Reading Utilities: Readability and Instapaper

Reading on the web can sometimes be challenging. Text blocks are broken up, advertisements are flashing relentlessly, type can be tiny. What is a person to do to make reading on a web page more pleasant? Enter Readability , a nifty utility that removes the clutter around what you’re reading. Readability works with most major modern browsers and has been tested on many news sites and blogs. It isn’t 100% effective but works surprisingly well.

First you can choose your preferred style from among newspaper, novel, ebook, inverse (light on dark) or Athelas (graceful using white space to advantage). Then choose your font size from a range of five from extra small to extra large. Finally choose your margin width ranging from extra narrow to extra wide. All of these selection choices can be viewed for effect at the bottom of the page as you choose so you can immediately see their effects and fiddle until you're happy with your selections.

You have an option to convert hyperlinks to footnotes by checking the box at the bottom of your setting choices. What will this do? Articles are often strewn with links — distracting you from the content — and pulling your attention elsewhere. Selecting the "Convert hyperlinks to footnotes" checkbox will pull the links out of your articles and format them as footnotes. Originally linked text will be marked with a simple reference mark so that you know exactly where footnotes correspond to your documents.

Once you have selected your settings, you simply drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark toolbar. When you find an article that you want to read, click on the bookmarklet and presto, you will be able to read it in the format that you have chosen.

Readability - Installation Video for Firefox, Safari & Chrome from Arc90 on Vimeo.

Install Readability and enjoy some quiet reading without distraction thanks to the folks at Arc90 and their laboratory experiment. And if you like their little experiment, don’t forget to follow their RSS feed or Twitter while you’re there.

Instapaper

Now that you’ve used Readability to declutter your reading space, you might want to check out another utility that allows you to save web pages or articles for reading later. Instapaper is an app that will bookmark web pages, but rather than saving them to your PC or Mac, Instapaper allows you to access archived articles from any computer you own, even smartphones and Kindle e-book readers.

Instapaper works the same way as Readability by creating a button in your browser toolbar. Go to Instapaper and click on “register for a free account”.


When you’ve registered, this is what you’ll see:



Simply drag the “Read Later” bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar. (If you have trouble with installation, check to be sure that Ad Aware or another pop-up blocker isn’t blocking you from adding the bookmarklet.) Once installed, all you need do is click the “Read Later” bookmarklet on a page you want to read later.

Be sure to check out the “Extras” tab at the top of the page to see what other tools, toys, features and applications are available to get content into and out of Instapaper. There are so many ways which you can use Instapaper, it will make your head spin. Check out the many ways from bookmark to e-mail to ebook readers to mobile devices and RSS feeds that you can save content to read later. There’s even an app similar to Readability but using a different technical approach called “Instapaper Text” which you might wish to try. And you can export your list of saved articles, up to the most recent 2000 articles you've saved.

Play outdoors while the sun shines but stock up your reading for a rainy summer day using Instapaper.

Happy reading with Readability and Instapaper!

Thing 30 More Ways to Use RSS & Delicious

It was interesting to investigate the options for filtering RSS feeds. I tried a quick test of FeedRinse. Feed Sifter which filtered in by keyword was also intriguing. I used it to find something I knew was there and saved a bit of time.RSSFWD announced their shutdown via Twitter in mid-January.The idea behind Feed My Inbox is good and I can see some use for it, but I'm trying to cut down on mail, not create more. I do regularly add and subtract feeds from my Google Reader application.

I did like the reminder applications and can see that they would occasionally be useful when you are busy. I also liked the usefulness of RSSWeather.com especially in the spring/summer severe weather season. It's nice to have the warning.

I added a widget to my blog from a Govt. RSS feed (Federal Legislative tracker) relating ta bill introduced to eliminate the need to keep track of calls on work supplied cell phones made for personal use. It's a GOOD THING! I hope it passes.

I used Delicious search features regularly, even before this thing. I like being able to take advantage of the accumulated knowledge of others. And I mourned the disappearance of Favthumb as I really liked their visual display of thumbnails of pages. I guess I am a more visual person than I realized. I like the display of my delicious tags in the sidebar of my blog. It's a BIG cloud. And there's a link to my delicous account there too.

