read It Later recently rebranded itself as Pocket and released a substantial update. Pocket lets you save items like articles and videos to their web service. You can then read or watch the things you’ve saved on their website, or on apps for iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and the Kindle Fire. You can get a fuller overview on Pocket’s website.

Screen shot of Pocket's web app

The upgrade has…

November 17, 2011, 8:00 am

Google Reader Alternatives

By Amy Cavender

The photo in this post expresses what a lot of people seem to be feeling over recent changes to Google Reader (one of many Google tools that’s been mentioned frequently here at ProfHacker). A great deal has been written about the changes since they rolled out a few weeks ago; some users mourn the loss of the old sharing features, while others (myself included) are less than thrilled with the new design.

Those who miss the sharing features might want to check out workarounds such as ReaderSharer, which can restore some of that functionality. For those of us who didn’t use those features but who don’t like the new design, this may be a good time to consider switching to a different RSS reader.

As it happens, I’ve been using Google Reader only sporadically for the last several months, anyway. My usual tool for reading news feeds is Reeder (Mac and iOS only, alas), which I’ve come to…