Hear Me Now, Read it Later

I saw this post on RWW about Read It Later several weeks ago. I guess Read It Later has been around for a while; it’s a nifty little Firefox add-on that allows you to mark links to read later. Simple enough. Plus it syncs between multiple browser instances, allowing you to have a consolidated reading list.

Sounds similar to Delicious, but targeted at managing stuff to read, rather than storing scads of bookmarks with a network wrapped around them.

What caught my eye was that the new RIL version integrated with Google Reader, my feed reader of choice. So, with the new RIL add-on, I can see the little checkmark to add any feed item to the RIL list. Very useful for me.

I frequently open feed items from Reader into new tabs and leave them open to read later. Sometimes they’ll stay open for days; sometimes Firefox eats up too much memory, forcing a restart. Sometimes I remember to note all the open links, sometimes I don’t.

So, this little add-on sounded like a good way to keep track of my reading list. I promptly installed the Firefox add-on and decided to wait and see how it worked for me before blogging it.

This falls into the “blog it later” bucket.

Well, after a few weeks, it’s turned out to be useful. As I remember to use it more, it’s getting more useful, e.g. today I found several posts that I wanted to read in detail, just not right away. So, I used the little checkmark in Reader to add them to my reading list.

The sync feature is very nice too, so I can keep my reading list on two laptops. Sure, there’s a web site too, but I doubt I’ll use it much, if at all. Here’s a demo video, if you’re interested.

Anyway, if you read a lot of stuff online, or more accurately, if you want to keep track of stuff you want to read, Read It Later works really well. There’s even IE support of some kind, not that I care, but you might.

Do you use Read It Later or something similar? Sound off in the comments.