Ever found that interesting article you just wish you had the time to read? You bookmark it, intending to read it when you get home, or perhaps you email it to yourself. Then in the jammed pack email inbox, or loaded browser bookmarks, it sort of gets lost. In comes Read It Later. Read It Later is a sort of bookmarking service that allows you to save interesting articles so when you finally have the chance to take it in, it can be easily located.

Read It Later is not the only service of its kind. Instapaper is another similar service, however I found the services available, as well as the asthetics of Read It Later make it a much more user friendly service. Read It Later integrates with Facebook and Twitter, as well as email. It has both iPhone & iPad versions, which integrate with the same services as well. While Instapaper has similar integration tools, the one feature Read It Later has that sets it apart is called Digest (which is available for a one time $5 upgrade fee). Digest is a feature which groups your articles in categories, and then allows users to quickly browse through saved articles. Photos and videos are shown in thumbnail view, which makes it much easier to find that specific article. If you have many articles in a specific categories, you can jump to the category tab in order to view all articles for the given section.

Classroom Use

I find that I use Read It Later as a PLN (personal learning network) manager of sorts. I find that I subscribe to many RSS feeds, many teachers on Twitter who share wonderful sites, and recieve many websites from colleagues via email. This is where Read It Later comes in handy. Whenever I see something I want to look at deeper, I instantly save it to Read It Later. It is very useful in cases, such at school, where I don’t have the time to really sit down and read an article. Read It Later has abookmarklet for easy article saving, both a Chrome and Firefox plugin, and an easy send it to plugin for Google Reader.