Instapaper for iPhone is a simple concept, but simply beautifully executed. It is a joy to use.
It is where I spend most of my reading time on the iPhone.
So it made sense to think about how I use the application, what my reading workflow is on the iPhone. And here’s what it looks like:
I send articles and pages to Instapaper via one of
1. emailing the link to my private Instapaper email address
2. using the ‘send to Instapaper’ menu item in several iPhone apps
3. using the ‘send to Instapaper’ bookmarklet on my PC browser
Email to Instapaper is a fantastic idea. There is just so much that I browse on Mobile Safari and don’t want to read immediately. This includes links from Twitter that I open, scan and email. I doubt I’d use Instapaper as much if I couldn’t email articles to it. [1]
And I share articles I like to Twitter from within Instapaper. The app automatically appends a short URL to the article at the end of the tweet. So far, I’ve sent around 50 articles to Twitter from Instapaper.
[1] Yes, there’s the Mobile Safari bookmarklet, but it’s inconvenient to set up; I’ve never gotten around to it. Emailing is so much easier.