The concept of a Read It Later service is not new to our workflow. Back in October of 2010, we discussed moving our workflow to Instapaper. Then, our storage expanded to Pinboard, and we discussed integrating Pinboard and Instapaper into a writing and reading workflow.
However, the developer of Instapaper is very iOS-centric. He released an official iPad and iPhone app, and many of his updates are paired with an app update. We do like the product, but we decided to consider the competition when ReadItLater released an official Android app(Market Link), which is available currently at 99 cents. We had initially looked at ReadItLater and moved on, but things have changed.
The Android app offers an exclusive feature not available for any other platform app. Instant Push Sync, which ensures new items instantly download and are available on the phone, even if the phone is offline. Also on the Android side of things, there is a ReadItLater plugin for Dolphin Browser.
Read It Later also has a Firefox extension with a feature we were hunting for(unfortunately not also available for Chrome), which is Save All Tabs for Later. It also offers offline reading, Google Reader integration, etc.You can mark items as read directly from the browser. Overall, it is much more tightly integrated into the browser experience.
Pinboard also supports the same import from ReadItLater it does from Instapaper, which means that end of my workflow(the archive) is unchanged.
Read It Later also has a beta paid feature called Digest. This turns your Read It Later stories into an online magazine format, and automatically sorts them into topics. The magazine format is very popular right now.
It does lack the auto-send to Kindle function that Instapaper offered, but this can still be reproduced using Calibre. It lacks folders, but supports tagging(which can accomplish the same thing)
If your priorities are clean formatting of long-form text content and integrated portability to an eReader, you may lean toward Instapaper. If you do your reading with your browser or mobile device and want to keep up with content-rich pages with lots of images or videos, Read It Later may be more suited.
Related articles
- Instapaper vs. ReadItLater (almutei.wordpress.com)
- Why Every Android Web-User Should Try ReadItLater (gigaom.com)
