Personal bookmarking service Read It Later has some nice new features this week for both users and developers.
On the user side, there's now an updated version of its reading application for the iPhone, which lets users access their saved reading list even when they're not near a data connection. The new version supports both password-protected sites and articles that are spread out over multiple pages. Once you've plugged in your password to a site that needs it, the app stores the password so you don't have to enter it each time the app needs to fetch a full article. And for stories that span multiple pages, the application will automatically detect this and download the content from the remaining pages.
Other small tweaks include an easier way to turn the auto-ration lock on and off, a currently-reading and recently-read list, as well as a scroll bar that lets you quickly jump to a later part of an article without having to do the Running Man with your fingers. It even shows you how far you've scrolled down in any given article, so you can hop back to where you were. These are small touches, but they can speed up how you navigate to and from each piece of content.
For developers, the service has updated its API to allow third parties to pull user data. Previously they could only write to it. This could make for some exciting apps in the future; one being a version of the software that can download article data in the background, even when you're not running it. As it stands with Read It Later for the iPhone, it can't download new article data for offline reading until the next time you launch it and have a data connection. Other platforms that allow background processes may see richer, fuller apps because of this.
Some of Read It Later's new iPhone features in screenshot form. Click to see in full-size.
(Credit: CNET)
Read It Later (download), the bookmarking meets productivity tool has a new iPhone app out (review it). It lets you sync up with your desktop reading list and pick up stories while away from your computer. But the real reason to get it, is that like the desktop version it lets you save stories for offline reading, giving you a way to catch up on content even when you're away from a sturdy data connection.
There's both a free and pro version. The pro version, which costs $2.99, adds in things like a bookmarklet for saving links from Safari, a sharing tool to post articles to external bookmarking sites, as well as a full screen browsing mode that gives you more screen real estate than you get in Safari. You can also set it to ignore the iPhone's accelerometer, which lets you read certain content sideways or upside down which can be useful for things like photos.
Here's a demo:
The company also recently released an API for developers to build Read It Later integration into their own apps. This means developers of RSS readers, or even news publishers could give readers who are also Read It Later users a way to save their content for later viewing.
If you've ever used Read It Later, you'll probably like a new service called "I Need to Read This." It does the same thing, letting you bookmark stories that you want to read, but not right away.
What's nice about I Need to Read This is that you can use all of its services through bookmarklets instead of having to install anything in your browser. There's simply "I Need to Read This" and "Read an Article" bookmarklets, which you drag up to your browser's toolbar, and on any story you want to bookmark you just hit the former bookmarklet to save it. Then, to read what you have saved you click the latter "Read an Article" button, which takes you to the latest story. Clicking it again takes you to the second most recent, and so on.
Along with skipping to stories directly, the service maintains a complete list of stories you've saved, which is presented in reverse-chronological order. Like Read It Later, this is all saved in the cloud so you can access it from any computer, and because it's bookmarklet-based you could use it even from public computers without needing special permission to install anything.
There's not much more to it than that, which is what I like about it as a bookmarking tool. For power users, though, there is a Firefox Extension that gives you the bookmarking and quick reading buttons, right in your browser, although it's currently listed in the experimental section of Mozilla's add-ons.
Saved articles can be found in your source list, where all the ones that you've already read are greyed out, with the new ones showing up on top.
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