I’m one of those people who browses the web with 20-30 tabs open at any one time in my browser. I’m constantly opening up links in background tabs which look interesting and that I plan to read at some point. The problem I have is that I end up opening new tabs faster than I can read the already open ones. This is where Read It Later comes in.
Read It Later is kind of like an enhanced Chrome to Phone. But whereas Chrome to Phone just pushes open tabs to your Android phone, Read It Later enables you to save any webpage for… reading later. Even when you’re offline! By clicking on a special bookmarklet in your browser bar you can clickly save articles to your Read it Later reading list.
The reading list view of your saved articles
When saving articles Read it Later also reformats them to a mobile friendly format which is much more pleasant to read. It also has the side benefit of stripping out ads (sorry Leigh!).
Read It Later turns this...
...into this!
Read it Later is available for both Android and iOS and has a sync feature so your articles are always up to date on whichever device you use. I bought it from the Android market for the bargain price of 50p with the iOS version costing me a whole 9 pennies more from the app store, although free versions are also available. I found it particularly useful on my iPod Touch since it only has WiFi and therefore spends a lot of time offline when out and about.
One unique and very useful feature of the Android version is that it utilises the share functionality built into the OS. So if you’re reading something in the browser you can quickly save it for later reading. It even works in Twitter where you can save links from Tweets without even clicking on them.
Read it Later integrates with Android's share functionality
Summary
Read it Later fulfils its purpose perfectly and should ensure that you always have something to read when you’re sitting on the bus, or loo!! It’s offers a much more pleasant reading experience than standard websites and is great for those times when your data connection is flakey.
Read it Later is really good. I use it all the time. The Android App costs 61p but Paperdroid is free and supports Read it Later.