6 Great Tools to Save Links for Later
Unfortunately, there just aren't enough hours in the day. This seems to be especially true when you take on a lot of projects. Between blogging, researching, emailing, and real life, reading all of your feeds isn't something we can do all the time. Sometimes, we see something that we'd love to save it for later without cluttering up our bookmarks. Here are 6 tools to get the job done.
ReadBag
ReadBag is a quick and easy bookmarklet to save links for later. ReadBag requires a Google Account to use the service, though OpenID might have been a better choice. The UI is simple and clean with all the features available from the homepage. You can archive bookmarks after you're done reading them, star them, add a note, or simply delete them. ReadBag includes a host of goodies such importing options, a Firefox extension, Google Reader integration, Google Gears support, RSS for your bookmarks, and a mobile interface for both regular phones and the iPhone. Unfortunately, ReadBag doesn't support tagging.
Instapaper
Instapaper is a really simple "bookmark it for later" service. With only a simple bookmarklet to bookmark items, Instapaper doesn't offer nearly as much as its competitors. You can edit the title and url of your bookmarks, grab an RSS feed, and add a note to your links. There is one great feature that's available when you click the 'text' link at the end of each bookmark. Instapaper allows you to read your bookmark right from the site with no hassles. All in all, the service is very straightforward with a clean UI and zero distractions.
LaterLoop
A new tool from the maker of social bookmarking service Mento, LaterLoop offers the best features out of the group. There's a neat extension for Firefox that features keyboard shortcuts, mobile support, import and sharing options with Del.icio.us, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and more. Offline support is integrated with Scrapbook Firefox extension instead of Google Gears. You can also read a text only version of your links. However, the UI for text only reminds me of the horrible reformatting job that Google does for mobile phones. Overall, LaterLoop sports a clean and uncluttered UI just like the rest of the pack.
LinkRiver
We've reviewed LinkRiver as a great service to find more news on a slow day. Well, when the pace picks up and you find yourself not having enough time, LinkRiver offers a handy bookmarklet to save items for later. If you're a user of the site, you can also bookmark content for later directly from your profile.
FriendFeed: Read Later
Fans of the FriendFeed aggregation service will love using the Read Later Greasemonkey script. This script allows you to save entries in FriendFeed for later. It's a very useful tool for reading FriendFeed quickly and coming back to the articles that might get buried under the constant stream of activity. Once installed, you'll begin seeing 'Later' appended to the end of each item. There's also a convenient tab that the script adds to FriendFeed for browsing through your saves.
Bonus: Star it in Google Reader
If you're using Google Reader to go through the never-ending process of reading feeds, Google's 'Star' feature can be a great way to save items for later. To quickly process your feeds, change your display to 'List View' in Google Reader. Then star only the headlines that jump out at you. 'Mark all as read' and repeat until all your feeds have been processed. Now you won't have so many feeds to read and a lot more time to weed through only what might be interesting whenever you have time.
Leisure Reading
When you're short on time, these services are great way to put things on hold. They allow users to come back and read things at a more leisure pace without wasting time or feeling overwhelmed. Just be sure you actually go back and read them. Otherwise, you may have some serious catching up to do.
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I have only heard of one of these, so I look forward to checking the others out. Thanks for another great article!
I'm still working on http://PushPopURL.com but anyone can try it out.
i've been looking for a link saver service, thanks for the list! :)
I think another one that's not really mentioned is using the "Note It" bookmarklet from Google Reader. If you are already using GReader and don't want to sign up for another service just to track a few links it is a great way. You have the option to not share it if you only want to make a note for yourself.
I would have added Twine.com to the list above. You can just collect things into Twine and read them later. But you also get the ability to share them, search, have discussions and a lot more.
Sad to see Eluma toolbar (eluma.com) is not on the list.
-=-Carlisia
I am absolutely shocked that the only quality tool for saving links for later is not on this list.
http://www.ideashower.com/blog/read-it-later-extension-updates-ver-05/
Read it later extension works perfect with Firefox's bookmarks ad is basically all I need for when I dont have time or am not ready to read a page. You should be ashamed.
I always drag and drop links I want to take a look at later to my "Follow Up" folder in my Bookmarks.
thanks for these later link reader services
It might be worth mentioning Mento from the developer of LaterLoop. LaterLoop is in a way a "light" version of Mento which includes powerful yet simple sharing and emailing options.
The simplest, fastest is http://toread.cc
I use Google Notebook for link storage and later access from anywhere. It works perfectly for me.
I'm totally in love with readbag since the first time I've used it!
Great selection. :)
hey Corvida, you missed Xoost.com in the list
http://www.xoost.com/about.php
http://toread.cc/ must be on the list. I recommend it.
Some more tips:
http://www.fleck.com
http://iterasi.com
http://bemba.com
http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/08/6-upcoming-tools-to-share-the-highest-waves-in-web-surfing/
THANKS for the links, but...
... why not just post to del.icio.us if you are already a member?
For Bloglines fan, like myself, use the "pin" or "clip" feature.
Eddy.
