I'll repeat. I bought two apps for the iPad and they have already changed my life. In my opinion, these two apps used together create a "killer app" combo that fundamentally alters how I use, and how much I use, my iPad. These two apps are Instapaper and Reeder, each priced at $4.99.
Instapaper is a service that copies webpages to a central, cloud-based service. The idea is that a person might find an article they find interesting, but do not have time to read. They bookmark it with a special code from the Instapaper service (visually a "read it later" button) and they can come back to it when time and interest permit. I never thought that Instapaper seemed all that compelling on the desktop, nor on the iPhone. Sure, it was cool that you could save all the stuff you were reading to one place, but it just didn't seem worth the privacy loss.
Reeder is an iPad app that accesses your Google Reader account for RSS feeds (if you are not sure what an RSS feed is, you can read Wikipedia's article about it here). Truthfully, I tried to use Google Reader and I never got into it. I liked browsing to my favorite websites each day over using the Google Reader interface that seemed clunky.
These two apps together, however, have fundamentally altered how I read, save, and share the information I collect on a daily basis. The two, together in an iPad format, create a synthesis that I find convenient, compelling, and natural to use. I don't usually buy $5 apps that I'm not sure I'm going to like, but I did buy these based on some recommendations and decided to give them a try.
I began by collecting the RSS feeds of all my various information sources. The list includes the web versions of Fox News, CNN, slashdot, BYU News, Mac Rumors, and others. Again, I had tried this before with Google Reader and had not enjoyed the experience. But, I gave it another go and updated Google Reader with all my current news and information sources.
After updating Google Reader, I launched the iPad Reeder app and was instantly impressed by the interface. It organized the sources in a way that was easy to understand, and it had easy to use controls including "mark all as read". It also had settings to allow one to save a link or page directly to Instapaper.
Consequently, I purchased the Instapaper app and set up a free account. I updated my iPad's Safari browser to have a "Read it Later" bookmark and gave it a quick test. After saving a page, I switched back to my Instapaper app to read it. It downloaded it quickly and found that it generally did a good job of getting rid of all the cruft on a page (e.g., the ads and so forth). The interface was easy to use and the information was easy to read. More importantly, the information was available offline. In other words, I would not need an Internet connection to read the content.
My daily information consumption used to look like this:
- Browse to 10 or so different information sources
- Look for something new
- Skim the article if time was limited
- Try to remember to come back to it later to read more thoroughly or share with others
But now, my daily information flow works like this:
- In the morning: Open "Reeder" for the iPad
- Browse all the new news
- Send interesting stories to Instapaper
- WALK AWAY (go to work, etc)
- In the evening: Open "Instapaper" for the iPad
- Read the marked articles and file under different Instapaper folders
- Send articles I want to share to "Buzz"
There are a few problems with this system, of course. While articles are downloaded to the iPad and available for offline reading, it only keeps the 250 most recent articles. There are a few methods for getting permanent copies onto the iPad, but that aspect is still a little clunky. Also, there is a crash when moving items to folders (but it is acknowledged and should be corrected in the next version).
Despite these problems, however, I have never felt so organized in handling all of my daily news. These two apps together only cost $10 but have greatly increased my perceived value of the iPad.
