If you use the free Instapaper service, you really need to get the Instapaper app.
First, for those who aren’t using it, check out this KF on KND article about Instapaper: a fantastic, free service that allows you to send articles to your Kindle/Kindle Fire or other devices so you can read them later, offline.
I absolutely LOVE Instapaper, because it seems I’m constantly coming across interesting articles online myself or via links on Twitter or Facebook, but very often I don’t have time to read them immediately. Instapaper allows me to save a copy of the article to an online filing cabinet, or “archive”, under my Instapaper account, and also provides me with the option of sending copies to my Kindle or Kindle Fire automatically. And it does all of this FOR FREE!
It’s always been a terrific tool, but there’s one problem that’s always prevented me from getting as much use from it as I’d hoped: the articles I have sent automatically to my Kindle Fire all show up on my carousel labeled “Instapaper”, with no additional details to help me tell the various articles apart at a glance. Up to now, I’d have to actually open each Instapaper file to view the article titles. Since there was also no way to label them myself, or even to group them into meaningful categories, it became kind of a bother to find specific Instapaper articles on my Fire.
Enter the Instapaper app (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $2.99). The Instapaper app connects directly to your online Instapaper archive, and displays a scrollable/swipe-able grid with the title and a snippet from each archived article. It also provides access to ‘featured’ articles that you haven’t selected to archive, but may find interesting.
Since I know every single article I’ve archived to Instapaper is something that piqued my interest at the time, having this new app is like having a free, electronic newsstand that’s filled with nothing but content I find fascinating or amusing. As I browse my archive in the app, I feel like a kid in a candy store!
Another great aspect of having this app is that I no longer have to have my selected articles automatically sent to my Fire, where they were always cluttering up my carousel and were being stored as separate, individual files that took up more memory space than the Instapaper app does—even with my archive loaded to it.
At $3, this app is a bargain. When you consider all the FREE content you get for it by selecting/archiving articles online, and further that the content is all hand-picked by YOU, $3 hardly seems enough to pay for this app. Having this app is like having a free monthly subscription to a magazine that’s been totally tailored to suit your unique mix of tastes and interests.
Sign up for Instapaper and get this app, and you can stop setting a browser bookmark for every interesting or funny article you find online, you will never again be unable to find an online article you intended to read because you failed to bookmark it, and you’ll never be at a loss for short, great reads.