Read It Later: iPhone Bookmarking and Offline Reading on Steroids
Bookmarking on the iPhone and iPod touch works well enough in Safari, but it can clearly be improved upon. The latest app that tries to provide a better bookmarking experience on the iPhone is Read It Later (iTunes link), which also syncs with the company's desktop browser plugins and bookmarklets. Read It Later is similar to Instapaper. It lets you save pages through a bookmarklet in Safari and then read them in the app's built-in browser, both as a cached copy of the web page, or in a text-only mode.
Features
Because the iPhone doesn't allow users to easily copy and paste a code snippet into a bookmark (yet), installing the bookmarklet is a bit complicated, but the company provides a good set of instructions, and installing the bookmarklet shouldn't take more than a minute.
Once you have installed the bookmarklet, you just have to open up your bookmarks folder, click the Read It Later bookmark, and the page will be saved for you. Because your data is saved on the company's server, you can easily sync bookmarks from multiple devices.
In the app itself, you can then read your bookmarked stories in the built-in browser at your leisure. You can also sort your reading list by date, title, or site.
Read It Later's most important feature, however, is that it caches the content of your saved Web pages and lets you read it offline. Thanks to this, you can catch up on some of your reading while on a plane, for example.
Pro Version
The paid version, which costs $2.99 (iTunes link), adds a number of great features to the app, including a 'Tap To Save' bookmarklet that allows you to save any link on a given page (see this video for how it works), a full-screen reader that hides the Read It Later bookmarks, the ability to share links on various social bookmarking services, and an unread count on the apps icon on the iPhone's home screen.
Verdict
Read It Later's closest competitor is probably Instapaper, which also offers a free and pro version (at $9.99). Both apps are very similar, and Instapaper has a dedicated following that swears by the product. We like both apps, and would recommend that you try the free version of both Read it Later and Instapaper to see which one works best for you. For us, Read It Later's 'Tap to Save' bookmarklet is a killer feature in the pro version, but not everybody will really need this.
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I've used ReaditLater since it first came out a few years ago and am happy there is a finally an iphone app. It is a great app for reading long articles on the bus on the way to work. The Tap to Save feature is perfect for digg, too.
the ability to share links on various social bookmarking services, and an unread count on the apps icon on the iPhone's home screen.
raivo pommer-www.google.ee
raimo1@hot.ee
The New Zealand dollar
rose on a day with little domestic news of note ahead of the Easter holiday weekend.
By 5pm the NZ dollar was buying US58.16c, up from US57.77c at 8am and from US57.30c at 5pm yesterday.
The theme of the week was the ebb and flow of risk appetite among foreign investors. The currency dipped when Wall Street had a bad day and has been strong when investors are more comfortable with the world economic situation. They were at ease today.
BNZ Capital said that even though the NZ dollar has risen from below US50c in early March to nearly US60c it is no raging bull.
"Much of the recent NZ dollar strength is attributable to an improvement in sentiment toward the global economy," BNZ Capital said.
Solid demand out of Japan has also provided a boost and the yen cross has climbed from below 54.00 yen to above 60.00 yen in the past month. It was 58.15 yen at 5pm from 57.35 yen at the same yesterday.
Investors are said to be hesitant about risky assets ahead of US bank earnings reports next week and ahead of the long weekend.
raivo pommer-www.google.ee
raimo1@hot.ee
PEUGEOT CRISE
The board of PSA, Europe's No. 2 automaker after Volkswagen, cited "the extraordinary difficulties currently faced by the automotive industry" as its reason for replacing Streiff with Philippe Varin, currently the boss of steelmaker Corus. But Streiff, 54, had alienated other top PSA managers and infuriated the French government by vowing to shrink the group's payroll-even after receiving a nearly $4 billion government bailout that was supposed to protect jobs.
Although rumors had circulated for weeks that Streiff's job was in danger, the announcement clearly caught him off guard. Through an outside spokesman, he issued a statement calling the board's decision "incomprehensible," adding, "The policies we defined and put in place over the past two years have left PSA well-armed against the current crisis." Investors didn't seem happy, either: PSA shares sank more than 9 percent on the news of Streiff's departure.
raivo pommer-www.google.ee
raimo1@hot.ee
Europe's largest bank, HSBC Holdings,
confirmed on Monday it was considering selling three of its major office buildings and said it
had received interest from potential buyers.
HSBC, which recently raised nearly $19 billion in a rights issue, said it may sell and lease-back office buildings in New York, Paris and London, including its headquarters at Canary Wharf.
London's Sunday Telegraph reported that HSBC was considering selling three of its biggest office buildings to raise 2.7 billion pounds ($3.98 billion).
"We are taking a look at the market, yes," spokesman David Hall said in Hong Kong.
"There are people interested in buying at an appropriate price," Hall said.
He declined to give further details.
HSBC bought back its building at Canary Wharf for 838 million pounds from ailing Spanish property firm Metrovacesa at the end of last year after the Spanish firm failed to refinance a loan secured on the building.
Globally, banks battered by the financial crisis have been looking to shed non-core assets in order to raise capital and improve their balance sheets.
"HSBC has just raised funds from a rights issue and the possible sale of offices could further boost its cash level and thus benefit the bank in its future acquisitions," said Alex Tang, head of research at Core Pacific-Yamaichi International.
The bank, which planned to shut most of its U.S. consumer lending business, said last month that it was ready for acquisitions in its traditional stronghold of Asia where many banks are pulling out to focus on core markets.