I’m afraid I didn’t manage to read the whole of this post by my buddy Pawel (from Self Employed Cafe) on the topic of customer service. Something in the first paragraph caught my attention and sent me off in another direction.
That something was this:
I usually save a lot of articles to my instapaper and spend a good deal of time on Friday going through them.
Instapaper? What’s that?
There are times when I’m embarrassed about how far behind the times I can sometimes be. Instapaper has a PageRank 6 and has been around since November 2006 (at least that’s the date of the domain registration), although the earliest mention I can find is from Mashable in 2008 when they did a feature on apps that allow you to save web content to read later.
In the past I’ve done this by storing bookmarks in the traditional way, through the browser, or by using one of the major bookmarking services like Delicious. Generally though, these bookmarks are forgotten and an article that looked interesting in the AM hours all too quickly becomes a distant, unread and unappreciated, memory. In fact, it’s not even a memory any-more…
Which is a shame.
People spend hours researching and creating blog posts. They make sure every detail is correct, that every link is pointing to the correct page and that every headline is an attention grabber. And then people like you and me ignore them.
You can’t blame us though. There’s only so much shit you can read in one day. What with all this tweeting, blogging, Facebooking and coffee drinking going on, there just aren’t enough hours to do everything you would like to.
No need for Mr Fancy Pants
If you have read these pages before you’ll know I’m a fan of simple applications that just work. That don’t over-complicate matters by adding fancy (and unnecessary) functions.
Instapaper is just like that.
I’m using the web-based version – there’s also an iPhone/iPad/Kindle version – to store articles I don’t have time to read when I first come across them. I click on the “Read Later” bookmarklet I’ve installed on my browser toolbar and the link to the web-page is passed through to my Intsapaper account for easy access when I have time.
Really simple, and so much more convenient than adding to Delicious or even to my own favorites folders.
And, because I have a link to my Instapaper account sitting right in front of me in the middle of my toolbar (next to the Read Later bookmarklet), I’m not going to forget to check my saved stories.
Once read they can be easily archived into folders. Brilliantly simple and so, so useful.
Ha ha, hey Stephen, thanks for the mention.
And…doh! I really hope that some people actually went past that opening paragraph :D
I love instapaper, use it all the time. Not only to save articles for later. Together with Twitterlator Pro they form a great duo to post to web 2.0 sites and so on. I use them all the time for that.
I also use Instapaper to post snippets of articles to Twitter and so on. Together with Twitterlator and few other apps it practically allows me to run the entire online business from my iPhone.
Thanks for dropping by Pawel and no problem!
I actually did go back and read your post as customer service is an area of business that matters to me (I was involved in it for some time and frequently experience poor examples of it).
I’ve often though about getting an iPhone, but I don’t think I would benefit from one enough to warrant the cost. An iPod touch is another matter though. It’s amazing that a business can be run from such a small device :-)
Yeah, it is. But what’s more amazing is that it works!
I have been managing my all online ventures from a phone, not to mention that I write most of my blog posts on the iphone too.
By all means I am not an iPhone advocate. I have one but you can easily do the same stuff on an Androind phone for half the price.
What you need is some speech to text software – now that really would save time! I’ve looked at iPhones time and again, but the prices are just crazy. There are more functional alternatives around, and yes, many of them operate on Android and are much cheaper.
I’m quite happy with my old laptop for now :)
Glad you shared this. I’ve got 100′s upon 100′s of bookmarks, this will keep things a bit more organized.
Hope you find it as useful as I do. I use it on a daily basis now.
thank stephen. i think your article is very useful for me and all people. thank alot
Sounds like a good method to save my web wanderings. I’m terrible, I usually just leave open bunches of tabs everyday that I want to come back and read the following day. Hardly ever happens though, I end up getting sick of all the tabs being open cluttering everything up! Will have a look in instapaper. Cheers for the heads up.
Hi Mike,
Sounds like we have similar surfing habits. I get a bit ‘tab happy’ too! Instapaper has been a great way to store links and pages I want to read again. It’s easier to organise than my favorites folder and I don’t feel obliged to add tags as I do when I save a link to Delicious. Needless to say though, my Instapaper page is looking a bit messy at the moment and needs to be cleaned up a little!