Ryan C Briggs

I am a person who reads from a screen. Excluding books, I never read off of paper. All I need is a Kindle, and I’ll never read off of paper again (which would be sad, because I do like books). This post is aimed at other people like me.

I want to share two bookmarklets that are central to how I read online.

First, we have instapaper by Marco Arment. Instapaper allows you to save an article to read later. When I come across something interesting while I am working, I click “Read Later” and then close the window. Later when I want something to read I go to instapaper.com and read the articles I have saved. Marco even made an iPhone application, so I can read the articles I saved while riding the metro.

When I come across an article that I want to read now, I often click “Read Now.” Doing that runs a bookmarklet called Readability by Arc90. This separates the content that I want to read from the ads, formatting, and layout, and gives me a clean page to read from. It might sound picky, but if you read the New York Times or Economist pages regularly, then you will love it. It is a one-click cure for ADD.

My biggest challenge when working with my computer, especially when I am online, is staying focused. Both of these bookmarklets are drop-dead simple ways to help me stay focused. If I see something cool but not currently relevant, I file it away with instapaper. If I want to read something now, I remove the clutter and read it. I hope you find them as useful as I do.