I found some new tools for special purposes here that I'm sure I will come back to use when needed.

Thing 29 Google Tools

It's almost scary to contemplate all the Google tools I use on a daily basis. What would I do without them? I have a iGoogle home page, use Google Reader, am overwhelmed daily by Google News (I've learned to hit delete without guilt), and frequent Google web search and Google Scholar and Book Search with hourly regularity. Google is a librarian's best friend, if you know how and when to use the tools they offer.

For this thing, I set up a number of Google Alerts: one for mention of my hometown, one each for mention of my favorite jazz artists, and one for my own name. It didn't create too many additional e-mail notices, but I did find the results interesting. It works much the same way Twilert worked when I used it to score a hard to come by Nintendo WiiFit at Christmas time. I was notified of the release date of both favored artists new albums and used that information to pre-order their music so I actually got it on the day it was released (not that I needed to, but it was nice to have.)The hometown alert brought up news stories from sources other than those I normally read in an RSS feed, and despite all my Web2.0 activities, my name didn't show up anywhere I didn't expect it to, easing fears of identity theft and privacy concerns.

For productivity, Gmail is a boon while traveling since it is so easily accessible. Recentl changes to gmail have made it even easier to find archived mail. I had set up an account for the original 23 Things program use, and have found it so handy, that it has become my default for mail I want to be sure I see. It's also easy to have that same mail sent to my main work account for my convenience as well. The best thing about it is their ability to identify spam as spam and not accidentally eliminate real messages that I would want to receive. I only wish my work ISP mail service could do as well. There legitimate messages are regularly flagged as spam when they are NOT.

I am very excited by Google Sites. It looks like it would be great for those of us who are HTML challenged with no time to study up on it, and would allow us to have a vital, easy to update website. I intend to investigate it further and keep an eye on this as a possible venue for our NCLC web page.I'd have made the change already, except for the fact that when I checked it did not support the use of forms which I use as part of our interlibrary loan service. If and when forms are supported, it would be perfect for us.

And the Google apps and features just keep on coming. While editing a post today, I learned that my Blogger blog's photos have their own album in Picasa Web Albums. I signed in, went and looked, and there they were. What a cool tool that is as well.

Thing 3 - Redux

I happened upon this blog post which compares the RSS Feed readers Bloglines and Google Reader. It has a nice comparison of features and some thoughtful commentary so I thought I would add the link to my blog so I could find it again should someone ask what the differences are: http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2008/02/bloglines-vs-google-
reader-a-usability-evaluation/

Thing 3 - RSS Feeds

RSS feeds literally bring the world you choose to your doorstep and using Google Reader lets you move that doorstep around to wherever you are. (Unless,of course, you're at the cabin without electricity.)

I tried using Internet Explorer's feed but I don't always use Internet Explorer. I don't like IE. I like the navigation features of Netscape much better and I mourn its demise. I've downloaded Firefox and find it similar enough that I suspect I will use it more than IE. So I thought I would try Google Reader since I already have a Google page and a Blogger account. It's simply to avoid having to use another username and password combination to remember. (But I plan to check out Passwordsafe.com mentioned in Bridget's Twig which sounds as nifty as RSS Feeds and allows you to access all your passwords from anywhere.) I live in fear of losing my little notebook whick contains everytihng I need to access my online resources.

Google Reader is ideal for me to keep track of the progress of blogs in the 23 things project. I can be notified when there are changes and not have to check each blog everyday. Talk about a time saver! It could easily be used to monitor other types of similar projects or online learning.

I added news feeds, but find that for the most part I prefer going to the news web site and browsing, much like browsing in a library. After monitoring the news feeds for a few days, I eliminated most of them. Somehow there is satisfaction in browsing the eclectic conglomeration of information on news sites and using the RSS feeds for this leaves me thinking I might miss that odd tidbit the catches my fancy and leads me to explore new ideas or learn more about a subject. However, for specialized information RSS feeds would the be choice to have information delivered to me.