I totally agree with Eddy Young. Delicious is king.
Simply save your links with tags like "read" or "toread" and bundle these tags in a Todolist. Check out my bookmarks : http://del.icio.us/c0wb0yz
I liked ideashower a lot, but u can't carry your links from one computer to another, your links are stuck in the browser...
Now I use and would recommand www.diigo.com , their toolbar has a one click button to save your links as unread and find them later. it's kind of a delicious+readitlater (plus bunch of things actually) combo
I don't always have time to read an entire article or found one item I want to buy later. I started using i-Lighter. It lets me highlight what I want,add notes, organize it, share it, insert it into word docs. It's pretty simple to use.
When I have some link to visit later, but it's not yet a link to be my favorite in delicious, I just add to "Note in Reader", a new feature at Google Reader, simple, easy and quickly! Then at the end of the day I read my notes on Reader...
I use delicious too.
Also Google Reader stars are useful to make a first filtering of what is worth reading.
I use furl.net for a similar purpose. You can tag urls when you save them, then generate lists of saved urls by tags - useful when sending research reports to others.
We used to use http://del.icio.us/ for our company, now we use http://www.centraldesktop.com to share and bookmark web pages for reading.
Since this is for our company/team environment, using Central Desktop makes the bookmarks private to within our organization and stores the cached copy, which then becomes indexed in the search engine for later retrieval.
We have been doing this for about a year now and its working out well.
what's wrong with delicious? why did you exclude it?
We eat our own dogfood and use the A.nnotate bookmarklet to make a snapshot usually adding a tag or two. I find it a bit tedious going through plain bookmarked pages, but this way they kind of jump out later when you're browsing by tags, which is probably when you want to read them.
I love to use delicious with readeroo FF extension.
One button to push page in delicious, one button to pop page out from delicious ...
I also write a greasemonkey script to add a post from google reader in delicious (with custom tag or tags or groups of tags) http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/22481 (and you have also insert it in a list of greasemonkey script here http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/greasemonkey_scripts_for_the_s.php) so I can push url from google reader ...
I'm just developing a simple service to store links as "supervised link lists by the community". What I don't like of the most link saving tools is that they very loosely connected. What I like is a set of links which gives me real value on a specific subject.
Give it a try. However, it's still in very early stages. www.socialistr.com
Just wondering why del.icio.us was omitted from the list? del.icio.us is awesome!
Instapaper + PaperStack is an awesome combination to access your Instapaper links right from the Dock (OS X Leopard only)
http://www.sause.org/paperstack
Del.icio.us is more for storing links permanently or for a longer length of time. These sites only aim to store links for a shorter length of time, though you can do both. The aim is different.
I prefer Eluma for my bookmarking needs, but of course I am the CTO...
:)
"ReadBag doesn't support tagging." Ups, a strong disadvantage.
Thx, good news ;)
Thanks for a great post that made my day. I'll have to share it with my faculty. I've been looking for such tools for awhile, but wasn't sure what was available or even where to start looking. I definitely see the need for keeping temporary bookmarks separate from all the bookmarks I want to keep. I'll get through the day and have a pile of a dozen or so bookmarks. I plan to give ReadBag and LaterLoop a try, although since my life exists within the Google Universe, It's tempting to lean toward ReadBag, but LaterLoop makes a bit more sense with its integration with Twitter and del.icio.us (where I prefer to keep my permanent bookmarks).
A list of links only? Get yourself a list of stashed *pages* you can read directly, even when you're offline: http://sharedcopy.com/public/read-later
True, i use delicious and it has been a wonderful tool but just needed something for the short-term for evaluation purposes which I might later save in delicious if found to be really great.
Thanks for the post and all the comments, too. Now, I'd have to sort through the growing list myself. Beats the hell out of the many open tags that slow down the Mac.
Best.
alain
Another Socialbookmarking-Service is Diigo.com. Diigo knows a state "unread" for bookmarks, these unread items are even integrated in a menu (in Firefox using the Firefox-Extension of Diigo) and the toolbar of Diigo has a really simple quick bookmark button that adds automatically the state "unread".
I use Evernote - which not only saves the original article, but also syncs it across my computers so I can read it anywhere - including my phone!
http://evernote.com/
It's funny that someone would even need a tool to save bookmarks for later. Why not just create a folder in your browser bookmarks that says for later or something.
However, for those who are more productive and want to add notes and other stuff to 'potential' bookmarks, then those tools might come in handy. I will definitely give the apps mentioned above a try though.
I used to use http://del.icio.us/ but now I just use Springnote (http://www.springnote.com/) which is something like notepad and Microsoft Word that is online. No installation, just sign in and I can start adding stuff to it then close the browser or tab and thats it. Everything is saved automatically. I can also easily share this information or just keep it private. Highly recommended!
Thanks for these new tools to save and bookmark and read the articles for a later time. My question is: where is the time between blogging, twitter, FB, emails and reading. I am wondering how many of us really end up reading those saved posts?
I would be curious to hear what folks have to say about this.
Thanks,
kamla bhatt