I have recently moved from the archaic “Bookmark” or “Save web page” or “keep tab open” browsing system in my daily news consumption flow, to join the Read It Later cult. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then try to think of what you do when you run across an interesting website or article that seems bery interesting to you but don’t have time to check right now. There are several strategies, most of which I stated in the first sentence above: bookmarking, saving and caching the page, or keeping the tab open in your browser until you eventually either decide to close it either read it. That’s where services like Instapaper and Read It Later kick in.
After looking into both, I decided to go the Read It Later way, as it has a great Firefox plugin that allows me to browse through my saved pages and to save a page with simple keyboard shortcuts. It also integrates with Google Reader, and if I simple tap “I”, the item will be added to my Read It Later list. Basically, I have changed the way I consume information and I now no longer have to be bothered about interesting articles disturbing my workflow when I’m focusing on something else. The problem remains though that there isn’t a decent Read It Later application for my Symbian-powered handset. Of course, I could access the mobile site, and it’s well done, but I’d love to have more than that.
The way I see it, is that I only enter my account information once, and upon launch, the application should connect and sync with my online account. It should cache all the webpages I have so I can then access them offline, but should also give me the option to remove an item from my list after I’ve read it. I’d also like it to give me some sorting options by date, article title, website title, popularity… like the Read It Later website does. It would be also awesome if I open a website on my phone’s browser, then switch to Read It Later and have an option for it to see my browser and add that page to my list. Alternatively, maybe it could give me an option to go through my browser’s history and add items.
Read It Later already have their API open, so there’s nothing stopping you, my dear Symbian developer, from making it happen. What about you, do you use services like Read It Later or Instapaper, and would you love to have a dedicated application for them on your Symbian device?
