4 Awesome Tools To Save Pages For Reading Later

The advent of Web 2.0, blogs and various social networking sites has ensured that there is an ever increasing flow of information which is not possible to consume in one go. There are millions of websites on the internet and if you are an internet addict like me, you would easily come across hundreds of those sites every month. Some of them capture your attention while you skip the others after a glance.

Also there are times when you come across an interesting webpage or an article which you think deserves your time but you are in a rush and can’t read it. So what do you do then ? You might consider bookmarking it but it may be not always very convenient to do that since it could create a long unmanageable list of bookmarks.

There are better solutions and this article aims to highlight 4 such solutions. Each of these 4 tools have their own set of features and qualities but one thing in common in all of them is that they allow you to save a page for later reading in just one click.

1. Instapaper

Instapaper is a simple way to save pages for reading later. You need to sign up for an account at their site and then drag the bookmarklet which they provide to your browser toolbar. You can click on that bookmarklet to save any page for reading later. All the pages are saved in the text format in your Instapaper account and you can also get the RSS feeds for the same. You can also visit the original links from your account.

2. LaterLoop

Laterloop is a service which really caught my attention since it has some features worth talking about. It is built on the Google App Engine and therefore you can use your Google account to log into the service. It comes as a bookmarklet as well as a Firefox extension but I personally prefer using the bookmarklet. It also lets you archive the links and star them. Hence the links which you consider important can be starred for future reference.

LaterLoop also lets you subscribe to the RSS feeds for both current and starred links. One of the best features is that you can also access LaterLoop on your mobile phone. It also has the ability to integrate with the Scrapbook Firefox extension which we’ve recently covered here at MakeUseOf.

Last but not least, LaterLoop also allows you read your 30 newest links offline. It does this by letting you download them in a zip file. It calls this the LaterLoop Airplane Mode. Although this mode is in experimental stage and the quality of some downloaded webpages may not be up to the mark, it still can be a convenient way to read stuff when you’re not connected to the internet.

3. Read it Later Firefox Extension

The Read it later extension for Firefox does a lot of other things apart from allowing you to mark websites for reading later in one click. I have already talked about this extension in great detail in this post but Mark was the first one to talk about it here on MakeUseOf back in February.

4. LaterThis

LaterThis is another service which offers you a bookmarklet which when clicked will save the webpage for reading later in your LaterThis account. It has two interesting features which might excite you as a user. First, it comes with built-in support for the iPhone and iPod touch. Secondly, and this is something which I think could be useful, is that it lets you organize the links through tags. Plus, like LaterLoop, it also lets you archive and star the links.

So which of these services do you use to save links for reading later?

(By) Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips and productivity hacks at Jeet Blog