Guys, does any of you use anything of the following:
- Instapapper
- Delicious
- Pinboard
- Pocket
- Read it later
- Readability
- ... ? ? ?
If you do, please let me know what you are mainly using it for.
Link sharing between devices for myselfI use Firefox as my main browser. I use Firefox Sync for synchronising bookmarks and opened tab on different PCs. In the early days of Firefox when Sync used to be called Weave there was a free app for iPhone to load the bookmarks from the Sync server. I tried it but somehow this was not convenient. So I ended up not using the app. Currently this app costs a few dollars (no longer free) in the apple store. I'm guessing that browsing on iPhone is not comfortable enough to motivate need for synchronisation. On the other hand, the Sync's feature that synchronises opened tabs between PCs is a lifesaver. I don't need to remember to actually bookmark a tab I'm reading at work. When I come home I just open the browser's "tabs on other devices" page and it's there.
Pushing to KindleWhen I got kindle (this actually was not for myself by for my wife) I tried instapaper. The idea is that you bookmark anywhere (pc, iPhone) and it gets pushed to kindle. This did not quite work. The main reason of course is that the kindle was not mine
. But I did install instapaper on iPhone and in Firefox. What I noticed is that sync with kindle was not stable, and that reading "flattened" web pages on kindle felt subpar. I better read them on a desktop, or where not possible on a laptop. So I ditched instapaper.
Syncing with iPadSo last week I got an iPad. iPad is much more comfortable when reading web than iPhone and I see myself doing that a lot. For example, browsing these forums on iPhone is a torture and on iPad it's a pleasure. This actually prompted me to reinstall instapaper. Still, I'm not satisfied with the "disconnected" look of instapaper pages. I'm always in a coverage area of some sort and I'd rather read my bookmarks as they are published and not flattened for offline use. I realize that I can use instapaper for bookmarking only, and just press the link to load the whole page, but still the sight of a flattened page always turns me off.
Now, ideally I would like to be able to open my opened tabs from Firefox on iPad. I don't think I'm going to get that - Safari will never support syncing bookmarks with Firefox. The next best thing, is to be able to bookmark something and have it available at fingertips both on iPad and PC. But again, I'm not sure what app serves this purpose the best. Delicious? Pinboard?
Sharing with friendsThis one is least likely to be achieved as certain traction is needed so that people get on board with a technology. I'm trying to get my buddy play AI War with me. Naturally, I wanted to furnish him with some reading material. He spends a lot of time commuting and he has an iPad and a laptop that he uses during the commute. He commutes inter-city and does not have a good coverage while en-route. I mean there is coverage but it's on and off all the time. So what I wanted to do is to bookmark a few wiki articles on AI War and let him see them on his iPad (or elsewhere). Of course I could send links by email, but what fun is that? Instapaper allows "liking" links and then they'll appear in the friend's application (btw, only was able to find this feature in the iOS version but not on the website. Am I missing something?) But this would only work if he
had instapaper, which he does not. And I can't wholeheartedly recommend it to him, since I don't like it much. As I mentioned in the beginning getting him on *any* platform could be an issue if he is not going to use it for anything beyond sharing stuff with me.
So these 4 above are my mine requirements. If you used similar apps or platform, what you used it most for and how would it rate on the 4 points above?
