As a general rule, most web content is relatively short. But occasionally you stumble across something a bit longer, that you want to take in at your leisure. But if you’re not connected to the internet, you’ll need an app like Instapaper.
Instapaper lets you save longer articles to your iPhone. Setting the app up is a bit time consuming and may put off a few users, but the results are worth it. You can add a bookmark to Safari that will let you save a story to read for later, and a contact in your address book that will let you email stuff to your account for later consumption. You can also set up RSS feeds to monitor, allocate them to folders, or read suggested articles from the Instapaper editors.
But once you’ve saved an article to Instapaper, there are some nifty features that make it a great app to use. You can star items to recommend them, adjust font size, send to Twitter or Tumblr, email the link or full text to someone or scroll through the article by tilting the phone. You can also turn on “Dark Interface”, which switches the screen to white text on a black background.
At $5.99, Instapaper is a relatively expensive app purchase. But on the upside, it is a universal app, working on the iPad as well as the iPhone.
iAppalooza is Gizmodo Australia’s showcase of their favourite iPhone apps across a range of categories.
[Instapaper]
[iAppalooza]